Students may not wake up to find a tiger in their bathroom or their mattress on the roof, but they may greet the Sunday after Sing Song still sporting crimson cheeks and brightly colored tights. And that, my friends, is a Sing Song hangover.
Other symptoms include spontaneous choreography, an affinity for white gloves and conversing via rewritten chart toppers from the past three decades.
Some may suffer from the prolonged condition, Sing Song Syndrome, in which victims find their faces permanently frozen in expressions of what appears to be painfully intense joy. This symptom often accompanies a compulsion to inject “jazz hands” into everyday gestures.
Loss of sleep, prolonged exposure to pep and a glitter overdose will leave even the most weathered Sing Song veterans fumbling for an Advil and a cup of coffee as they try to kick the hangover and drag themselves to church after the Saturday night finale.
A production with the grandeur of Sing Song comes with a price, and it isn’t the $24 ticket that made ACU “the singing college” fifty-four years ago, when the campus was young and treeless. Sing Song is bought with the blood, sweat, tears and GPA points of the students who dedicate the first month of the semester, and a portion of their sanity, to the greatest show on campus.
Although four years of Sing Song experience might not look good on a résumé, Sing Song memories can mark peak moments of the college experience. There isn’t anything better than an elementary school program on steroids to bring friends closer.
Students stay up late into the night putting the final touches on their homemade costumes and sets. And finally, after many nights of practice with Tom Craig rocking the role of the music teacher, it’s time to perform.
Parents, grandparents and siblings fill the coliseum to watch their twenty-something year-olds show off their newest knowledge, acquired at a high-dollar price at a private university, by singing exuberantly and executing perfectly choreographed arm movements with 50 of their peers. And no one knows why, but the parents are so proud of this accomplishment that they proceed to purchase the production DVD.
20 years from now, the lost sleep, blown GPA and struggle to stay awake during church will be forgotten. The only memories that will remain are the same memories of the energetic, overgrown elementary school program that has brought generations of ACU students together.
Love it or hate it, it’s Sing Song.
