The Fredösphere

Der Drübermensch visited a rehearsal of the local boy choir last night to see if he would like it.  It is definitely his thing:  boisterous boyishness combined with music geekiness.  The tone was set, literally, by the nine-year-old who was banging out In the Hall of the Mountain King on the old upright piano as we entered the rehearsal room.

Said rehearsal room was in the basement of a Lutheran church in downtown Ann Arbor.  I looked at the linoleum floor, and  -- woah!  Flashback!  I saw four shuffleboard courts laid out there, just like in the basement of the church I grew up in.  This church must have been built in the same era, an era when indoor shuffleboard tournaments were expected to become everyman's pastime.  How very, very strange, since I (and I bet you) have never heard of, or even imagined, indoor shuffleboard being played.  And yet, as a kid, I accepted without question those triangles and numbers drawn with linoleum strips.  Weird, weird, weird.  I imagine contractors specializing in church basements offering the shuffleboard courts for a minimal markup.  I imagine church trustees buying into the "logic," excited by the evangelistic possibilities as crowds flock to the tournaments hosted by the church.  Oh dear.