We’ve all heard of distracted driving—which is defined by Wikipedia by:

Distracted driving is the act of driving while engaging in other activities which distract the driver’s attention away from the road. Distractions are shown to compromise the safety of the driver, passengers, pedestrians, and people in other vehicles.

But I’ll dare to introduce a new term: distracted playing, specifically to mean being distracted while playing the organ!

This cartoon, while not new, was circulating around the internet today:

Yesterday I had one of those “oopsy” days! Thinking that I would save myself some practice time, I scheduled the same preludes and postludes for my two church jobs. Trouble is, one church organ has two manuals (keyboards) and other has three manuals. Of course I had to register each organ differently: on one organ the solo was on the top manual while the other one had the solo on the bottom manual.

You can see where this is going, right?!

At St. Mark’s during the prelude, I put my hands on the wrong manuals in a couple of sections resulting in a sound imbalance! My theory is that when this happens, just keep going like you meant it that way!

The fact is that it being Choir Recognition Sunday, director Mike Dupre, called me in early to take pictures. I did get distracted from my usual pre-service prep when our Queen of the Selfies, Yoko Kokuni Kessler, rounded us up to take pictures.

Then, I had relied on an early hymn list and didn’t notice that there were a couple of changes in the final service order. I freaked out, and missed giving the pitch for the Asperges, and Mike had to vocalize it in my confusion. I found this great cartoon to explain what happened—I’m the example of “when the organist hasn’t come in!”

My husband used to say that he heard me make one mistake a year in playing the hymns. Well, yesterday was the day for that one mistake when I misread one of the notes, even though I had just practiced it the day before. Groan!

But the day wasn’t over! During the afternoon Vespers service , I missed hitting the General Cancel button and hit the Zimbelstern instead! Whoever thought to put these two buttons right next to each other! YIKES!

And yet … I always tell my students that “the organist is the ultimate multi-tasker!” Hah!