This little guiding light of mine...
My career as a world champion “laugher at inappropriate moments” began as a Girl Guide. A group of us had been asked to present what we had been doing for Thinking Day in a family service in church one Sunday. We’d had a practice session with our guide leader on the Friday evening, where we had stood, en masse, at the top of the steps by the choir stalls and stepped forward one by one to say our prepared speech.

Some of us, precious little shits like me who were way too fond of the sound of our own voice, had skipped forward and delivered our piece in the manner of your average stage school luvvie (I was an exceptionally irritating child, it must be said); some, however, were less confident and had to be continually reminded to keep their voice up and project to the back of the church.

Sunday morning rolls around and we get up to present our talks. After I had finished, one of the quieter members of the group, Claire, got up, with a look of fierce concentration painted across her young face. Clearly desperate to please the guide leader and to remember all she had been told, she took a huge breath in and bellowed,

“MY NAME IS CLAIRE AND FOR MY THINKING DAY PROJECT I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT....”

I still to this day have no idea what she spoke about, as, in her panic to keep her volume up, she had lost all sense of tone and cadence in her voice and was basically shouting in a Stephen Hawking-esque monotone at Brian Blessed levels. It was like a Dalek being projected through the speakers on the main stage at Glastonbury.

I, and my fellow guides lost it. Totally. In front of the whole church. What made it worse was her total oblivion to our mirth, and to the hysteria in front of her as pretty much every single adult in the church was biting their prayer books to try to stop the weeping laughter.

Hell now seems like the only option available to me after this.
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Fri 23 Jul 2010, 13:43, Reply)