I was a church organist at the tender age of 15. I wasn’t all that experienced, but our previous organist broke both a hip and an arm right before Christmas. They asked me to fill in just for the holiday season, but somehow that stretched out to five years. (organists are hard to find)
Not only did the church have trouble finding organists, but cantors were hard to come by, as well. I had one cantor, a sweet old man named Rudy, who was very nearly deaf. He could lead the singing for me as long as I sang along with him as loudly as I could. Mostly I think he read my lips. The rest of the congregation tended not to sing much.
The church did not have air conditioning. In the summertime the doors were left open to generate a cross breeze. The organ was situated a few feet away from one of those open doors.
The song was “One Bread, One Body.” Rudy was singing, I was playing, and I sang along, doing my best to keep him on tempo (he tended to really drag out the slower hymns). All was silent in the church as people filed up to the front for communion. I took a big breath for the next phrase, and inhaled a fly, which lodged in my throat. "One bread, one body, one Lord of all. . . "
I started choking. The fly was struggling in my thoat. I could feel it. I either had to cough up the fly or swallow it the rest of the way. I tried swallowing. Meanwhile, the communion hymn marched on. "And we, though many, throughout the earth. . . " I reverently played on while choking on the fly. Rudy was oblivious. My mother and everyone sitting nearby, however, noticed me turning all sorts of attractive colors as I choked on a fly.
The fly started to go down, but then it struggled its way back up. It was buzzing around my mouth. I spat it on the keyboard. “We are one body in this one Lord!”
I finished the hymn, never missing a beat. There on a G on the lower register was the fly, doing circles in a puddle of saliva.
I still can’t sing that song without laughing internally. My mother threatened to get me one of those church hats with the mesh veil. A few weeks later a squirrel came running in the open door during mass. . .