Everybody has something they do well. Me, I’m a lousy driver, a terrible cook, an indifferent housekeeper, and am so klutzy that anything involving coordinated movement on my part (dancing, sports, etc.) generally results in people doing a lot of pointing and laughing.

The one thing I could always do -- in spades -- was SING.

From my first appearance in the kindergarten Valentine’s Day pageant, where I precociously belted out a lispy “My Funny Valentine” with absolutely no clue about the meaning of the words, the sound I produced was, shall we say, impressive (not GOOD, necessarily…just LOUD). Even, as Kelly Clarkson might say, “freakish.” It’s a real shame I came along about a decade too early for “Annie” -– I’d have been a shoo-in and wouldn’t even have needed the red wig.

(I sometimes wonder if the child Clay felt as I did when he was singing for his mama on the carpet samples at Sears.)

My mom, perhaps in denial about my formidable lung power, inexplicably shipped me off to ballet class, where I consistently stunk up the joint. Maybe she thought it would make me more graceful. If she did, she was wrong. During one memorable dance recital, I managed to jette right into the scenery, knocking every piece of it down like dominos, much to the audience’s amusement. I wasn’t destined to be anybody’s idea of Pavlova, or even Ruby Keeler. Eventually she must have seen the futility of this, and after flirtations with piano and guitar lessons, she threw in the towel. All I could do was sing.

God knows I tried. Over the course of junior high and high school, I was continually laughed out of madrigal, small ensemble and swing choir auditions, and the only groups that would take me were really large ones. Despite being of below average height, I was always being stuck in the back row…maybe the choir directors were hoping singing into the back of somebody’s head would muffle the sound. It didn’t generally work too well – and pretty soon, they came up with a special signal just for me –- a “throat-slashing” gesture, meaning, essentially, “shut up, already.”

One day, we had a distinguished visitor. She was a local conductor, music professor and well-known composer of spirituals –- a very imposing African-American woman. She sat down at the piano and played one of her compositions as my choir sang. As soon as we started, her head shot up and, with a familiar sinking feeling, I could see her scanning the crowd. Then she stopped playing, stood up, walked down in front and pointed. At me. “You, sugah.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. C’mon down here.” I did, amidst some understated grumbling from my classmates (“Freak!”). “Now, honey, d’you really sing like that?” Not sure exactly what she meant, I acknowledged that I did.

She went over to the piano, plunked out a note and commanded, “Sing this.” I did. “And this.” I did. “And this one.” I did. “Now sing a scale. I want to check somethin’ out.” I did, and she came around behind me, put her hands on my back and ribcage and pressed in, then moved them around to my sides. When I got to the top of the scale, she gestured for me to stop (I think her ears were ringing), seeming a little nonplussed by this pint-sized Ethel Merman. Then she thanked me and told me to take my place again. The other kids were annoyed with me. As usual.

After class, I was called into the choir director’s office. “Ms. Composer thinks you could be an opera singer,” she told me. “She wants you to start taking voice lessons.”

Well. How about that. I suppose I should have been flattered, but I didn’t know anything about opera, other than that it generally featured large caterwauling women wearing breastplates and carrying a spear. I asked why Ms. Composer had said that, and the director replied, “Well, you’re barrel-chested, which means lots of lung capacity; you have a big head, so you can really resonate; plus you have a good ear…you may be loud, but you’re always on key.” I think that was the first time I ever thought of my voice as something other than a liability.

The next thing I knew I was in some high-priced teacher’s studio, standing on a chair, wearing a corset and singing with marbles in my mouth. One thing I quickly discovered: I HATED opera. Eventually, she began to enter me in scholarship contests, where my usual competition -- from another school -- was a pretentious, obsessive future homosexual named Mitch, an operatic tenor. Usually one or the other of us would win the competition and pocket the scholarship money. I knew enough by then to be convinced I didn’t want to spend the rest of my professional life in a stuffy windowless practice room, associating solely with divas like Mitch, despite our friendly rivalry.

At 17, I went on a European choir tour and managed to get myself “detained” for belting out “Let There Be Peace on Earth” in German on the Berlin Wall observation deck. The East Berliners, judging from the sheets I saw being waved enthusiastically from apartment windows on the other side, appeared to be digging it (some brave soul even had an American flag!). But I guess the machine gun-wielding guards at Checkpoint Charlie were less than enthused. Then again, maybe it was my German.

You haven’t lived until you’ve nearly been shot for your art, I guess.

Today I sing with two other women in a jazz trio, and I’m pleased to say that we’ve discovered the secret to me blending in: we turn my microphone WAAAAY down. And everybody’s happy. I only wish I'd had a way to do this years ago.