America has spoken

Last night I had an American Idol anxiety dream.

It seems I had tried out for the show. This in itself is impossible. I would never do such a thing. For one thing, I am extremely self-conscious; for another, I can't sing. Well, I can sort of sing. I can sing well enough to take part in an average church choir--not the really sensational gospel kind, but the reedy white Protestant kind whose performances people sit through with polite tolerance.

So anyway, I had impossibly tried out for American Idol. And then, to make matters worse, I had by some huge clerical error made it to the top 24. Now the first live-in-front-of-millions-of-people performance was looming, and I was in a blind panic. I would be humiliated because my incompetance would be exposed. How would I even make it through one-minute-thirty of my song?

My mother, who is quite a good pianist, had come to the hotel to help me prepare. But we were having a lot of trouble picking a song for me to sing. I figured we should pick a fast, rough-edged indie rock song that would not require me to hold any high notes. Or alternately, we could pick some sort of soft, breathy Norah Jones-type jazz-pop schlock that wouldn't require me to actually project my voice.

We were still brainstorming in the hallways of the hotel when I rounded a corner and slammed face-first into Simon Cowell. Randy Jackson was there and laughed heartily.

I was really glad to wake up from that dream.