Walk Like A Panther, Sing Like A Boo

There are many things in my life I have never done; yodelling, nude modelling, afternoon tea at the Ritz. Some of those things I may get round to, like tea at the Ritz. Nude modelling and yodelling seem unlikely, separately or together, but never say never.

There is always room for new experiences, no matter how old you are. This week, for example, I did my first karaoke at the ripe old age of fifty.

Karaoke wasn’t even a thing when I was growing up and by the time it arrived I was an adult with a crippling array of hang ups and trauma about standing in front of people belting out popular hits into a microphone.

Some of that can be blamed on being coerced into the school choir by angry nuns who thought shouting about scales in C to a bewildered child who just wanted to be left alone to eat crisps was a good way to engender a life long love of performance in her. Some of it can be blamed on the hideous grip of puberty that insisted that everyone was looking at me and finding me wanting at the same time as insisting that nobody was looking at me because I was an awful specimen of humanity and doomed to failure for the rest of my life.

You might think that someone like me, who is loud and opinionated and talks all the fucking time, might love getting up and singing as if nobody had ears. I would love to, but I also very much feared having a panic attack and throwing up in front of a crowd of people in a bar. For a very full on person, I am massively socially anxious and cripplingly shy.

Over the years I have dealt with this in one of two ways. I either pretend for the required amount of time before going home to throw up and keep doing that until I am too exhausted to keep throwing up and/or pretending. Or I just refuse to do whatever it is. Karaoke has been one of those things I have been able to refuse to do, but it is also one of those things that I know I would love if I could just bloody well get over myself for five minutes.

I have been going to do karaoke every year for the past decade and then washing my hair instead. Last week, the family decided that while we were all still in the same city, we would hire a karaoke room for the evening and sing until our little hearts burst. Even though it was all my best beloveds, and there would be snacks, I was still not sure I’d actually do it. And on the night itself, events conspired to make it nearly not happen anyway. But it did, and I did. I sang and then I sang some more and I didn’t throw up and I had a lot of fun and I didn’t even have a drink to soften the blow. I did it all stone cold sober.

Some people might say that it’s a stupid thing to make a fuss about, because it’s just mucking about. It’s silly to be frightened of something unimportant.

I hate those people.

I say, if you’re frightened of something, it doesn’t matter what it is, it matters what you feel. Nobody has the right to tell you that you are stupid to feel what you feel, or that your feelings aren’t real or important. That’s just one of the many ways that society has found to make people a little bit more invisible in their own lives and that’s shitty.

Karaoke may be silly, but the fear of standing up in front of people and being ridiculed when you open your mouth, that’s not silly at all. That’s a huge thing.

What I decided in the end was that I was going to go and sing for myself, because I wanted to. I’m a big girl now. It turns out I can do whatever I want. I decided that it was time to stand up in front of people and be heard, even if it was just singing Walk Like A Panther by Tony Christie to my best beloveds.