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?
(
chthonic, Thu 14 Oct 2004, 15:07)
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Talent ShowOh yes, I had forgotten...
In my last year of high school, I was approached to do a dramatic reading of some of my writings for an audience. There was to be a fund-raising talent show, and needed all the "talent" they could find.
Well, I decided to do something a little fun. I had written a first-person narrative from my grandmum's point of view, and thought it'd get a laugh if I did it in Grandmum garb.
Up on stage, dressed and acting like an old hypochondriac woman, I did my best to solicit a laugh from the audience. Instead, there was just an awkward, embarrassed silence. Someone in the audience started shouting something at me (I couldn't hear over the sound of my heart pumping blood behind my ears), and I realized my writing wasn't nearly as funny as it had been earlier that week.
Humiliated, this boy-in-a-dress slunk off-stage, where I learned that the fund-raiser wasn't for cancer (as I had believed), but to help pay for medical supplies for an elderly woman suffering from cancer. Everyone treated me horribly off-stage.
I ended up having to go back on and apologize to the audience, and explain that I didn't know exactly what we were raising funds for. In drag, sans silver wig.
(Same auditorium as the "Abstinence Lecture." I still hate that fucking place.)
(, Wed 20 Oct 2004, 20:18, Reply)
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