Running with Scissors

Sara Peterson-Davis has worked as a newspaper researcher and reporter, as well as a communications director and consultant. She and her husband, Monty Davis, can be found in Liberty, Mo., keeping their two children from running with scissors. Contact Sara

Name That Tune

There’s just no gentle way of putting it, our daughter, Brynne, can’t carry a tune, in a paper bag. The girl is utterly tone deaf.

The melodies of even the most familiar songs are completely unrecognizable coming out of her sweet little mouth. And like the majority of folks who can’t sing, what she misses in pitch, she seems determined to make up in volume.

She loves to sing, bless her heart. And sing she does, morning, noon and night, rarely hitting the same note twice.

Brynne inherited her lack of tonal accuracy from both sides of our family. My husband is so tonally challenged that he doesn’t even hum anymore. As for my side, my mother couldn’t hit the right key with a tire iron, but that never stopped her from belting out show tunes whenever the mood hit her.

“How was that?” Brynne asked the other night after finishing a rousing backseat rendition of Queen’s “We Will Rock You!”

“That was just great, sweetheart,” I said, hoping the ringing in my ears would subside soon.

So I lied. But it had been better than her first three attempts. I figured at that point the term “great” was a relative one. And anyway, the girl either doesn’t know or care that she isn’t singing the same notes as everyone else.

That became apparent last week when Brynne suddenly decided to participate in the congregational response portion of the service at church. Now at our church service this consists of the leader singing the first part of a prayer in a rather monotonous melody and then the congregation responding in an equally monotonous manor.

It isn’t grand opera and if you’re even close to the notes written on the page you earn a gold star for effort. That was until last Sunday.

There we were standing in the third pew from the back of the church and Brynne jumped up and joined the rest of the congregation in singing “Lord, have mercy.”

Mercy was right. There were only three notes and she didn’t hit one of them.

As we continued, Brynne started unconsciously doing a kind of skat singing adding at least six extra notes per measure running each word up and down the scale.

Her father was too busy lip-syncing to be aware of the cacophony emanating from our general direction. Meanwhile I was acting like a woman giving driving directions to someone who doesn’t speak English. I started singing louder and slower, hoping I could make Brynne sing in tune. Heads started to ever-so-slightly turn toward the back of the church. Either an exorcism was needed in pew No. 3 or someone was channeling Ella Fitzgerald. I just smiled as the “serious” singers in the group gave me concerned looks.

Oblivious, Brynne just kept skatting away.

I know it’s only a matter of time before she’ll want to join the choir.

This past Sunday, I was prepared for another edition of “Find That Tune,” when we were greeted with a polka band in the sanctuary. It was Oktoberfest Sunday.

I had never greeted polka with such enthusiasm. Let’s face it there’s nothing like the sound of accordions to make anyone lose their musical compass.

We all sounded like angels.

So here’s my plan. Does anyone know of an all-polka Lutheran church with a youth choir?

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