Lucky Dorito

I was talking to my daughters about stage-fright this past weekend. I think it’s a relatively common thing for us to fear, public speaking, when you don’t have to do it routinely. Some people just get up there and act like it’s no big deal, but I think a large percentage of people are more like me – we CAN do it, but it requires effort. And a lot of sweating and butterflies in the belly.

Both of my daughters are beginning to have moments at school when they have to read in front of the class either straight out of a textbook, storybook, or to present a project they’ve worked diligently on. Oh my, how I remember those days! Don’t you?

I shared with them a story from my sophomore Chemistry class this weekend that had them cracking up at the thought of it…. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years is this: if there is something embarrassing in your past – no one gets a bigger kick out of it then our children!

The year I was a sophomore, I made some HUGE stupid choices and created a world of mess for myself. (That’s a story for another time though, let’s just say it involved a boy and his former girlfriend – who happened to be my friend. Er…. former friend, as it turned out.) I felt like I was muddling through the days, trying to lay low. I hear people talk about how much they loved high school and all I can think is “yuck”. I’d never want to go back to those days. Ever.

Anyway, my chemistry teacher was a big guy, towering over me by more than a foot and a gazillion pounds. He was a likable enough man, even if he scared the heck out of me by his mere size. He loved to call people to the chalkboard to work out equations in front of the class. It was nothing but sheer torture for me as a student, to stand there with my back turned to the classroom – feeling eyes on me. Oh, how I hated it. Regardless of how well I knew the subject material, the burning sensation I felt in my face standing at the front of the room would totally block out any rational thought process and I would struggle to solve the simplest of equations.

What a dork.

My most vivid memory was the day I was called to the board and as I stood there, I could hear whispering behind me and my face was getting hotter by the second. Now, I know that chances that the whispering had anything whatsoever to do with ME is slim (more likely it was someone thanking their lucky stars that I’d been called to the board instead of them) but that day, when I heard it, I felt like it was all about me. My normal nervousness escalated considerably.

I couldn’t solve the problem.

As a matter of fact, I don’t remember even being remotely close to pulling the formula needed to solve it out of my muddled brain at the time. As I stood there, buying some time, trying to appear as if I was thinking of the first step – my nervousness caused me to reach one hand up to fiddle with my hair. I sort of touched my ear somehow and all of a sudden, the noise in the room rose about 3 times louder.

It must have been a September or early October day, in the height of a full blown Indian summer day, because the windows were open in the room. The outside noise coming through the open windows and the hum of whispering in the room combined to be quite loud all of a sudden. I know exactly what happened at that moment but it surprised me so, all I could do was look over at the teacher and say, “I can hear,” with a tone of wonder in my voice.

Have you ever been swimming and gotten water stuck in your ears? It sort of muffles the sounds you can hear until it comes out, right? I have always had a big problem with that – and I’d been swimming a lot over the previous summer, probably right up until the city pool closed Labor Day weekend. I had water stuck in my ear for so long, I’d grown accustomed to the muffled noise I heard out of that one ear. I don’t think I even realized I still had water in my ear, actually.

Just at that moment, while I stood at the chalkboard and fiddled with my hair and ear out of nervousness, the water finally released and my hearing was no longer muffled. That’s why the noise in the room tripled at that moment.

The teacher looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face.

I repeated to him, “I can HEAR!” because I was totally shocked and surprised.

He gave me the oddest look and said, “Yeah, ok, but can you solve the equation?”

I remember saying “ummm, no” and shuffling back to my chair, realizing that everyone had heard me say I could hear. The teacher kept looking at me like I was loony for the rest of the class. Since I was obviously not a deaf person, I’m sure they thought I was nuts. I don’t know about nuts but I was definitely embarrassed.

Do you remember an embarrassing moment from high school?

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