Confidence

Sometimes I wish I had the brazen confidence of a little boy. They may screw up a lot, but I admire the way they come out swinging and are unafraid.
I even wish I had a little more of Calvin's ego.
How nice to know who you are at your best and to expect due treatment from all the rest.
Put me in my areas of strength, and I think I do have this confidence.
I have the confidence that there is no teacher in the world who can stand before a class and set up such an intricate, well-balanced performance that contributes, entices, involves, entertains and engages students in such a way that they find themselves demanding to learn. This is me at my best and most confident in a public forum. (Conversely, on a bad day, I would probably tell you the opposite)
I feel confidence when I'm doing any presentation. I'm not a Communication Minor for nothing, I tell you. I love to stand before an audience, get them on my side, and use nothing more than the power of well-chosen words to move them. I've gotten both laughter and tears in the same performance when I've chosen to do so.
Of course, High School students are a much tougher audience. They prefer that you be quick, sharp, and hilarious.
I'm a good public speaker because I can read an audience and know what they require.

I was not always this good.
I will never forget the time when I first stood before an audience and heard the sound of laughter and applause. It was, as I have mentioned elsewhere, when sharing a story I'd written with my fourth grade peers.
But time and circumstances chipped off my shiny veneer of confidence. We moved three times in one year, each time to a different school district. My father's drinking went out of control and frightening things began to happen. A vat of venomous negativity began pouring into my ears every evening after dinner when he came home from work. Nothing and no one was ever ever good enough. I became a  perfectionist who could never meet her own standards. I shrivelled up inside of myself and became all but invisible to the world around me. Social situations had never been easy for me, but once I accepted a vote of no confidence in myself, I was finished.
I dreaded the scrutiny of public presentations with an extreme level of fear equivalent to someone being thrown into a pit of lions. I would become physically ill. I would sweat and shake. I would miss school. I would do whatever I could to get away from standing in front of people and reading anything that I had written. I had this sense that no one would want to hear what I had to say. If it was well-written, they would sneer at me for being arrogant. If it was poorly written, as I suspected, they would laugh at me for being incompetent.

My artistic abilities somewhat relieved me of my low self-esteem. I could always paint, and no one

ever disliked anything I created after my Junior Year of High School. But I didn't get over my fear of public speaking until I was in college. I had to do a speech class, and the Professor had everyone give their speeches in the most nonthreatening environment that she could possibly devise. Our first speech had to be ten whole minutes long, and an introduction of ourselves. I remember observing my classmates, all of whom seemed to have a deadly fear of public speaking themselves, squirm and tremble before the class as if they were in a firing line. In addition to their great discomfort, they were presenting their personal information with all the organization and variety of a resume. After a certain number of days of this with no one dying of anything but perhaps a little boredom, it began to seem just a little bit silly. I decided to bring in one of my paintings, because I knew from High School that a good visual could break the ice like nothing else. I tried to think of what things I had to say about myself that might be interesting or funny. Interesting I wasn't so sure of, but funny, now - funny happened to me all the time. Or maybe I just saw something funny in most situations. Either way life was a little more bearable.

I don't remember exactly what I told the class, but I remember that I opened with one of my favorite stories from art college. One day, my friend James and I were walking down the street together when a man came panting up to us and was begging us for money. "My car just broke down!" the man was explaining urgently, "I got out to get help, and somebody mugged me. I was on my way to my grandmother's house. I had some food to bring to her. She's going into the hospital. She had an accident!"

I was thinking his story sounded a little suspicious and wondering when he was going to mention that there had been a wolf in the house wearing his granny's pajamas, but then I caught sight of the man's feet. Seeing the direction of my gaze, he embellished with a grand sweep of his arms: "And then they stole my shoes!"

"Oh, gosh," said James. James was from a small town in Louisiana and had the most pleasant Southern drawl I think I had ever heard, primarily because he was also the most laid back, pleasant person I have ever known. "That's terrible!" James dug around in his deep pocket and fished out a roll of quarters that I happened to know was for his laundry. "Here you go."

The man grabbed his quarters and ran.
I looked at James accusingly. "James, obviously the man was making all that up!"
James smiled at me slowly and drawled, "Aw, come on, Heather - It was a good story, wasn't it?"

My audience laughed.

I had succeeded in both getting their attention and killing two of the ten minutes that I was supposed to be talking about myself. I segued into my actual story, which was about how I ended up in art college to begin with, and also about how frightened I used to be of being myself around other people. (I secretly still was, but talking about it in the past tense really did seem to help some) I talked about how, through art, I was able to express things to people that I had been unable to do before, and then for a finale I revealed the painting that I'd brought.
My only self-conscious moment occurred just then, when I found myself apologizing that I couldn't draw hands as well as I'd like. My audience loved my painting and the speech anyway, and I got an A.
In this way, I learned something that I have used in all my dealings with people: That, as a general rule,  if you make yourself even a little vulnerable before people, they will be drawn to your side. Get the audience on your side, and from there make them laugh, and from there you can make them do whatever you want - get angry or motivated, cry or feel touched. I have always been a natural storyteller, and now I had the confidence again to do it.