My cell phone rang at 8 a.m. Saturday, and while I’ll admit I wanted to get to the beach early, I wasn’t quite ready to wake up. The ring tone, Loggins and Messina’s “Your Mama Don’t Dance” indicated it was one of my parents calling.

“Hey hun, did I wake you up?” Mom said.

“No, of course not,” I said, but thinking, “Yeah mom, you did.”

“OK, well I just wanted to tell you Claudette [my aunt] left a message last night about a cookout for their 35^th wedding anniversary tonight. And Steve [my uncle] wants to be Johnny Cash so he’s hunting for a karaoke machine,” she said. 

And she couldn’t have waited one more hour to tell me that my family can at times be border-line crazy. 

I spent the day at the beach wondering if my uncle would succeed in his hunt, secretly hoping that every karaoke machine in the state of Maine was rented for the day. 

As my parents and I drove to their house in Limington, we weren’t concerned about warming up our singing voices. It turns out we should have been.

Everyone else in the family had arrived by the time we got there, and they were all very anxious to fire up the karaoke machine my uncle had rented. 

The big, black box speaker was set up in the corner of the back deck. A binder of blue and pink pages was floating around, and a book of CD’s offered a large collection of songs – everything from Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby Got Back” to “The Way You Look Tonight” by Frank Sinatra. 

So my Uncle Steve, aka “The Man in Black,” started off the evening with a rendition of “Folsom Prison Blues,” followed up with “I Walk the Line.” The crowd hooted and hollered as he squinted to read the lyrics on the screen and belted out the words on the microphone, talking more than singing and completely off beat. 

While everyone seemed excited to get the show started, no one was stepping up to embarrassment. 

A family friend’s youngest son, who was not afraid of the microphone, sang Sinatra’s “Summer Wind,” totally hamming it up. 

I caught my mother and her sister conspiring in the corner to choose a song for Claudette. They picked “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” and as the tune started, Claudette marched in place, pretending to wave a flag. 

After a few more drinks and enough laughter, everyone was willing to give karaoke a try. 

We even got my grandmother to sing some of her classic favorites, including “Crazy” by Pasty Cline. And for dad, I picked the one and only David Bowie song the play list had to offer. 

It wasn’t until after dinner that I drummed up the courage to take the stage. I jammed out to Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets.” I didn’t come remotely close to being on tune with G minor, nor did I get everyone singing along like James Marsden and Katherine Heigl did in “28 Dresses.”

While none of us will be trying out for American Idol any time soon, we brought karaoke out of the bar and into a back yard in Limington.

My uncle’s crazy idea turned out to be a ton of fun and the source of non-stop laughter. 

Now I just need to convince dad that having a loud karaoke machine for the beach party at the end of August won’t be a nuisance to neighbors.

— Emma Bouthillette