Out of my depthAs a schoolkid, I signed up for a public speaking contest purely as a ruse to meet girls. It haunts me still: in front of 300 people, I started to speak, dried up, stood there for what felt like half an hour staring at the floor and then slowly walked back to my seat. Oh, and the girl I liked laughed.
Have you ever been utterly, completely, devastatingly out of your depth?
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chthonic, Thu 14 Oct 2004, 15:07)
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try athlonthe night before this year's london triathlon i bought a (required) wetsuit. not being one for pre-race instructions, i got all keen ad headed down to the front of the queue for the off. treading (for treading read taking on) water for ten minutes waiting for the starter's klaxon i quickly became out of my depth and got that sinking feeling. just when i thought things would improve with the signal to go, i couldn't and felt 100 or so co competitor's crashing over the top of me. that's roughly when i stopped breathing and had what was later described to me as a panic attack. don't get me wrong the images of me spewing up lumps of thames while resisting efforts to have oxygen force fed still make me chuckle but the memory of that moment where you realise that no-one is counting how many orange swimcaps are bobbing up and down in the water is a chilling one which wakes me in the middle of the night.
my thoughts go to the little old lady who stared at me and my bike for ages on the tube heading home before asking "where's your medal?" at roughly the same time as she realised maybe i didn't have one.
ahhh. bless.
(, Thu 21 Oct 2004, 8:20, Reply)
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