Peer Gynt

So every third year, my elementary school arranges a play that all the students in fifth to seventh grade participates in. For some people, this is a big deal, and can be seen as a «breakthrough» in their teenage career as a local celebrity in the town. That year we were going to do a play called Peer Gynt, a famous Norwegian play, since it was 100 years since the creators’ death. And for the play they needed people who wanted to sing solo’s, however, this time they were one male singer short.

One year prior, we started to rehearse, and the teacher asked the guys that had signed up for the choir (basically all the sports-guys with no musical abilities) if anyone wanted to be that last singer. Predictably, no one responded, and the teacher had to just pick someone to sing. Until puberty hit my voice quite hard, I were a descent singer, and was asked if I could sing. He asked me in front of everyone and told me «it will be fun, it’s just the first verse of Livin’ la vida Loca, or this other song». Before I could answer, he had left the room, and I accepted it. Livin’ la vida Loca is a cool song, and how bad could this «other» option be? Pretty bad it turned out.

The week after we had our next session, and the teacher started to talk about this «song he had fallen in love with», which was the «other song». Turned out it was the latest participant from Norway in the Eurovision Song Contest, and it was a ballad…sung by a girl. So Livin’ la vida Loca suddenly got swapped out with «When a bailar conmigo», which had no meaning for a guy that had yet to learn «si» and «una cerveca por favor».

Pretty hesitant I looked at the text I was asked to sing:

I wanna dance, I wanna feel
Your body next to mine
Feel the touch of your skin
In every move I feel the beat
In every breath I take

I feel the rhythm of your heart
When I hear the music start
All I want is to be here with you

This experience will haunt me till the day I die, because, like my Spanish skills, it took me approximately 11 months and 20 days to understand the meaning of these English words. There I was, a 12 year old boy, singing a half-erotic ballad (in Norwegian scale) in front of the entire elementary school, secondary school, all the parents of the partisipants and too many others. In total over 1000 people saw this play (1/4 of the population of my town), plus another 600 DvD’s were sold. Some might say this was the end of my days as popular. I would agree.

For a fifth grader, this definitely was social suicide, and as a kid it was a, mildly speaking, a traumatizing experience. However, if I had the opportunity to change that part of my past, I wouldn’t. When I look back at the experience, it taught me that I can leave my comfort zone, without it leading to physical or psychological distress. It might be embarrassing in the moment, but you must learn to let go of that fear. I didn’t realize it then, but I see now that people respect me for being daring and doing unorthodox actions that other people wouldn’t dare.

Me and my friends watched the play all over again on DVD in the last year of high school, and the comment from my most snarky friend was: «You didn’t sing as bad as I thought». And today, this play makes for an amazing story.