Rake handle singer

We've seen it a million times in Romantic "chick flicks" (most notably "Bridget Jones Diary"): the lead actress lip-syncs a tune while clasping a hairbrush handle and transforming said brush into a make-believe microphone. These instants of uninhibited romantic mania do of course not happen in real life...or do they? I buckle under the weight of your accusing stares and admit it: YES, I did sing into a handle posing as a microphone! Except: it wasn't a hairbrush. No! My fake microphone of choice was, in fact, a rake handle. Growing up on a farm in rural Austria I had plenty of opportunities to bend a farming tool to my will, and I did so, with great gusto! I also did not lip-sync, because, funny enough, there was no sound track to my raking and hay making efforts, apart from my singing. In fact, my whole family would be singing various tunes while in the field. And we would sing extra loud when we passed each other to make sure the other person knew just what tune it was we were mangling that day. My older sister driving the tractor belting down some Peter Alexander (you know, the Austrian dude from the fifties movies with Caterina Valente), my other older sister raking in the opposite direction with the help of some folk tune, and me, probably laying down some Michael Jackson (my memory is a bit hazy on that part). My brother pointedly did NOT sing. Must be a girl thing, I guess.So there...don't say this stuff doesn't exist, because it does! And I can attest to it!

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