Trouble with My Teeny, Tiny Voice

                I love Broadway musicals and am always starring in them during performances in front of my kids.  The key to starring in a real Broadway musical is to find the Broadway character that you sound most like, that you can emulate the best.  

    I sound the most like Les Miserables’ Cosette.  Unfortunately not the romantic, beautiful, soprano songbird, but the ragged, sweeping eight year old French child. And no matter how many theaters I call, I can't find a theater who will let a 39 year old Korean woman perform “I Have A Castle on a Cloud”.

                I’ve always been self-conscious about how child-like my voice is.  After several family members, close friends, business people, two pastors, and my husband have mistaken me for a child on the phone, I’ve finally conceded that they probably don’t all have bad phone connections.  Just most of them do.

                Don’t get me wrong- I still laugh when my friends ask me on the phone if they can talk to my mommy.  I still chuckle at Verizon for not letting me block a crank caller because they need my daddy to authorize my transaction.  I still smile patiently at being questioned if I’m old enough to buy theater tickets, and will my mommy and daddy be attending with me?  And I find being asked to speak to my mommy an excellent excuse to hang up on telemarketers.  

    Who am I kidding?  When I karaoke, I do a killer Michael Jackson parody.  Again- not the adult version, but the Jackson 5 child version.

                When we decided to stop homeschooling my teenager and enrolled him in public high school, one of the biggest stresses for me was how I would do calling the attendance office when he got sick.  Where’s my Cameron Frye when you need him?  I had a feeling that he did better getting Ferris Bueller out of school than I would do getting my own biological child out of school.   I mean, what would I do when the attendance office accused me of being a child and not a parent?  Throw a tantrum and scream at them that I am, in fact, an adult?

                In high school, one of my inspirations was Michel’le’s song “No More Lies”.    In this song, Michel’le belts out this strong, lung-powered singing voice, and then part way through the song, she decides to talk.  And your first response is, “Is that Elmo?”  Her child-like squeaky voice was incredible.  It thrilled me that a woman of such luxurious R&B success would not only sound like Elmo but choose to publicize that on national radio.  It surprised me- as much as it surprises you- that a woman who would choose to put an apostrophe in her name would give me courage: call me Christi'ne. 

                So the day finally came when my teenager got sick.  I pumped myself up, jumped up and down, and gave chest bumps to my imaginary football friends. Then I called the high school attendance office, and surprisingly, the first call went incredibly smooth.  I’m sure the coincidental amount of dropped huskiness must have played a factor.  They asked me his name, age, and why he was missing school.  I gave my best bass performance and didn't have a sliver of a problem.

                As for my several family members, close friends, business people, two pastors, and my husband, I was pretty sure that they all had hearing problems. My imaginary football friends and I, we did the dance Rocky Balboa did at the top of the stairs at Philadelphia Museum of Art.

    But when my son missed school a second day, it was revealing.

                “Hi, I’m calling because my son is sick,” I said.

                “Oh ok.  Thanks for calling,” the attendance lady replied, starting to hang up.

                “Uh, don’t you need his name and grade?”

                “No need.   I recognize your voice from yesterday.”

                . . .

                I looked around and my imaginary football friends were nowhere to be found.