When I was in the sixth grade at Oak Forest Elementary School in Jackson, Mississippi, our music teacher was named Miss Larsen. All sixth graders were required to sing in the choir; it was a class that we all went to.
Miss Larsen decided that we would have a Christmas program, and so we started early in the Fall to learn the songs. Because we sixth grade boys were only twelve years old, most of us could not sing the bass line. So she had the boys singing the alto line, with the girls singing the soprano line.
I remember being so excited about the upcoming program, and how it all sounded when we put the two parts together, that I would often sing in the shower when I was getting ready for school. My mother would take as much of it as she could, before she would tell me to stop singing and finish getting ready for school.
She told me on more than one occasion that I sounded like a dying cow!
However, when the night came for our program, and the sounds of the little girls singing the soprano part and the little boys singing the alto part filled the school auditorium, my mother sat there with her mouth hanging open. She remarked later that after hearing me rehearse while in the shower, she never dreamed that it would ever sound as beautiful as it did. The problem was that she was only hearing the alto line, sung by a sixth grade boy.
The problem with us many times is that we are only hearing the discordant notes of life as we move through it, without understanding that there is much more music to this score.
–Rocky Henriques
