Organist Shane...

My all time favorite organist was Shane.
He was probably the worst organist of all time.
His first Sunday at my church,
he decided that the hymn we were singing was a little mundane,
so he jazzed it up by playing it in a really weird key.
I have never heard a greater trainwreck at church.
Ah but the grandeur doesn't stop there.
During the offertory,
he was supposed to play the piano for a soloist.
We all sat in breathless silence waiting for him to get all the pieces of sheet music lined up on the piano.
For some reason he thought he could line ten pieces of paper up on the piano without dropping any.
Miraculously he got them all on there.
They had already finished passing the offering plate around by the time he started playing.
He played about two lines before stopping,
staring harshly at the first page,
and then starting all over again and playing the exact same thing.
The soloist started to sing and two pages fell off of the piano.
I was in suspense waiting for him to get to those pages and see what his solution would be.
Would he stop playing?
Would he adlib?
Would he lean over and try to see the pages on the floor?
To everyone's distress,
this woman ruined the impending amusement by walking to the front and picking up the pages for him.
Unfortunately he finished the piece perfectly.
Finally the choir had one more song to perform.
They had chosen an acapella arrangement and Shane's only part was to play the starting notes.
He played the chord.
The choir stared at him.
He played another chord.
The director turned around and mouthed something to him.
He finally played a last chord that sounded halfway decent.
I say decent,
but when the choir started singing it sounded like a tone deaf orchestra.
It was terrifyingly wonderful.
Sadly,
Shane did not return after that marvelous Sunday,
but his legacy still lives on.