Let me take 10 seconds to laugh at this before I begin.
It was a December in 2012 - or 2013, I can’t remember for sure right now.
My mother was the coordinator of the Children section in my church branch. And at that time she had no assistant. As I was still awaiting admission into the university, I had a lot of free time so I helped her with the children.
It’s a custom in my church to arrange a Christmas party for the children in the church. So all church branches’ Children church coordinators brought the children together to party and have fun.
At this time I was about 17 or 18 years old. Still a teenager. An unlike my mates, I was the kind of teenager who looked more like a kid than an adult. They called me ‘baby face’.
At the party I had to sit with my mom’s children to keep them well-behaved and organized. My crush was there. This was a girl I’d crushed on since I was 8 years old. I wasn’t sure she still remembered me because we worshiped in different branches and hadn’t talked in years.
The party clown/MC started a dance competition. He went round to pick random children from different branches to come out and dance. Then the other kids in the party will vote for the winner by elimination in several rounds. He picked kids from different sections of the party. When he came to where I sat, he pointed at me. “This must be a joke”, I thought. “I’m a Children church teacher.”
Other teachers, much older than I was, started pushing me up, “Go go go.” I was… there’s no word to describe the feeling I had. It was a nauseating mixture of disgrace and anger. “I am one of you guys”, I screamed in my head to the teachers. Well, I don’t blame them. All I was, at that time, was tall. I looked like a very tall and skinny 12 year old. It was embarrassing.
The clown made the children start chanting encouragement for me to come out. After much hesitation, I finally did. “This will be over quickly”. In the corner of my eye, I saw my crush step into view to watch this. She was here as one of the adults. And here I was, about to compete in dance with 6, 7, 9-year old kids. Somebody kill me!
I can’t dance in public. I was shy and very introverted at that time. I never tried and till now, I have never attempted to dance in public.
I decided to flop this. I moved a bit, did some lame BS moves I’d learned once upon a time and practiced only in the full view of NOBODY.
As expected, it was a disaster. The crowd turned on me and kicked me out in the first round. I laughed away my shame nervously. My crush saw everything.
All this while, my mom wasn’t around to tell them not to pick me that I was with the adults.
When she came back, she met me fuming. I got a stomach ache from being severely nauseated by the entire experience.
It scarred me. I have never danced in public till date. And I no longer crush on that girl. Turned out she didn’t even know who the heck I was.