Karaoke nights. My favorite thing that I look forward to at the end of each week. I hate my work and I hate my coworkers and everybody but I really love karaoke nights. Forget the fun celebrations and going to bars and clubs, forget everything else, I love karaoke nights!!! Every Friday I go downtown and I go to this cute little piano bar where I sing my heart out with songs ranging from Whitney Houston to Taylor Swift.

It’s funny actually I was a horrible singer growing up, I was kicked out of my church’s choir because I could never hit the correct note in Amazing Grace, my director said it was because I was being disruptive but I genuinely tried. In middle school during my school’s choir recital I had a solo and I messed up so bad during the second verse of Lean On Me that I vomited and fainted all over Billy Matthews in the second row. I mean granted he had it coming since he thought girls couldn’t be astronauts. So I might have purposely thrown up on him but that’s a different conversation.

But back to karaoke night, I got dressed as usual, did my makeup and ordered an Uber downtown to my favorite piano bar, Pete’s Piano Patio and the rest was history. I downed my two strawberry frozen margaritas (with sugar on the rim, not salt) and asked the accompanist to play my favorite song to sing, Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond. However I was meeted with a response that I have never heard before.

“Sorry there’s a long line.” He replied with condolences and the next singer came up and sang some old country song that I never have heard before. I looked at a piece of printer paper on the piano that had sloppy lines written by a blue pen and at the top. At the top of the paper writing said “Piano Singing Line”. And as far as I could see, the lines were filled up with different signatures and names of people. I was so upset I would do ANYTHING to shorten the line.

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Over the last 8 months, I have never had my karaoke night ruined by such an annoying inconvenience. I went back to the bar and drank a few more margaritas and started flirting with this guy who seemed interesting until they called me by the wrong name and apologized and said that was his ex-wife’s name.

Really? Your ex-wife’s name? Come on, I couldn’t think of anything more awkward. I was super infuriated and turned around ignoring the guy abruptly.

At this very moment this very small girl came up to the stage and began to sing a disney song. She couldn’t have been more than 19 or 20 years old, still in college. She wore the most beautiful emerald skirt that framed her fragile figure. Her frame looked so frail I could snap it easily. She was an agile dancer. Her hair seemed so silky and cascaded down on her purple top that made me obsessed with her. She started singing and I was in awe.

She was so amazing and so great and as she sang through the first verse of her song. She closed her eyes and held the microphone with both hands shaking and at the first musical instrumental break she opened her eyes and realized everybody in the bar was staring at her. 

It was though even the electricity in the stereos stopped to feel the silence after the beautiful harmonies of her voice. Her voice began to shake worse than a richter scale 8. Her flustering, indicated by the blood rushing to her head, was extremely noticeable.

She began to stutter and I felt bad, the rest of the patrons tried to ignore her and continue with their conversations but the awkward silence and lack of music made it hard not to.

I stood up and walked up to her. “Can I request to sing with you?” and I began to sing with her cause obviously I love disney music. And well like I said earlier, the rest was history. We exchanged numbers and went on a date at a concert and then we dated, moved in and eventually married.

Coming back after remembering my old flashback I respond to the judge. “And that’s how I met my first victim on my killing spree, your honor.”