Even more tenuous a link than my "Buses" story? Yewbetcherass it is...
Think I'll just cram this one in here - the cathartic urge to share this story is the reason I finally joined b3ta (alas I joined slightly too late to share it in more appropriate weeks, namely 'School Days', 'Nativity Plays' and 'The Thing I'm Most Ashamed Of Doing With A Penis').

I wrote this back in March and it's been sitting on my desktop waiting for another suitable question. As the story happened in my school gym (and as I'm getting a new work laptop and can't be arsed to transfer it across), I'm going to cram it in here (with a couple of tweaks for topicality). Flame away.

The story takes me back about 20 years, to the days when camcorders were thankfully absent from school plays - not to prevent paedophiles getting their kicks, but because it would have taken a well-trained team of oxen to lug that size of equipment in.

Due to being one of the best in my class at reading (I know, I know - no-one likes a show-off), I had been assigned the role of narrator - a plum role as I saw it, with lots of lines (and therefore lots of the limelight) but no need for learning as I could have my prompt sheet with me at all times. This meant that I paid even less attention during rehearsals than would be expected from an 8-year-old child - notably so during the final dress rehearsal in the afternoon before the big show, where I spent the majority of the time indulging in the fizzy drinks and crisps brought in for the end of term.

All this backfired spectacularly an hour or so before the show - one of my classmates (I shall call him Jon, for that was his name) had developed a rash, and was sent home with suspected chickenpox. Jon was therefore unavailable for the evening's big performance, and so his role - that of Angel Gabriel - needed an urgent replacement.

Deciding that it was too big an acting leap for some of the other kids to make from Sheep #3 to the Chief Angel, the teachers conferred and settled on no-one other than myself as his replacement. My logical protests that I didn't know any of his lines fell on deaf ears, and I spent the next 60 minutes desperately trying to learn the role of Gabriel, whilst another child (I can't remember, but they'd probably been promoted from playing a farmyard animal) smugly took my part, safe in the knowledge that all their new lines could just be read off the paper in their hands.

All the rushing around learning lines and being fitted with a tinsel halo and angel's smock (a hastily adapted white bedsheet) meant that I didn't have enough time to go through the usual preparation for a child actor - namely a trip to the little boys' room. It was only when I strutted onto stage in our school gymnasium, followed and quickly surrounded by a veritable harem of angels (the entire female population of the reception class) that my oversight became apparent. All that time spent filling up on fizzy drinks earlier in the day came back to haunt me spectacularly, and I was squirming around like Michael Jackson's personal physician under cross-examination.

Angel Gabriel didn't have many lines in the play, and from what I can remember my basic job was to inform Mary early on that she would give birth to the son of God. (I can remember that even now, so why the hell couldn't I remember it then, given my hour's worth of intensive training?)

The play started, and all was going swimmingly until the a deathly silence fell upon the stage (a clear sign that it was my line). Try as I might, I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was I was meant to be saying.

With the school gym full of parents (including my soon-to-be not-so-proud mother) watching, I let the pressure get to me in the only way an 8-year-old boy can: I wet myself.

The afternoon spent imbibing my bodyweight in cola meant that my accident was regrettably spectacular - I kept going and going, leaving the crowd of angels around my feet like a pre-pubescent piss-Pompeii, drenched from toe to tinsel.

I then took the only logical option open to me, and attempted to flee from the stage, tripping as I did over my hastily-fashioned smock and falling smack into the middle of a crowd of angels, only succeeding in spreading the flow of piss yet further.

Picking myself up and running to the back of the gym, my last memory of that nativity is hearing the stand-in narrator continuing with his next line, cool as ever:

"And so the Angel Gabriel left Mary, bathed in a golden pool of light..."

Smug bastard.

And no, since you ask - nothing else funny has ever happened to me in a gym. Or with a tramp. Or on a bus.

*flounces*
( TheMagicDwarf is back like ballroom dancing, Thu 9 Jul 2009, 15:05, 3 replies)

Love It
Beautifully written.

"And so the Angel Gabriel left Mary, bathed in a golden pool of light..." That had me grinning from ear to ear

*Clicks a plenty*
(wehttamman via B3ta for microwave, Thu 9 Jul 2009, 15:17, closed)

It's tenuous, yes
but it's bloody brilliant.

*clicks til her finger breaks*
(berk, Thu 9 Jul 2009, 15:39, closed)

Tenuous, yes
marvellous, fuck yeah!

click!
( SpankyHanky, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 16:32, closed)