The Show Choir
An unwanted vacation, some obnoxious teenagers, and the impromptu performance that welcomed me back to the world.
There are many ways to start a story. Too many. Or at least too many ways to start this one — so I’ll do what my betters always encouraged — I’ll start in the middle.
It’s spring break and I’m staying with my husband and our two kids at an Embassy Suites in a small industrial neighborhood outside of Boston. It is the first time we’ve traveled as a family by plane since the pandemic started and we’ve come with my ten year old’s entire synchronized skating team for the ISI Nationals. It’s kind of a big deal. If it hadn’t been, there is no way I’d have gotten on a plane with a bunch of unvaxxed kids and agreed to stay in a big, cheesy hotel overrun with unmasked strangers right as a purported second wave of Omicron is apparently about to crash over the East Coast. It is truly — truly — my worst nightmare — a steadfast combination of many if not all of the things that I try always to avoid, but right now — here in the middle of the story — none of that stuff matters. What matters is that I’m standing on a balcony six stories above an open mezzanine upon which, approximately fifty teenagers are singing a cappella to “A Million Miles Away,” from the musical Aladdin, and their voices — the voices of this group of unruly, misbehaved, and foul-mouthed kids whose presence in our hotel has…
