Driving Miss Abigail, and Other News

I keep expecting all this time between now and when I get back to school in mid-August to be nothing but boring. And up until recently, it was. I used to dread looking at the calendar, even my lovely Glee calendar, since the vast expanse of time stretched on in so many little numbered boxes.
At least there's driving school to help fill my days.

Yes, driving school.

Yes, I'm almost 20. Don't hate. Hey, according to Sunday's Parade, Victoria Justice doesn't have hers, either, and she's as old as I am! On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm in a classroom with two dozen or so tiny little kids.
Okay, they're not that little. But when I went to my first class Tuesday night, I felt so darn old! I looked around the room and I knew they were all in high school. I was so surrounded by youth it was giving me odd flashbacks. It was like I was back in high school myself, sophomore year or so, only I was the same age I am now. Strange. Strange, strange, strange.

'Bury me,' I thought to myself more than once before the class began. I'd gotten there early to sign up since I'd been unaware that there was class on Monday nights, too. Oops. Once class started, I wasn't thinking much besides 'Ew!' This was because my instructor, who reminded me of a brunette amalgamation of my childhood piano teacher and Emily (Dracula's director, for you followers) launched into the story of her life-threatening crash as a teen. She spared no detail. Not. A single. One.

'The scare story,' I'd assumed when she began her tale. 'Typical.'

But "typical" is not the word for her story, for three reasons, four if you count the sheer gruesomeness of it.

1. Her younger self had impressively lucid conversations with the EMTs.

2. Just before the crash, she'd found out that she was pregnant. Coming from what sounded like a conservative if not Catholic family, she was reluctant to tell her mother. So, convinced she was dying, she told it to the EMT who was with her for 3.5 hours as she was cut out of the car, and she wasn't pleased with him when he yelled her secret in the earshot of her already hysterical mother. After a four-minute helicopter ride to the E.R. her mother was given a form to sign that would allow doctors to abort the baby since the necessary surgery on her right thigh, which had been shoved backwards so that the bone nearly broke through the skin of her right buttocks, would be dangerous otherwise. She refused to sign, and so did my teacher. Her son is now in his twenties.

3. During the four minutes en route to the hospital, she flatlined. "You know all that stuff people say about seeing the white light when you die?" she told us. 'Let me guess,' I thought, 'it's true!'

To the contrary, "it's total baloney*!"

*not her exact word, but it starts with the same letter

Didn't see that coming.

That's a heck of a scare story, huh?

If I felt old in driving school, I felt young the next night at Schola rehearsal. Schola Cantorum is a special choir made up of parishioners, most of whom are also in the regular church choir that sings at 9:00 a.m. Mass. Our focus is on renaissance polyphony. In English, that's ancient music. Think Gregorian chants, which we do...those and a lot more.

Since my mother was all for it, I was a little reluctant about joining. Once I did, though, I fell in love. I still feel young, though, don't get me wrong. Young and a little stupid sometimes because I'm new to these things called propers. More on that later.

Holy Week is nearly upon us, so we're busy learning for that. Fun fact of the week: a youth choir in Finland, joined by a famous opera bass, is performing our director's arrangement of "Were You There?"