Coach, I Shrunk the Competitor

My sophomore year I walked into my first forensics round at the Lakewood High School.  My stomach churned with nerves. The Coach, a friendly English teacher at my high school, never worked with students in oral interpretation, so she couldn't help. She brought us to Lakewood in her beat-up red Subaru. "You'll be fine!" she kept telling our very small team of three. I was performing in the event of Humor Interpretation, or HI, and I rehearsed for weeks in front of the bathroom mirror, door locked, and stuffed animals strategically placed as audience members. I knew my literature, "Notes for the Overfed" by Woody Allen. I knew my introduction, and the entire performance ran just under the time limit of ten minutes. The Coach asked me how I felt on the way to Lakewood, and I said I felt sick. Without taking her eyes off I-70, she passed me a large bottle of pink Pepto. "Drink this," she said, with a lilt in her voice for finally discovering a way to help. "How much?" I asked. "Enough to make you feel better," she instructed. The Coach grinned as I took off the Pepto cap and drank half of the bottle. It tasted like Christmas, and cooled like candy canes. Perhaps there was a chance I wouldn't die during my first round of competition, if only my stomach would stop doing flip-flops.

The Competitors sat in their seats, all dressed in blue or black suits, conservative ties on crisp white shirts, and polished black leather shoes that reflected the harsh overhead lighting. I had not received the correct uniform guidelines. I wore tan leather shoes, a rusty brown sweater, and khaki pants, barely. I'd always been skinny, but this knit sweater, and my pants cinched to the last belt hole, I looked even more rawboned. Like a deadman to his own funeral I shuffled to a chair. The Judge sat in the center back of the room. He laid out his timer, his ballots, his pens, and when he looked up at me walking into the room I noticed his white collar and black suit. A priest was judging HI. Was this my funeral? My stomach rolled over as I imagined him standing over my grave giving his final words. "He wasn't funny. He wasn't prepared. He wasn't good."

The Priest, the judge, called the first competitor up the front of the classroom to perform his humorous selection. The senior stood. He seemed enormous. Older than any other competitor I ever saw. He even wore a beard. Maybe he was a professional who failed high school on purpose just so he could compete in HI. The Judge interjected, "Matthew, didn't you win nationals last year? I thought you'd graduated." Matthew, like one of the disciples, had a following, a fan club, a devotee, a fanatic. The priest probably wore a t-shirt with Matthew 2, verse 1 printed on it, saying: "We have seen his star, and we are come to worship him." Matthew smiled and humbly began his Humor performance.

Falstaff: Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?
Henry: Thou art so fat-witted,with drinking bad beer and unbuttoning your belt after supper and sleeping on benches after noon, that you have forgotten how to read time. What a devil have you to do with the time of the day, anyway?

Oh, no. He was performing Shakespeare, and getting laughs from the audience at eight-thirty in the morning. Doom and dread filled my stomach like a fog into a bog. I crunched down into my seat. Matthew grew bigger. The room stretched out in every direction. My feet dangled off of the chair. The desk dwarfed my body. Matthew towered over me. All of us laughing. He was so funny. I was so not.

Henry: Peace, ye fat-guts! lie down; lay thine ear close to the ground and listen if you can hear the tread of travellers.
Falstaff: Being down- Have you any levers to lift me up again? I'll not bear mine own flesh so far down for all the coin in your father's checkbook. What a plague mean you to colt me thus?

And Matthew continued making us laugh until he finished with a flourish. He bowed, we cheered, and soared past little me back to his seat, next to the Priest. Checked all exits. Find all routes. How fast can a person get out of a room? With my luck there would be a getaway car blocking the door. I could sprint out the door, back to the beat-up Subaru and hide until the Coach could take me home. I could pull the fire alarm near the door on my way to the beat-up Subaru. I could break the glass on the windows and jump off the second story and claim I was having my own schizophrenic psychotic episode at fifteen. I could--

"Mr. Shineman. You're turn," interrupted the Priest.
Kirt in a production of The Foreigner (1986)

I could puke. Still feeling only four inches tall, I climbed out of the desk and walked up to the front of the room. Dead man walking! My skinny knees knocked to the beat of "Amazing Grace". My sunken chest wheezed with my terrified breath. I tried to smile, but my lips looked more like rails, thin and lean. The Priest looked down at me with eyes of judgement. Matthew hovered from his seat on most high. Oh boy. I took a deep breath. I thought of my first line.

"I am fat. I'm disgustingly fat." They laughed. "I am the fattest human I know. My fingers are fat. My wrists are fat. Even my eyes are fat." They laughed louder. "Can you believe that: fat eyeballs?" They roared.

I threw-up. I vomited pink right on the white floor. I hurled again, from the bottom of my toes, pink Pepto all over the front desk. I looked up, and with shame I saw I'd barfed all over Matthew.

The door opened. The door closed. I ran back to the rickety old Subaru, opened the passenger door and climbed in, curling up into a fetal position. Of course I didn't notice Coach napping in the back seat. She sat up, and put her nicotine stained hands on my shoulders.

"Didn't go so well?" She sucked her teeth. "You know, Kirt, none of us reach adulthood without encountering failure thousands of times. and many more experiences await us in life going forward. Failure is so common an experience in each of us, that what distinguishes us from one another is not that we fail, but rather how we respond when we do. Such differences are more apparent in those who fail more regularly, more frequently than anyone else. It is one of the main ways we learn." Duh. But I was not going back in there. I'd just barfed pink on the national champion. My self-esteem shrunk so much in one hour I would never be able to stand tall, much less face Matthew. I felt so small.

Coach finger-combed my hair as she comforted me. "My husband," she said, "played baseball for the pros. He used to say when he was on a losing streak, striking out, you know, the ball seemed super small. He couldn't hit it, it was too small. Yet, when he was on a winning streak, you know, never missing when he was at bat, he said the baseball was huge. He has lots of superstitions. When he's on a winning streak he doesn't even wash his underwear for fear he will start to lose. Not that your underwear has anything to do with you losing today. Today, you're in a slump, and you feel small, and everything is overwhelmingly insurmountable. When we fail at the task in front of us, and we return to the task, we see it as bigger. The ball is faster, smaller, and more impossible to hit. Failure can make our goal literally harder and more imposing than it had appeared the first time. Failure makes our goal loom larger, and we feel smaller." How'd she know? "I'll bet you feel less than, right? Less capable. Less attractive. Less funny. All of which have impacted your confidence. Now you think the performance is harder or that you're less capable. I think you're funny. If you knuckle down, assess, and rumble with this set-back, figure out what went wrong, I'll bet you can get back in there and win."

I didn't return to Lakewood High School.

The next weekend we went to a different tournament at Golden High School. And this time I was prepared. I dressed the same as I did, beige with tan. I wore my rust knit tie. I looked very similar to my idol Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties. And I didn't drink any Pepto. I went to the first round. Everyone in the room appeared normal size. I went to the second round. The competitors looked smaller, or maybe I was bigger. The third round I was confident and the other performers were at least ten percent smaller. Oh, I should tell you, I made it to the final round. Again the Priest was one of three judges. Oh, and Matthew was there performing Henry IV, Part one. But this time I won second, right behind the champion. 

As Woody Allen ended in "Notes for the Overfed", "One's opinion of events can change in the same manner as the seasons change, or your hair changes. That life itself changes. For life is change."