and no one is really updating, so now it's once again time for

The Jessica C-Red Lunch Time Story Hour

today's story is one i rarely pull out of the archive, one that even my brother might not know.

in fact, i believe the only people who know about this are those who were in Mrs. Myron's First Grade class, 1981.

it is a story of a girl with a dream

it is a story of hopes dashed down the drain

it is a story, my friends, of the melissa manchester song that, to this day, makes my stomach hurt.

i give you:

Why Jessica Stopped Singing in (non-personal carspace) Public

or

Please Keep Your Hands Visible at All Times

my mother is not known for having the best taste in music. growing up in a house with a father who would listen almost exclusively to jazz and classical records (though in his late age he started turning to world beat and other things), it was always clear that what he listened to was far superior than what my mother set on the turn table.

and he wasn't wrong, really.

other than her encyclopedic Beatles collection, most of which i stole when i last left southern california for my glamorous sales support up here in beautiful downtown lake merritt, she has been known to have the following in her record collection:

barbra streisand

the bee-gees

that bee-gees guy singing with barbra streisand

donna summer

jennifer warren

that "lady in red" guy

air supply

anne murray

the an officer and a gentleman soundtrack

the top gun soundtrack

andrea bocelli

garth brooks

kenny rogers

linda rondstadt

and, most important to this story, melissa manchester

i used to sit in the den and listen to records for hours and hours after school. my mother would let me turn them over, and sometimes she would let me put my own records on, my favorite being the "chipmunk punk" album by Alvin and the Chipmunks which featured alvin and the 'munks singing well-crafted renditions of such new wave classics as "let's go" by the cars and "my sharona" by the knack.

i cannot tell you what i would give to still have my copy of that album. i cannot put i into words my longing to have this album in my life again.

I HAD IT ON VINYL, PEOPLE.

anyway

my mom would put on her awesome records and we would talk about my day, or i would color in my coloring book or whatever other 6 yr old things i did.

when my mother wasn't around i would sing along with her records. my favorite, without a doubt, because it had the lyrics and i could read them while i sang, was "don't cry out loud" by melissa manchester.

plus, it really captured the melancholy i was feeling at the time, 6 years old was a rough year for me. i'd really rather not go into why, but, let's just say that was an unwanted addition to my life at the time. nothing but crying and pooping and unlike my sister, i didn't think it was fun to play house and change his diapers.

i was having a lot more time to myself due to the screaming shitmachine, and here is where i think the very beginning of my anti-social tendency to use music as a source of solace. i would sit in the den for hours while my mom tended to jonathan, and sing and sing and sing.

around this time, it became my turn to bring in something for show and tell in mrs myron's class. i was given a week's notice and was told i could bring something from home.

well, i decided i was going to bring a song from home.

i was going to sing "don't cry out loud" for the class, because i really liked it and i liked that my voice didn't crack at all (since my voice has never ever been able to hit real high notes with ease, not even as a six year old) when i sang it.

plus, i could show off what i had convinced myself were considerable chops, given that i could almost hold the notes as long as she could without having to take a breath in the middle. this was, in my mind, almost more important than what a person's voice sounded like--it was how long they could hold a note that was important to me.

(later, after two or three episodes of star search with johnny carson sidekick ed mcmahon, i quickly gave up this criterion of singing talent)

so, i had a week to prepare. i would lock myself in the den and sing the song with the record over and over.

i would sing it as i walked to school, i would sing it while i walked around the school yard alone, i would sing it while i rode my bike around the neighborhood, i would sing it while i changed jon's poopy diapers.

finally, it was the big day. i was nervous, but not terribly so. i instinctively knew that the key to a flawless performance was preparation, and given that i had logged 14643 singing hours in the week before my turn at show and tell, i was fairly confident that i was going to kill.

when i name was called, i stood up in front of my peers and look out over the sea of my 30 or so classmates. i saw their young curious eyes peer over my empty handedness with question mark eyebrows(this was show and tell afterall, and it looked like so far i had nothing to show) and i did what nearly any first-time-performer does: i mentally shit my pants.

never before did it really occur to me what i was about to do. i was used to singing to the bookshelves in the den or the cracks in the sidewalk that i knew like the back of my hand. i was used to singing while riding my bike so that whatever came out of my mouth flew past me into the atmostphere, unreal, unheard and private.

what i was about to do, though, was going to sing, unaccompanied, in the dead silence of a first-grade classroom the soft hits now-classic "don't cry out loud".

just thinking of it now is making my stomach pull itself into knots.

so, i hurriedly explained that i missed my mom and that i would sing this song when i got lonely, then sang the world's fastest rendition of "don't cry out loud" in recorded history, all the while fidgeting with the tag sewn into the back of my garanimals corduroy pants and staring at the ground.

i believe i took two breaths during the whole performance.

as soon as i finished i looked up at my classmates with a paradoxical mix of relief and total terror. relief at having finished the song, terror waiting for their reaction.

before anyone did or said anything, kenny "i look like alfred e newman from mad magazine" (i can't remember his last name) blurted out

"WHAT WERE YOU DOING WITH YOUR HANDS? YOU PICKING YOUR BUTT??? HAR HAR HAR"

i could not, dear friends, even form a response to that, before my overwhelming sense of white-hot blinding murder-rage at his nerve to even PROPOSE something so damning IN FRONT OF THE TEACHER EVEN was quickly transformed to bone-crushing humiliation when the entire class errupted in laughter.

i think that my face turned a shade of red that heretofore, had not existed in nature.

i remember mrs myron gently told the class to quiet down and i walked to the back of the class to sit at my desk, fist shoved not into the back of my pants but deep into my pockets, near tears, undone, dejected, and for the first time feeling embarrassed about myself in public.

it is a feeling i will never forget. like most things, the first time is the most vivid/alive/painful experience.

to this day, it would take enough alcohol to kill the entire population of a small village to make me drunk enough to try karaoke in a bar or anywhere other than my/my close close friend's car, though i love to sing and will regularly torture my friends with my vehicular croonings.

but the idea of opening my mouth in public like that is at once the most terrifying and most fun thing i can imagine.

i'm sure at some point i will become confident enough to sing in front of people...i already promised lauren i would sing "save the best for last" for her at her wedding, given i am drunk enough. i advised to have plenty of tequila on hand at the open bar.

i just hope i have a mic or something to occupy my hands while i do it.

NB--for the next 3 years until kenny left my elementary school, i made it my personal mission in life to aim at his face whenever playing any ball-flinging game. dodgeball, kickball, basketball (woops! i guess i really suck at shooting a basket!), and my favorite, tetherball. once, i hit him so hard in the face with the tetherball that he had to go to the nurse. when asked if i did it on purpose, i simply gave the 8 year old's equivalent to "don't come on the court unless you're gonna bring it".

ya dammmn right.