Hey, want to see my organ?

money. "When do I start?" I accepted without hesitation and hauled ass out of the church with the nuns trailing to teach me a lesson for leaving them high and dry.

Nervous and with a terrible case of ~the shakes, I pulled through my first Mass under the stern and miserly eye of an Immaculate Heart nun. I was in the seventh grade at a suburban parochial school named Saint Laurence. Back to the times when hoards of seventh-grade girls just stared at you as you foolishly passed in those stylish Catholicschool uniforms (you often wondered why they thought they were so hot since their uniforms were even dopier), I took a complete step in the wrong direction and began accompanying the singing at school Masses held on First Fridays. It wasn't as if I had a say in the matter. Going against a nun carried a heavier sentence than the embarrassment of being the school's student pianist/organist.

My friends, who all of the sudden stopped calling me, wondered why I would want to play the organ for the school and the good monsignor. I continued through all of the nasty comments and mastered the art of never knowing what to expect during the Catholic Mass as an organist.

I remained active in the music ministry of my parish throughout high school. One Sunday while I was playing the piano at Mass, I was paid a visit by a monsignor from a neighboring parish. He wanted to hire me to be the organist for his parish. I thought a little bit and didn't care much. He mentioned he was offering

I think my experience of playing the organ in church has been an awesome and definitely interesting one. I am obligated to show up every Sunday and play for no less than three Masses. Is it redundant? Yes. Is it easy? Yes. Can I go out on Halloween dressed as a priest and know every last word of the Mass? Yes.

Since the organ is in the choir loft, I have a great view of the congregation. I also have to play funerals and weddings, which is very nice money. But back to the view of the congregation. Did you know that in one comer there are fruit loops strewn all over a pew and crushed on the backside of the old guy in the twill blazer and plaid pants that just sat in them? All the way up in the front of the church are the blue-haired women that never miss Mass and have buzzing, shrilling hearing aids that screw up the microphone systems. They signal their intense discomfort by full-armed swatting gestures. Down the right-side aisle are all of the young tough guys and thugs that stop in for a few minutes of Mass because their mothers kick the crap out of them when they don't. They don't last very long, stopping for a bulletin on their way out for proof of their visit. I speculate that they spend the rest of the Mass time at the Wawa. I would like to kick the crap out of them too because they don't think that this organist job is the coolest.

Though it is a weird job for a young college guy, being an organist has opened some doors for

OOPS!

me. I started out as the organist, but now I am the parish's director of music and choir director as well as organist. The money is great, the chicks are few and the choir people are dedicated. The job takes some heart and a lot of patience because working with mostly volunteers is the greatest way to learn to control your temper. The biggest pain of the job is dealing with brides and wedding couples. They think that their wedding is the first that you will ever play and the last that you will play. The whole time they think you're the one that's going to mess up and here the bride shows up 50 minutes late. Every once in a while a terrible guest singer comes to the parish that causes the congregation to have terrible shoulder spasms and go "whoa" to the syncopation of "swing batter, batter swing." The attentive members of the congregation jot down how this guy isn't going to sing at their funerals.

Incense has a tendency to rise. When you have 35 to 45 choir members gagging from the priest using too much it looks terrible. It sounds even worse. Ask that number of dogs to bark in unison and you'll know the rest of the story.

It's true that the organist is performing at Mass, but just know that it is you guys who are providing the show. The next time you go to Mass, remember this, before you slide down into your pew to take a nap or slip a missal into your pocketbook, the man upstairs is watching, the man upstairs in the balcony.

Joe Holden is editor in chief of the Loquitur. He likes to watch.