When I was in the third grade, I already had a good dose of piano lessons under my belt, compliments of my weekly sessions with Mrs. Gorkachevsky, a Russian immigrant with tons of patience and a need for cash. I loved to listen to her play: not only was she extremely talented, she was a beautiful older woman with perfect blonde hair always in a big updo with piercing blue eyes. She was always yelling at me because I didn’t practice enough. I was practicing piano every single day – just not any of her stuff. I preferred Lennon and McCartney. At this point I was able to easily crank out a few Beatles tunes (I had a crush on Paul, then Ringo, and sometimes John; George never clicked with me). When I learned that my school, Grimsford Elementary was having a talent show, I proudly signed up.
The day had arrived and I was ready: I was going to floor them with my rendition of ‘Yesterday’, my favorite Lennon/McCartney song.
‘Gee, Catey, you can really read music?’ asked one of the other contestants, who was holding a baton (her talent was apparently twirling the baton, and I was embarrassed for her).
As I looked over the other non-musician schmucks in this show, I thought to myself I had this one in the bag – I had sheet music! It was rolled up and ready for action! I was going to be THE SHOW STOPPER!
I was next up after little Miss Twirler. Then something strange happened: my chest felt heavy. I realized it was my heart beating…I was NERVOUS! All of a sudden I started to panic –I was looking for a way out of all of this…and then I heard my name over the loudspeaker. I felt woozy and thought I wasn’t going to be able to move, but knew I had to get it over with. I fumbled with the sheet music I had been parading around with, since it was still in roll format, quickly attempting a reverse roll to flatten it out. I peeked around the curtains and was jarred when I saw the great sea of heads. No faces -just heads… it seemed like there were thousands of them! I could sense all those heads were staring at the stage, waiting in anticipation, because it was intensely quiet. Then I heard one distant cough, which made me even more nervous.
I found my way to the piano and carefully placed my still floppy sheet music up on the stand. My fingers were trembling all over the place. So far, this was not going as planned. I relied on my abilities and just started the song: ‘Yesterday … all my troubles seemed so far away ……..’ and then I, um…forgot the song.
Like someone flipped a switch. Blew a circuit.
I went totally blank… I forgot everything I knew.
So I glanced up at the sheet music to refresh my memory and it just flopped over: I watched it gingerly cascade down to the floor, eventually landing on top of my feet. Now I was really dead in the water. I struggled for a few moments to recall how this song went … or even how to play the piano… nothing. I just sat there like a big putz, wondering how I could possibly have allowed myself to be in such a position. All those heads were staring at me… What were they looking at? I heard murmurs and there was much more coughing. Why don’t they all just leave me alone!!?? What’s with all that coughing?!!
There was too much time left –I just couldn’t walk out yet – I had only gotten through one line of the song to begin with. I had to pick up the floppy sheet music and try again. I crouched down to scoop up the sheets and firmed it up with an additional fold. This was a painfully long procedure; the murmurs and coughing got louder; I think my heartbeat was actually audible by this time. I looked down to see if my shirt was moving –my heart was thumping hard.
And so I began Yesterday once again, from the beginning. Since I was well into my allotted performance time, part of my young little stage-frightened-to-death brain thought I’d better catch up, so I sped up the tempo. Then floppy started acting up about half way through the song. It started to slowly bend over, and so did I – and the song got faster. I was hunkered over the keyboard like Quasimodo, squinting up at the bowed sheet music, speed reading, speed playing, and by the end, I was playing it so fast, the song was unrecognizable. My performance was a complete and utter disaster and I was a mess. I stopped the show all right!
Everything painful and embarrassing about that dreadful moment was summed up in one brief sentence, when I heard a couple of kids say,
‘There’s that girl that messed up at the talent show’ ….
and at that point I was officially retired from showbiz- in the third grade.
theclubsinger 