Chorus; the song of life

Have you ever attended a course and wondered what the hell you were doing there? Whether it’s a seminar, a training session, or some random healing group, which claims to solve all your life problems by teaching you how to breathe, I’m sure everyone has found themselves in an unplanned environment, during which they frequently wished they could die.

I remember when I was in Eighth Grade we had a required Chorus class, yes it’s as retarded as it sounds. While all the boys were doing fun things in Tech Ed. building shelves and hot air balloons, we were stuck in a class room a kilometer away singing “Mee May Maah Moe Moo”. Yes. Moo. Can you imagine the indignity???! This exercise was supposed to make your vocal chords flexible. Well someone should tell them that…I DON’T PLAN ON ENTERING THROAT GYMNASTICS AT THE OLYMPICS!!! But there we were, with our wig-clad teacher who was sickly excited about the prospect of singing the above mooing in every bloody note on the piano.

AAAAAH!

It was only about 55 minutes of suffering but it would almost drive me to tears, every single time. When Mr. Winward fell unexpectedly off his piano bench knocking his toupee out of place, I felt guiltily responsible, although everyone could see, I was a clear 5 meters away from him, and hadn’t tampered with the screws.

Since then, I’ve been surprised, that life often throws you into Mee-May-Maah-Moe Moo-moments. One minute you’re happy and free, the next you’re stuck somewhere, and although not physically restrained from leaving, you stay the entire torturous time, silently suffering and resenting the fact that you were taught not to scream in public.

A while back I was signed up for a day long seminar about trade or export or something equally exciting like that. It was in the middle of a week, where I was close to ripping my hair out from all the impossible tasks on my plate, and yet I went anyway to broaden my horizons. On the way there, the insane traffic helped broaden my creativity in skills such as swearing and wishing evil thoughts towards my fellow commuters.

I thought that overcoming this obstacle was a big achievement, but after I arrived at the venue, and was handed a folder and the agenda for the day, I found that there was an even bigger achievement ahead of me; to make it through the day without crying.

It turned out that the seminar was suddenly something completely different. And the inept organizer had switched it to technology, and how it could make my life smoother and easier, if I was an entrepreneur. Okaaaay. But I’m not. I wish I was, because then I wouldn’t have sent myself here. I’d be in my delightful Ikea-furnished home office drinking coffee and listening to blaring music while I worked happily on my laptop, making millions. Fantasies are great, they defy logic.

Anyway, in eight grueling hours of mundane discourse, we praised the wonders of Excel, MS Project, and learned that putting together a database of contacts in your own handwriting on random pieces of paper is not an efficient business practice..HELLOOO! No Shit! Is it still 1989?

And to add insult to injury, we had to do really annoying exercises where you pretend to introduce yourself to an “American”, by keeping it “short and sweet”. They made it sound like we were acquainting ourselves with outer space beings with ADHD. I was less than enthusiastic. In fact, I used a very clever tactic to avoid being passed the microphone. I stared at my paper with such intense concentration, I almost went cross-eyed. Experience has taught me that if you avoid eye-contact, people tend to skip over you. It almost worked until my neighbor, whose method didn’t work, passed it over to me out of spite, while I was still staring profusely at my desk. My less than subtle hand signals and silent mouthing of “Get that thing away from me!” were unfortunately noticed by the instructor up front. “What’s going on back there?”

I suddenly looked up at her and gave her that sick sweet smile, you use when you’ve been caught being yourself in a public place. I wanted to disappear, but instead I just mumbled, “I’d rather not.” Grin…

My thankfully sharp partner and I finished the last exercise of the day on the computer, in 10 minutes, while others were still typing with one finger and looking for the Enter button on their keyboards. At some point we were asked to mix with others who had difficulty with technology, but we politely declined with a smile.

That might’ve been considered rude and uncooperative, but the mood I was in by then, I couldn’t have managed to kindly guide anyone through the basics of keyboarding, or teach them how to enter data into a table. I would’ve simply smacked them with the mouse and walked out.

Anyway, the moral of the story is…I’m not sure there is one. I think the next time you find yourself in a useless predicament, leave. Go back to doing what you’re supposed to be doing, because life is short and one shouldn’t spend it visualizing themselves knocking their head senseless into their desk, like I did. I leave you with my final words of wisdom: Never Mee May Maah Moe Moo, for anyone, it’s just not worth it.