This past weekend one of my best friends got married (one of the biggest reasons I’m back in Wichita). Yes, I was one of the best men. I say ‘one of them’ because there were six of us and Aaron said that we all had some kind of profound influence in his life. Needless to say, I was honored by it. He mentioned something about the time that him and I scaled Long’s Peak outside of Estes Park, CO. He got dehydrated and nearly passed out. After defeating the mountain, we gorged ourselves on pizza. It was a great summer where I almost died – but that story’s for another day.
Thursday night we had the bachelor party and he really wanted to sing karaoke, so we went to this place in Wichita called Margarita’s. You might have heard of it. It’s a little Mexican restaurant on the east side of town that herald’s loud music, chips, salsa, and margaritas. 
Thursdays are karaoke nights.
Now I’m not the biggest fan of karaoke, mainly because I’ve NEVER done it in my entire life. My insecurity prompts my ability to uninvolved myself in all of the festivities. I think Aaron might have been deeply saddened by my refusal to participate in singing classics by Journey, Styx, and Queen, but I just couldn’t come to terms with myself to do it. I have too much pride in the fact that I will never do karaoke – even in Asia.
There was an old guy there with his wife and friends whose name was Charles. His wife actually wanted to hook us up with her daughter because we all had jobs and some of us drove cars. But Charles was free. Honest to God. I don’t think Charles had a lick of alcohol that night, but he was more free that a baby out of a diaper! He was the first to jump at the opportunity to sing and I think he probably does it every Thursday. Charles was very vocal and loved to bellow a perfectly-pitched yell at the most opportune time during another’s performance.
Charles cannot sing in tune though.
I promise you that the man’s tone-deaf. The best part is that he knows it… yet there’s no shame. He groans off pitch like the best of them. And this is also the same man who whisked his wife onto the dance floor and did a little twist with his index fingers pointed in the air, laughing and giggling like a little girl playing with bubbles.
It got me to thinking about myself, about why I won’t do karaoke. I won’t do karaoke because I want it to be perfect. I want to perform for everybody and impress them; not suck in front of them. My friend, Casey, quickly reminded me that this is the entire point of karaoke – to suck.
Yet I still thought: am I really as free as Charles? I’m still concerned about what the rest of society thinks of me. I think he gave up on it 20 years ago because ‘opinion’ sometimes just doesn’t matter when you’re doing something you love, no matter how foolish you look.
