In the days that pre-dated social networks, instant messaging, and texting, many of us only had email as the main source of communication between friends while at work. Hard to believe for some of those kinder in years, but email was considerably easier than lugging around that ten pound military com unit commonly referred to as a “cell phone” back in those days.
A regular “activity” for on-the-job, twenty-somethings like me back then, was the constant forwarding of email jokes. It was our escape from the daily doldrums of office cubical incarceration. One email, that I actually still keep near-and-dear, was entitled “Modern Philosophies of the Cynic”. It was my battle-cry, my manifesto. Bottled sarcasm. As someone who has always done everything the hard way, it spoke to my inner realist.
“The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body is required to be pressed against it” and “The hardness of the butter is always proportional to the softness of the bread” were just a couple memorable quips from this masterpiece. I keep this original list handily nearby, posted to one of my cabinets at work. Torn and weathered from the dozens of job changes dating back to the mid-1990s, it’s magnificently printed via vintage dot matrix and still proudly echoes one of my favorites.
“Success Always Occurs in Private. Failure in Full View.”
I constantly find new ways to reinvent that credo. And I often do so spectacularly.
Anybody who knows me knows that I’m not a master orator. Tense public speaking situations for me are often met with wildly-exaggerated sarcasm and self-depreciative mockery. Humor is my defense. Don’t get me wrong. I love talking and joking with a roomful of friends. But a roomful of judgmental strangers? Me…as the straight-laced professional with a serious demeanor? Fuhget-about-it. In truth, I do what I have to do to make a buck, but I unquestionably loathe every second of it.
In response to making that buck and take on a greater role in my job, I was recently invited to take an eight-hour executive presentations course through work. Yes indeed, ladies and gentlemen, now boarding the “A” train to Hell. Destination: Dante’s Inner Circle with stops at Anxiety, Apprehension, and Public Humiliation.
This particular training covered a wide range of public-speaking scenarios in a corporate environment. Speak on the spot, presenting with powerpoint, hostile Q&A sessions, and impromptu boardroom fist-pounding speeches. These weren’t one-and-done sessions either. Each scenario was done three times in succession. The first round was a start-and-stop session with critique from the instructor. The second was a complete delivery with a humiliating, overall performance hack-job from your fellow classmates. The third and final was the excruciating review of the entire train wreck on videotape.
Yes…videotape. The ultimate weapon of mental mass destruction. The vehicle that makes it capable to pacify the most animated of grandstanders, as well as psychologically cement the innumerous possibilities of potential internet blackmail. Just ask the “Star Wars Kid” how well it worked out for him when his supposed private video went viral worldwide. Talk about your semester-long case study in psychiatry…and well, drapery products.
There it was. Stammering voice, delivery, nervous ticks, and gawky appearance on full, 42-inch hi-def display. If you ever possessed even the slightest trace of personal insecurity, this magnified it fifty times over. Being the gangly, bald, babbling oaf who makes really bad jokes at really inopportune times, I now understand this. Honestly, it was not unlike watching the Hindenburg disaster. In fact, once or twice, I believe I inadvertently channeled Herbert Morrison’s horrified eyewitness account out loud.
“Oh the Humanity!”
At the end of the class, the instructor handed back our videotapes and asked us to revisit them on occasion to remind us on where we needed to improve. Improve? On utter calamity? Besides, those images of are now permanently burned into my memory like a psychosomatic branding iron. So much for that theory of your brain subconsciously hiding extreme trauma in order to protect itself.
Passing through Washington DC on my way home that evening, I contemplated shipping this videotape, via airmail, into the Potomac River below. Two things kept me from doing so. One, it was 20 degrees outside and the thought of rolling down my windows on the 14th Street Bridge at 40 miles per hour was completely unfathomable. Second, the “Star Wars Kid”. Having some random jokester find and post this natural disaster to YouTube. Twenty million witnesses to my personal fail-a-thon.
With this scenario firmly entrenched in my psyche, the remnants of that videotape now sit in a secure, undisclosed location. Stamped thoroughly and repeatedly with my personal Seal of Approval, courtesy of a 22-ounce framing hammer. Further durability exercises on said evidence will include stoning-by-cinderblock, pyre-burning, and a private exorcism performed with speaker magnets dipped in battery acid.
Honestly, I don’t know why these embarrassing debacles still affect me. I was a Public Relations major in college and have taken dozens of these public speaking classes over the course of my academic and professional life. You’d think by this point, I would be psychologically immune to the end product and looming mortification. Being that eternal cynic though, I always seem to find that dark ray of comedic sunshine to help me get through it. This time, appropriately, it was the very first quip on my faithful philosophies list.
“If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that proves you tried.”
