LIFELONG SINGER PERSISTS IN TRYING TO FIND A FAN.

Byline: Gail Tzipporah Saunders Local View

I'VE always had the yen to sing, and in spite of what my detractors have said, I know I can do it once I find the right voice coach and determine the right dosage of zinc tablets to help soothe my throat. I did peak once, but that was when I was about 10 and in a day camp, and no one has asked me to warble since.

In high school, I was in the choir. The problem was that wherever I was physically placed, I would sing that part in my range. So even though I was an alto, I would sing the soprano, tenor or even the bass part if I was stationed next to one. I also appeared in the school's rendition of ``Fiddler on the Roof,'' but in spite of the time and money spent on voice lessons, I was placed in the back section of the choir.

Once we performed at a nursing home, and I stood in back with the other altos and sang loud and clear. This caused two sopranos in front of me to turn around. Thinking that I was doing a stellar job, I asked for their feedback, but their eyes widened like two frightened horses, and they looked at each other and turned back around.

Suspecting that I was hearing-impaired, the choir teacher one day sat down with me and plunked out different notes on the piano while I sang each one. In the end, he said that my hearing was not as bad as he had thought.

Out in the work force, I forgot all about my dreams of stardom until I moved to Southern California and met two men who wanted to start a rock band. Then the dream came back like a long lost star twinkling in the night. Thinking this meant I would never have to sing on pitch again, I volunteered for the band. After about three weeks into rehearsals, they told me to take voice lessons and come back in a month, so I quit.

That almost did it for good until I started teaching math, when I learned I could rap the concepts to the kids. The problem was that in rap, you have to talk to a rhythm, and this was where the problem began.

I knew this by the look in my students' young eyes whenever I started to flow, which is what rappers call rhyming on the spot. I knew it by the way the color drained out of their innocent faces whenever I announced I was going to rap. Eventually I started using it as a disciplinary tool whenever I needed the class' attention and only had to resort to it once or twice.

Then one day while presenting a lesson about the Pythagorean theorem, I remembered a little tune I had learned about it when I was in the sixth grade that goes:

The square of the hypotenuse of the right triangle

Is equal to the sum of the square of the two adjacent sides

You'll not tolerate letting your participle dangle 

So please effect the selfsame respect for the two adjacent sides

The two Wright Brothers when they were in the air

Like those others, they were heard to declare, ``Look, Wilbur!''

The square of the hypotenuse of the right triangle

Is equal to the sum of the square of the two adjacent sides.

I sang it to the class, and the room became totally silent.

Once it was over, some of my eighth-graders said I should try out for ``American Idol,'' and on the heels of this I heard someone mention William Hung, the contestant who was so bad he landed a record deal. Later on in the day, I sang the song again to another class, but I heard that name again. I told the class that I would audition for the show, and one of them said that he wanted me to do so just to hear what Simon would say.

Children can be so cruel.

Still, I remained hopeful and undaunted. A few days later, a man who taught science at my school told me that he was going to produce ``Fiddler on the Roof'' at a nearby junior college. I mentioned that I always wanted to play Fruma Sarah, the ghost who haunts Tevye, the dairyman, in his dreams, and I sang a few bars of her part for him. Unfortunately, he left the school, and I haven't seen or heard from him since.

Now I have given all that up. I am thinking of changing niches altogether and learning to sing in Chinese, where there are different scales and a whole new tonal range.