When I was in kindergarten, my class would have singing time in the morning. We would stand in a circle together and sing songs from the bible (it was the early seventies in the south) and classics like Jimmy Crack Corn and If You’re Happy and You Know It. It was expected that we would all join in the singing and also in the little dance steps and hand motions that went along with the words. It was expected that, being carefree kindergartners, we would love this! What could be better?! And everyone did seem to love it. Everyone joined in and giggled and skipped in a circle and everyone (except the girl with the dark hair who was allergic, which was a weird thing back then) got a cup of juice afterward and, I suspect, a nice warm feeling somewhere inside that told them they were Right On Track.

But not me. Why wouldn’t I join in, I still wonder. Why did I absolutely refuse to clap my hands with the others? Even if I wasn’t happy and knew it all too well, was it too much to ask to just give it a whirl??

But giving it a whirl, when it is a required whirl, a whirl that everyone else seems to be doing so I should too, a whirl that I may or may not be any good at and which could leave me looking sort of dumb and babyish, has never been my thing.

And, by the way, no one really cared that I sat out the hand-clapping songs. Alone, I held my graham cracker and watched the kids hoot and holler it up to the one about David and Goliath, and thought that it might have been sort of…fun to give it a whirl. I considered jumping in, maybe only singing but not clapping, maybe clapping (but barely, like only really soft clapping), or just for the Father Abraham song. I went through the pros and cons of circle singing while I stood, silent, by the coat hooks and galoshes.

Time marches on. Now no one sings bible songs in public school (I’m good with that, btw) and I am a middle aged woman trying to get her creative groove back by starting a blog. Have you ever heard of such a thing??? Of course you have. One of us gals starts a blog every 2.3 seconds and this, plus the yoga pants I’m wearing qualifies me as a cliche to many, I know. But those people are not my business and the rest of you are too busy being part of the circle to care if I look a little awkward or spill orange juice on my coolotts.

This blog might be a way to find my voice again. It might be a place to share some creative writing with a few people and motivate me to write when so many other things demand my attention. I don’t know the words, the tune, or the goofy hand motions

but it looks kind of fun,

so I’ll give it a whirl.