Actually, I suppose it’s a “why-haven’t-I-seen-this-in-a-novel-yet post.

The town I grew up in had a fairly serious extra-curricular boy choir. I was not in it, but I had several friends who were. It was an uncomfortable social balancing act for these pre-adolescent boys. On the one had: dorky robes, practice, and high voices. On the other: lots of getting out of class, some travel, and they balanced the robes with medals (bling trumps polyester?). Christmas was, of course, their high season, as they went around performing for the younger kids, recruiting them to their tremulous cause,

It seems like very little has changed in this regard, at least as far as I can tell from this NPR piece on a D.C. boy choir, which seemed bursting with middle-grade novel material. I mean, how can you not love this?

Offstage, Nick’s iPod runs to more baby boomer taste: The Beatles, Nirvana [!!!-ed.], Led Zeppelin. But asked which singer he’d like to be like, he replies instantly: “Probably Pavarotti.”

He doesn’t want to be a rock star?

“I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older and wiser that it just hurts my voice a lot, singing that kind of music. And eventually, like what just happened to the lead singer of Metallica, his voice just broke down, and he was only 40,” he says.

Nick wonders when his voice will break in a different way. The day is coming when he won’t hit the high notes.

“I’m going to be pretty disappointed when my voice changes, because I’ve grown so used to it,” he says. “But then I’m also going to be happy, because then I’ll know what voice I’ll have for the rest of my life.”

Happy holidays, all.

-Andrew