Strongly Worded

Testing 1, 2, 3

So among the many perks of working in academia is access to a cappella music. When I was in college, I was somewhat of an a cappella groupie, because the members of the best group lived in my dorm, and thus I saw, first-hand, how cool it was to be incredibly talented and be a member of a tight-knit clique/cult and have access to the guys in male a capella groups who visited our campus as featured performers/fresh meat. The guys were always adorable and I'd sit in the front row and fantasize that their rendition of "Brown-eyed Girl" was directed at me. I never actually spoke to any one of the visiting a capella guys, but they apparently attended the coolest parties (hosted in their honor) in which they not only hooked up with my classmates but also sang impromptu harmonies.

The mystique surrounding college a cappella persisted until after I graduated, and I fell in love with a former member of SQ. We went to a concert (he had "alum" status by then). And afterwards I had (what I thought would be) the supreme pleasure of attending an actual a cappella party at a co-ed school. I was kind of old by then (by which I mean 23), so the novelty of being inside a boy's dorm room underwhelmed me. And I was hugely disappointed to find that the party consisted of the same stale chips and beer and awkwardness that were staples of the social life at my (women's) college. I was disappointed. But I did have the very real pleasure of dating the aforementioned a cappella boy, and he'd sing in the shower and once (unsuccessfully) tried to teach me pitch.

Anyway. Despite the fact that I am much, much older, I remain a little in awe of this whole scene, and when two students at my foster job mentioned that they're members of the premiere group on campus, I got a little giggly and star-struck and listened to them online and then decided to check out their concert and also buy their CD.

Which I did with the beloved E. on Saturday night. They were so cute, running around before the show, all self-important with their water bottles and sound check. Their quirky set included break dancing and an encounter between a guy dressed as a gorilla and another guy dressed as a banana. They trash-talked about the women on their campus and how they are "the poor man's Wellesley girls."

I was too embarrassed to say hi to the students I know in the group. I felt so very, very old and dorky, way dorkier than I did in college, because there was absolutely no hope at all that any of the songs would be directed at me. Which is probably a good thing, since I'm almost old enough to be their mother (assuming I could bear children at age 12), and one of the concert's highlights was Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous Girl."

Posted by Dori at 7:48 PM