I did a thing tonight. After months of terror, I finally got up the courage to try my hand at karaoke.
Never in a million years would I have imagined that I would ever get up the courage to sing in front of several dozen complete strangers. A certain someone has been gently encouraging me to try it each time we go out. Until now I’ve always declined. I guess that’s the cost of being a perfectionist. I’m my own harshest critic, and I had this fear that I would sound terrible and get booed off the stage.
After watching my boyfriend do a few songs (and he does have quite a nice singing voice, though he denies that fact), I figured I would try to bust out of my shell and give it a shot. I picked a song I know really well, Enya’s “May It Be” from The Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack. I put my name and the song in the lineup, partially because I wasn’t sure they would have it, and that would be my ‘out.’ Can’t sing what they don’t put on the screen, right?
Yeah…they had it.
I get called up, and I will not lie, I was nervous as all get out. Even being on stage in one of the school plays in years past was not near so nerve-wracking. Then I told myself that it’s only a couple of minutes, and what is the worst that could happen?
I guess I knocked it out of the park. One of the people running the karaoke table turned to my boyfriend and said to him ‘she can sing!’ All the while, he’s looking at me, beaming with pride that his girlfriend, usually so shy and reserved, had actually pushed through her discomfort and sing before a bunch of strangers. I guess nobody in the place had ever heard anyone sing a song partially in Elvish, either. Someone later came up to me and asked what language it was.
Want to know the really amazing bit?
I volunteered to do a second song, “The Song of the Lonely Mountain” from the first Hobbit movie. A couple of the karaoke veterans said I did an amazing job, especially considering I’ve never done that before.
I can’t wait for my next round.