Talent show follies

Last week I covered two local talent shows for elementary schools - one I did in person and the other I did by phone (which really hardly counts as covering it, but attending one talent show a year is really quite enough and I couldn't make myself attend two in one day.)

There were a couple things I realized after the talent show. One is that little kids really, really like Justin Bieber whose songs I had never heard until the show. Not one, not two, but nearly half a dozen kids picked one or another of his songs to perform. The second thing I realized is that even though the kids mostly stood in place instead of dancing and lip synched or sang out of tune, they had some guts to get up there in front of their whole school and take a chance at it.

I was never a talent show kind of kid, and I guess I'm still not. I've never done karaoke or an open mic night and the closest I've ever gotten to a public performance was putting on an art show for my senior project at Pitzer College. But it was easy since I just had to hang the photographs and write up descriptions of each piece - I didn't actually have to deliver a speech in front of a large audience.

The last time I had to give a public speech was at my cousin's wedding. I wrote up what I had to say the day before, tried to memorize it frantically that night and can't honestly remember how things went with the delivery. I thought I was calm and collected, but when I reviewed the pictures of me giving the speech I really didn't recall any of those moments so I must have been really nervous. At least the speech made people laugh and cry - my goal - and it was just in front of family or friends of my cousin I will never see again.

The only time I was ever involved in a talent show, I was on the stage crew. It was my freshman year of high school and it was a fundraiser for the art-lit magazine. Several of my friends were also involved in the backstage work, but I think the real reason I got involved was because of my crush on a senior MC of the show. Being part of the crew gave me a chance to see him during rehearsals and performances, even though he hardly knew I existed. It turns out I didn't really like moving around stage props and lifting the curtain on scenes anymore than I liked being on stage, so I gave up the stage crew after the show.

My joke has always been that I don't have any talent and that's why I wouldn't perform in a talent show, but it's more that I am a little bit scared of making a fool of myself and a lot uncomfortable with being the center of attention. I'd rather be the one with a pen and a pad of paper, taking notes, reporting on the experiences of other people. And that's where my talent lies.