And here we go.
Every year when I was in good old Catholic grade school, we would put on two Christmas plays, one for the parents and one for the younger students and teachers. When I was in the seventh grade I was one of the Three Wise Men. This basically entailed that I walk around the the cafeteria/auditorium (it was the same place) and then present my gift to the baby Jesus. Well, my teacher asked if I would like to have a short speaking part as well. Of course, I couldn't turn that down. All I had to do was memorize a short, little paragraph on something about Jesus' birth, I can't really remember.
Anyway, skip forward to the day that we are performing for the students and teachers. I still don't know the lines completely. I tried to memorize them at the last second and I felt like I could pull it off. I even brought my littler paragraph to school, just incase the worst would happen and I forgot my lines. Well, the worst happened. (I no longer remember what happened to the actual 'cheat sheet'. I think I forgot it in my desk at school, but I could have also dropped it or just been to nervous to look at it. Just use your imagination.) Anywho, at this point I am panicing and shaking, like I tend to do when I get really nervous or hungary. So, I attempted to make stuff up. I talked about how excited I was for christmas, something about my family, and I may have even said something about Christmas presents. It wasn't very convincing BS.
All I could see in front of me then, was my teacher staring back at me with this look of anger and disappointment. I was so frightened I almost completely forgot that I had to go be a Wise Man. So I am on stage shuffling through some students, still shaking. When I got to the side of the stage, I saw the other two Wise Men just jump off, rather than use the noisy and rickety stairs. At the time I thought that this was a great idea because if I got off that way I wouldn't make as much noise and I hoped that everyone would forget about me messing up. Well, I turned around to hop off the stage and I completely underestimated the distance from the floor to the stage (I was still shaking and in retrospect there was no reason for me to turn around). The next thing I knew, I was laying flat on my back looking at a bunch of kids and a few teachers staring back at me from that side of the room, kind of amazed that I had just done that. On a fun side note, I vaguely remember this one heavier teacher get out of her seat really quickly to see what happened and it look pretty funny.
In the end, I got up and finished Wise Manly duties for the day, got reprimanded by my teacher and I had a flawless performance on parent's night. I guess today's moral of the story, kids, is that you should always memorize your lines and eventually, one day, stop procrastinating.
