Back to My Broadway Roots

When I was a child, I dreamed of becoming a Broadway star. Like most little girls, I was fully confident that my dream would be achieved. I loved to sing and would serenade (okay, it was more like bellowing) my family throughout the day. Broadway tunes and love ballads were the songs that resonated in my soul and throughout the Chase home. Oh, how I dreamed of the day when I would sing to the world, no doubt alongside my husband Justin Timberlake.

Times have changed. In my late teen years, I realized that my voice is not that great and I now tend to sing only when I'm by myself or having a random Skype conversation with my sisters. That is, until this week, when my students revived the song in my heart and gave me an opportunity to sing.

Yes, on Monday night, my students from the Thai National Lottery Office took me out for a farewell dinner and karaoke session.

This is the group before the party really got started. My students gave P'Wan and me gifts to thank us for teaching English. At the karaoke restaurant, there were little individual rooms built on a pier over the water. Each room had a table, a U-shaped couch and, of course, a TV for the karaoke. So that is us sitting in our private karaoke room, ready to belt our hearts out like Babs or Liza Minelli (oh wait, maybe that was just me).

Everyone took turns singing, with great emotion evident in each performance.

P'Song especially got into his songs (probably 10 in all). He has a large repertoire of karaoke songs and carries a little notebook with an alphabetized list of his favorites. P'Song kept asking me if I knew different English songs, and I quickly learned that he knows a lot more than I do! He also danced around the room on several occasions, which was pretty hilarious.

My performances included Drive Me Crazy (Britney Spears), I Swear (Boyz 2 Men) and My Heart Will Go On (Celine Dion) from Titanic. Although I did sing My Heart Will Go On during a 7th grade voice recital, I promise that my performance was nothing more than your typical, screechy on the high-notes, karaoke performance. However, my students raved over it, claiming they had goosebumps and insisting that I sing an encore at the end of the evening before we all went home. To my utter embarrassment, when I finished singing, I turned around to see that they had all videotaped my song on their camera phones and were already beginning to play it back. Oy vey.

Even though I was red with embarrassment by that point, when they told me that hearing that song would always remind them of me, my heart swelled. Once again, I thanked God for the incredible blessings He's given me through my relationships with my students. Their love for fun is contagious and my lottery students are some of the most generous people I've ever met.

So, I guess the next time I hear the lyrics, "Every night in my dreams, I see you, I feel you..." I'll be thinking of them....not Leonardo DiCaprio.

I just hope that when that happens I'm not hearing myself singing the song on youtube....