I would like to give a warm thank you to FOX for giving me the opportunity to live vicariously through a group of televised misfits.

The “Glee” kids, while supposedly living their own hellish nightmares, stricken with teen pregnancy, isolation, cliques, sexual frustrations and petty competition, are actually living my high school dream.

What I would have given to be able to break out into song at any given moment.

Some may scoff at the show’s utilization of the musical number, and see it as a ploy to hook people into watching the show because everyone loves a money note (whether in the vein of a Broadway belter or an “American Idol” finalist). Others may dismiss it as merely fantastical, a fantasy so cheesy, lame and surreal that no one on this planet could ever relate. I actually find it relatable and highly realistic.

While some of the musical numbers are ‘competition numbers’ that demonstrate the vocally competitive nature of show choirs (which my high school lacked, by the way, and if there was a show choir that sang songs like “Push It” by Salt-N-Pepa and permitted everyone to pelvic-thrust freely, I assure you the turnout would have been very high), the other musical numbers are reflective of character’s inner monologues. Though they are for the most part fantasized, they’re the ones that ring the truest to me. What person, with at least a moderate sense of musicality and the keen ability to feel touched by harmonics, hasn’t imagined a musical backdrop to a heightened emotion?

And beyond that, who hasn’t imagined a bunch of dancers in matching outfits jumping in to back you up on the chorus while you do your earth-shattering riffs a la Aretha? And who came up with the concept that breaking out into song was socially unacceptable; why is it not okay to communicate on pitch — that’s all singing is, really.

In a musical, a song happens because words are no longer enough; everything has been heightened. What happens to human beings when words are no longer enough? Since breaking out into song can only exist in someone’s head, because doing so would deem them both lacking in social skills and an attention whore, when someone is experiencing a heightened emotion they are then forced to suck it down and swallow it faster than you can say “that’s what she said,” creating a society filled with both tension and gritted teeth, leading to emotional troubles and TMJ.

I suppose that some therapists and orthodontists who make night-time bite plates have jobs because of this society of suppression.

So thank you, “Glee,” for letting me live vicariously through these teenagers, who get to do what I wanted to do more than anything in my high school days, and I don’t mean just sing aloud the song in my head (which I do anyway). Some obscure theatrics on key can be blamed on my major (see below), but what happens when the engineer-cum-computer science major breaks my heart and I’m ready to get all Jennifer Hudson-“Dreamgirls” on him? Or when my valiant attempts to be noticed by someone go awry? Or when I happen to be famished and starving because I haven’t gone food shopping in a few weeks, and I’m 2 cents short for my Starbucks coffee, and I’m about ready to start a revolution and feel that only a “Les Mis” song is serviceable in a specific moment?

In these cases, and pretty much every other case that involves costumes, lights and a full-scale orchestra (except some cabaret ditties do just involve a singular, lone piano and a little dim lighting), I just have to grit my teeth, swallow my song and wait til next week’s “Glee” shows up on Hulu, because I often miss the Wednesday-night weekly showings. I usually have rehearsal then.