I will try to put up the video, if I can figure out how. Until then, I will just have to describe it to the best of my ability.
The video starts in the middle of an impressive rendition of Queen's "Somebody to Love" being sung, chipmunk style, at the dinner table. Nicole, the clear ringleader, is sitting at one end of the table, singing so loudly that the possibility of popping a blood vessel in her neck is not such a far-fetched one. The camera then moves to Julie, whose eyes are squeezed shut in the passion of the song. Next we see Joseph, who apparently was not an active participant in the performance until he realized that he couldn't beat the others, so he would have to join them. He seems to have realized this only a moment after I turned to record him, and springs into life, throwing his arms up and opening his mouth wide to begin singing.
Kelly and I were visiting from college and hadn't remembered dinner being such a spectacular display of talent before we left. This whole thing seemed insane to us, but we were enjoying it.
Our parents, on the other hand, were acting as if all this was slightly normal for dinnertime. When I turned to look at them, my mom was calmly checking her phone, pieces of a balled-up napkin stuck inconspicuously in her ears. My dear father was a little more bothered by the scene, and was shoveling food in his mouth as quickly as he could, probably so that he could finish his dinner and leave the train wreck that was his dinner table. However, I noticed that he, too, had pieces of a napkin sticking out of his ears. The poor man.
Sometimes, Dad will get mad at the dinner table when the kids start singing, and acting crazy, but other times, I think he just doesn't have the energy to fight it. When he does come head-to-head with the insanity, he has a few sentences that almost always find their way into the conversation. This is not a comprehensive list, but I think it's a good start:
1. "I can honestly say that this never happened at my dinner table when I was a kid!" My dad grew up in a home with two brothers and no sisters. He will sometimes add something about how, if he had ever started singing at the dinner table, either Glenn or Tracy (his brothers) would have hit him right there for being so weird.
2. "Hey - Joseph! Now I mean it. You knock it off." Out of all the kids in our family, Joseph is probably the one who gets in the biggest trouble for singing at the dinner table. This isn't because he does it the most, or the loudest, or because he is always the one who starts it, or even because he is the least favorite. My dad actually thinks very highly of Joseph. His main problem with Joseph joining in is that he wants Joseph to be as manly as possible....after all, he is the long-awaited boy that finally came to our family after four little girls. Dad doesn't see singing at the dinner table as a particularly manly thing to do.
3. "All I want, what I reallyy want, is for you to act like you've got the common sense God gave to a gopher!" This one has all sorts of variations that never fail to entertain whoever they are being directed at. For instance, "You guys act like you have the brains of half a chicken to share between the three of you."
4. "I don't hear singing. All I hear is a bunch of screeching and it sounds like 'Dad, we hate you, LEAVE!' " Of course, no one really said those (totally hurtful) words, but Dad hates when we sing at the table so much that I guess it feels like that to him.
5. "Why don't we have a discussion. A nice, normal discussion. Did you guys hear about [fill in the blank]." My dad will usually try to distract the choir from their singing by mentioning something that he finds interesting, be it a recent event in the news, or a missionary opportunity he had, or a fun fact he just learned. These conversations might get off the ground, but they will be invariably derailed when someone hears a phrase or word that also happens to be in a song. They will begin to sing, and the rest of the family will enthusiastically join in.
If anyone has a suggestion for what my dad should try next time, I'm sure he would appreciate it, since clearly the situation has spiraled a little bit out of his control.
UPDATE! Click here for the video :)
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