Despite my regrettable, yet extremely obvious, lack of talent, I am a singer. I'm not a singer in the same manner of some of the very talented people that I've worked with that have been paid to do it. I'm not even a singer in the way that a number of actors that I know - who claim they can't sing, right before they start belting out a showtune. No, what I am is a supermarket singer.
At least a couple of times a week, I find myself in a store...whether its a food store or a Wal-Mart type place...and they'll have music playing over the speakers. Time was that the music that they played was the much maligned Muzak and everyone just ignored it. But these days all of these places have a satellite music service that plays contemporary music.
Well, apparently, as I shop I must kind of zone out because it doesn't take long before I'm unconsciously singing along to "Time After Time" while I check out the sale on cereals...unconsciously that is until I notice the women looking at me with their looks of, "Oh, sweetie, you really shouldn't sing."
I'd love to be able to stop it, but its kind of hard when you don't know that you're doing it. I've caught myself singing everything from Elvis to Motown to Fleetwood Mac to Cowboy Junkies. I sing along to country music songs that I haven't heard in 20 years. I sing along to one hit wonders that I didn't like when they were released. I've hated Matthew Wilder's "Break My Stride" since the first time I heard it, but that doesn't stop me from singing it in a department store.
The really unfortunate part is if there's any sort of unconscious dancing. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes it can't be helped. Since I was 10-years-old I've always had to do an involuntary shoulder shake during Elvis' "Burnin' Love." Turns out that I still do that according to the quizzical looks I received a few weeks ago in a Target.
Now, when I lived in Los Angeles, there would be people all over the place that would sing in line at the bank or in the laundromat or in the park...and it would sound like a real life musical. For all I know, the young guy that I used to run into at the local laundromat in my Burbank neighborhood is off doing a touring production of "Rent."
It would be great if people looked at me that way as I butchered a Beach Boys song, but that's not the lot that I have in life. I'm stuck being the adult version of Alfalfa terrorizing my fellow shoppers.
There are moments that I do enjoy being an unintentional singer, and that's when I get to collide with another of my kind. The other day I was arriving at a business lunch and as I was getting out of my car still singing the War classic, "Why Can't We Be Friends," I heard one of my associates walking towards me doing the same. I still remember one time when I was working in a deli in my youth, hopping out of my car after listening to the Beatles "Hey Jude," still singing and opening the door to the store just as one of my coworkers inside was getting to the same point in the Na-na-na-na's...and we looked at each other and belted out the next line. Or the time in cubicle jungle when I walked past a coworker's desk singing Simon & Garfunkel's "Cecilia" only to have him suddenly join me in the chorus. None of it might sound good, but it is fun.
So, apparently I'm going to go on singing whether I really want to or not. It's a mostly harmless flaw...although, I would recommend maybe avoiding the aisle that I'm in while I'm picking out bananas and laying waste to "Walk This Way."
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