Apparently I sound like — or at least I supposedly did as an 8th grader — Domingo “Sam” Samudio when he’s singing.

I know this because I had classmates who heard me singing the hit song by Samudio and thought I was the singer they were looking for to complete their garage band.

Samudio was Sam the Sham of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. The song was “Little Riding Hood.”

If you’re over 55 or so it’s the one that starts out, “Owooooooo! Who’s that I see walkin’ in these woods — why it’s Little Red Riding Hood”.

If you’re under 25 you might want to Google it so you can reference it if those that lived in the Stone Age before everyone including the homeless had smartphones tries to dismiss Ariana Grande’s version of romance songs as being daffy.

How Tom Middleton, Terry Miller, and Mike Halford made their erroneous discovery was via a school yard “audition” before our first class. They were daring classmates to sing “Satisfaction” to see if they really knew the lyrics. You know the one. It’s sung by Methuselah also known by the stage name Mick Jagger

I apparently sounded semi-decent to the untrained ears of my classmates.

Looking back, it has probably due to either the fact they had just gotten out of bed less than an hour earlier or else they were desperate.

At any rate, they talked me into trying out that Saturday during their rehearsal.

There were four things learned that day.

*First, we all learned “singing” barely above a whisper in a school yard sounds much better than when you turn up the volume on your voice. It’s why everyone can nail “Rock a Bye Baby” but few can sound like Freddy Mercury singing “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

*Second, I would be doing the world a favor if I never tried to sing again unless there was a jackhammer in use nearby to drown out the noise I was creating.

*Third, the sound of two 14 year olds on guitars and a third on drums in 1970 in a garage packed with a 1961 Chevy pickup, yard equipment, camping gear, and assorted junk is an acoustical nightmare and is what probably gave birth to the heavy metal genre.

*Fourth, combine my voice with three teens that are wannabe rock stars and add an amplifier half the size of a refrigerator eliminates all doubts that there are sounds worse than someone dragging their fingernails down a chalkboard.

However, no matter how bad my voice is, it is less annoying than constantly hearing the Barney song or “It’s a Small World After All” being played over and over and over again.

I’m convinced if there is a hell one of those two songs will be playing 24/7 for eternity.

I should have known better than to think I had musical talent as it was less than two years after I proved Mr. Baughman wrong.

I was a sixth grader and he was the Glen Edwards School Band instructor. He was short band members and was trying to recruit more.

He made one fateful statement while making the round of homeroom classes trying to get kids to sign up for classes — “Anyone can learn to play a musical instrument.”

My inability to comprehend notes almost brought a grown man to tears of frustration.

He started my short musical journey on a saxophone and ended up trying to find an instrument that would make up for the class scheduling mistake he would be stuck with for the entire school year.

That led him to the Sousaphone.

It’s the biggest — and heaviest — instrument in a marching band that is carried on your shoulder. It has a large bell flaring out at the end.

He had no one else to play it and assumed it is where I could do the least damage.

Boy, was he wrong.

A Sousaphone played by someone who is talented and knows that they are doing makes an impressive sound, but in the hands of an untalented pre-teen they can send a moose running for their lives plus send parents — and neighbors — to the edge during at-home practice sessions.

How bad was I? Let’s just say air vibrating through pre-20th century pipes in a building is a soothing melody in comparison.

Mr. Baughman and others trained to teach would argue that anyone can be taught to play an instrument. But there are exceptions to every rule.

Trying to teach me how to play an instrument is akin to someone trying to teach a person with bad eyesight and shaky hands to be a neurosurgeon.

I get the value of making joyous noise.

It’s just that I’m a realist.

If I was an alley cat doing an impromptu concert on the fence, you wouldn’t throw an old shoe at me. You’d be hurling construction boots.