Ok, so the last hymn is listed as “Londonderry Air,” so I looked in the back of the hymnal in the hymn tune section, and it wasn’t there. So I got out my phone and looked it up.
Big. Mistake.
I start laughing and I can’t stop. Tears are running down my face and no sound will come out. My nose starts to run and I cannot stand it. I am just about to die of asphyxiation from trying to stop laughing when David, the guy next to me, asks what’s so damn funny.
The last hymn is to the tune of “O Danny Boy.” When I tell him, the laughter starts all over again.
So it gets to the end of the service and when the last phrase comes around, several people around me miss the high note by A LOT, and I just collapsed onto the pew, laughing so hard that David is clearly trying not to kick me. I can’t see, I can’t breathe, I just cannot even. And of course, when something is not supposed to be funny, it makes me laugh even harder because it’s inappropriate.
Who in their right minds wrote a hymn to the tune “O Danny Boy?” I don’t know my hymnody, so perhaps it was a hymn long before it became a bar song that makes Irish drunks cry… but that is not a song you give to non-singers and make the last phrase hit a high F or something crazy like that… and then modulate a whole step higher. Even the tenors in the crowd (and I use that term loosely) are having trouble with it, so none of us are safe.
I finally got my snot together and finished it, because I knew I could help keep everyone on pitch…. and then my voice cracked and I fell over again, unable to keep the tears of laughter from running down my face.
This is only something I would do if I was trying to punk the senior pastor. I look up, and he can see me, and he’s trying not to laugh… not because he knew what was funny, but because laughter is contagious.
I think next week the last hymn is “My Way.”
Stories That Are All True 