Out of my depthAs a schoolkid, I signed up for a public speaking contest purely as a ruse to meet girls. It haunts me still: in front of 300 people, I started to speak, dried up, stood there for what felt like half an hour staring at the floor and then slowly walked back to my seat. Oh, and the girl I liked laughed.
Have you ever been utterly, completely, devastatingly out of your depth?
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chthonic, Thu 14 Oct 2004, 15:07)
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A-level zoology practicalIn the bad old days, this included the dissection of something dead, always a vertebrate as a look at the past papers revealed.
No, not our year.
There waiting for me in a waxed tin thing was an earthworm or Lumbricus terrestris to be precise. It hadn't even crossed my mind to revise it although I had the dogfish, rat and mouse inside out - literally.
For the uninitiated, there is a right and a wrong way to cut open an earthworm. I chose to do it the wrong way, making the incision on the "top".
What to do? I stuffed the late oligochaet into my lab coat pocket, I managed to swipe a spare one, cut it open correctly and tried to name as many of the bits inside I could remember.
Yes. I can confess after 28 years. I cheated.
(, Tue 19 Oct 2004, 13:41, Reply)
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