A bass player acquaintance related a story of his band's drummer making silly faces at their new singer during rehearsal. The singer took offense[1]. This reminded me of something I did recently.

I'm one of the bassists at our church. Most of the folk on our worship teams have non-music-related day jobs along with side jobs and/or kids, so we don't get to practice for hours each day. This means that on any given song, there's a good chance one or two of us are having to concentrate at least a little. Our worship pastor occasionally reminds us before service to smile more. I get that, we aren't going for a death metal vibe. Or a "mama got run over by a damned old train" vibe. Whatever.

One Sunday a few months ago, she (our worship pastor, not mama) reminded us to smile just before the first service started. I'm not a morning person and was running on too little coffee. I'd been re-watching the Hunger Games movies that week (some of you may see where this is going). I was checking a chord chart one last time when the lights came up. My head whipped around and without thinking, I gave everyone a huge, cheesy Caesar Flickerman grin. I immediately realized what I had done and burst out laughing. The best part was that I nailed the song intro timing. I'm still not sure how that happened.

Notes 1. If as an adult you get offended by someone making silly faces, you may have a problem. If you get offended in the context of a rock band, you are probably in the wrong field.