Perry's First Blog!

Now that Christmas break has finally arrived and I have oodles of spare time on my hands (when I'm not shoveling snow), I decided to contribute to our family blog! I had quite the experience last Friday at our school sing-along, so I thought I'd share. I know you are probably tempted to just click on the video below, but the footage might mean more if you wade through my preliminary explanation/introduction first. (Sorry it's so long!) Enjoy.

Background, Part 1:

For those of you who don't know, I used to be the lead singer in a rock band in high school. My bandmates and I created many fond memories as we spent numerous hours memorizing and practicing various grunge/metal cover songs. (To our credit, we even wrote a few that were pretty decent. ) Anwyay, one of our "concerts" was a performance at our high school talent show. We played an original song, which the audience seemed to enjoy. This got the adrenaline flowing, and for our second song, we launched into "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana. The familiarity of this song, which was popular at the time, proved to be irresistible for some in the crowd. Within seconds, every rocker wannabe, metalhead, and stoner was on his way to the gym floor to participate in what quickly became somewhat of an impromptu mosh pit (as opposed to a carefully choreographed mosh pit?). Needless to say, this did not go over well with the faculty and administration of RHS. Miss Whitworth (a.k.a. Coach Whit) stepped in to settle down the hyper mob. Not a good idea. I'm pretty sure she got an elbow to the head. Enter Dr. Wilcock, Principal. He authoritatively walked in to the midst of the band and held up his hands as if to say, "That's enough . . . this is getting a little out of control." We tried our best to pretend that he wasn't there, but alas, the song was cut short. Aaahhh...the good ol' days. Fast forward 11 years . . . . . . . .

Background, Part 2:

Several years passed, I graduated from college, began teaching, and eventually ended up in Smithfield. During my first Christmas season at Summit Elementary, I was informed at the last moment that there was a tradition that the male teachers (of which there were many) would dress in hula skirts and wigs and dance around on the stage to the world's most horrendous Christmas song, "Mele Kelekimaka," as a special number during the school sing-along. Since it was too late to politely revolt, I went along with the routine . . . kind of. There is a fine line between "being a good sport" and "public humiliation." Our performance was definitely of the latter classification, and it was about as un-rock n' roll as you can get. My inner Kurt Cobain was violated. I vowed never to do it again. Well, a year passed, and the hula routine was again on the agenda. Not wanting to subject myself to that a second time, I rallied the troops (the other male teachers) and convinced them that it was time to change tradition. Fortunately, most of them hated it too, but they were too afraid of the music teacher to enact a coup d'etat. We decided to come up with an alternate performance (without her knowledge) and surprise everyone. Drawing from my rock band experience, I tracked down a punk rock version of "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town." We all dressed like rock stars, took our places, and prepared to rewrite Summit history. When the curtain opened, the crowd roared (as you'll see in the video, 600 elementary students can really do a number on the ol' eardrums), and it was a hit! We were lip-sync celebrities for the rest of the day, and even the music teacher was pleased (whew!).

The Present:

Fast forward another year, to last week. Since the previous year was such a success, we decided to keep the idea of a rock routine and just use a different song. This year's selection was "Jingle Bells" by Skid Row. (Yes, I just said "Jingle Bells" by Skid Row. Check iTunes if you don't believe me.) This brings us to the video below. I spliced together little segments of the performance for the sake of time. Here are a few fun things to watch for:

1. FYI...the view is kind of distant. I am the guy lip-syncing at the microphone in the green shirt. We have about a dozen male teachers at our school (an anomaly, I know), hence the oversized band. Our janitor joined us too. He is the dude who slides across the stage then whips his mop hair around in the air.
2. I know it looks like we are in some shady drug-laden venue, but we are actually just in the upper gym of our extremely old school. It really wasn't as dark as it appears, and we are proud of our drug-free-zone status. We took a break from our rigorous schoolwork for the occasion. We don't always have this much fun. :)
3. Watch for the nice light show. The flashing red/yellow/white lights are due to our resource teacher and ESL teacher standing at the dangerous 80-year-old breaker box, manually flipping banks of lights on and off with both hands.
4. Listen for the kids chanting, "Encore, encore, encore . . ." This is where I must insert that I think I have the best job in the world. The legislators may not appreciate us, but dangit, the kids love us!
5. Here is the part that ties this whole rambling blog together. Toward the end, one of the new teachers exercised his right to use his first-year-teacher poor judgement by hoisting one of the students onto the stage to dance by us. Oops. Remember earlier when I described the metalheads rushing the gym floor? Well, this was sort of a deja vu moment. Once the crowd saw that one of their own had infiltrated the stage, they all wanted a piece of the action! In a matter of seconds, the stage began to fill up, and from my vantage point, I could see about 1/3 of the student body (which amounts to approximately 200 students, age 8-11) lunging toward the stage. My teacher self thought, "Yikes! Stop the madness!" Then my rock-n-roll-adrenaline-ridden-livin'-the-high-school-dream-one-more-time self thought, "What the heck? We're just having fun!" Moments later, deja vu moment #2 appeared. Watch for the lady at the left in the green shirt holding up her hands. That is the principal. Only this time it was Wilson, not Wilcock. Once again, I was upstaged by the administration. (Now I understand why so many of those rock stars smashed their guitars . . . ) It was just as well though. All good things must come to an end. Don't worry . . . we weren't in trouble, no one was injured (where is Coach Whit these days, anyway?), and a good time was had by all. I chuckle to think how history repeated itself in a small way, and I look forward to next year's performance. Merry Christmas! And long live rock and roll! Enjoy the show.