Whoopsie

In elementary school you are required to take art, music, and gym class. Gym was easily my favorite, then came art, then at a far far third, was music. I mainly didn’t like it because we had to preform a song as a class to the rest of the students. My voice may sound normal when I talk, but when I sing sounds more like a whale’s mating call. So I never enjoyed singing in front of my classmates.

To present the song we learned as a class to the rest of the students there was an assembly that everyone in the school was required to go to. It would always take place in the cafeteria because that’s where the stage was. Oh, and I should mention, participating in the performance of the song was not optional. I knew that I didn’t do well preforming in front of crowds, but the teacher insisted in my doing it, cause who would listen to a little kid when they tell them they aren’t comfortable with something right? I would even try to just mouth the words to the song without actually singing, but I didn’t get away with that for long. My classmates would notice and tell me to actually sing and eventually my teacher caught on and was not happy about it.

So we practiced a fun, upbeat song that even had little movements for us to do with our hands as a “dance”. Then eventually, after much preparation, the day came to preform in front of the school. My teacher decided to call each student in the class up to the stage one by one. I was so nervous to even hear my name be called. I dreaded the moment I would have to walk up onto the stage and sing in front of basically everyone I knew, I thought I might die of humiliation.

When she started listing off names I noticed it was alphabetically by last name, which meant I would be one of the last people to get called onto the stage. When she finally got to my name, my eyes were already tearing up, ready to let out a river of tears at any given moment. Then I heard it. The thing I dreaded hearing most that day, my own name, “Angela Strout.” I got up from my seat, mentally shook, and walked up to the stage. To get onto the stage from where I was sitting you had to go up a short set of stairs. I was making my way up, just trying to hold it together and the BAM, I hit the floor. Oh no, my toes had gotten caught on the lip of the last stair and I hit the floor like a ton of bricks. I was absolutely mortified. I looked up at the crowd, they seemed in awe, nobody knew how to react just yet. Then, to my own surprise, I started laughing. Yes, a couple tears rolled out, but I was too busy laughing to notice. My laugh was contagious, the crowd was all laughing along. Then, I started laughing even harder. This was hiliarious. I was so nervous I couldn’t even walk up the stairs. I stood up proudly, and took a nice big bow. My friends lost it which started an uproar in the crowd. Even teachers were chucking about the whole incident.

When everyone calmed down, it was time to preform. I was so giggly for a minute I forgotten what I was even doing up there in the first place. Then to my delight, the nurse came to my rescue. Of course, she had to make sure I was not injured, which meant, I had to go to the nurse’s office while the rest of my class preformed. The point was, that even if I did have to preform, laughing made my nerves faint away.

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