American Idol Wannabees

"Hello?" I sleepily answered the phone to the voice of my breathless sister.

"Did you hear? American Idol auditions aren't being held in San Diego anymore."

"Oh....oh well then."

Exasperated, Kimberly exclaimed, "Robyn. I really think we should still audition. Devon's sister lives in Denver. We could go there. What do you think?"

Waking up now, I felt a familiar nervous flutter in my stomach. "I guess we could...I just get so nervous thinking about it. What the heck am I going to sing?" My mind raced with questions of how it would work out. Kimberly's kids. My job. Singing in front of all those people. Aaack!

I hurried and got ready for my day job. The day couldn't go by fast enough. I considered calling my clients to tell them I had to cancel our personal training appointments for the night. I was dying to get home, get on the computer, and look at flights, and songs. Ohhhhh, songs. Did I really want to do this? WHAT would I sing? Kimberly's song was a given. She'd performed it dozens of times. Had a Dream, by the Judd's. But me? The one song I'd performed as a solo in High School, When You Say Nothin' At All, by Alison Krause was, as my sometimes-brutally-honest brother said, "not my best performance." Should I sing Shania? Something bluesy? Old? New?

I arrived home, and booked our flights. We were really going to Denver. I couldn't help but get my hopes up. My sister and I had dreamed of singing professionally for as long as I could remember. My problem? I loved being the back-up singer and harmonizer. Deep down, I knew it probably wouldn't work out, but it was an experience I couldn't pass up!

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The auditions were over. We'd sung our hearts out for our 10 seconds of glory, Kimberly with Had a Dream, me with my finally-decided-on Mr. Melody by Natalie Cole. A few of the thousands made it through to round two.

We sat in the hotel lobby, exhausted after two days of waiting in long lines and waking up at 4 am to get ready for our big moment. We waved good-bye to our new friend, Chris Daughtry who'd traveled with us on the shuttle from the Red Lion hotel to downtown Denver for some sight-seeing.

"Did you guys make it?" he yelled.

"No! Did you?" We shouted in unison.

"Yeah!" he exclaimed.

"Good luck!"

We should've snapped a picture of this humble family-loving-guy with a southern accent. We thought he was all country. Who knew he'd end up the successful rocker?

The morning after returning home, I took the test I'd purposely waited two extra weeks to take...just to be sure. It was positive. Parker was on his way!

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Now, 3 1/2 years later, Kimberly still called me to excitedly remind me that American Idol's season premiere is tonight. It's our show! I read her blog today and laughed as I remembered:

• our scary hotel room the first night
• the nasty Mexican food Denver had to offer
• booking a room in a new hotel for night #2
• singing over and over for each other the night before the actual audition
• our "friends" in line
• visiting my sister's sister-in-law after the audition and almost missing our flight home when her daughter choked on a screw
• yelling at each other at the height of the stress
• Kimberly missing her kids
• wearing our shirts on the way home and being asked if we would sing in the airport "Didn't you hear us? We DIDN'T make it. We are NOT the next American Idol."