Besides the group activities in which I was supposed to plan and
participate I was in charge of the daily morning announcements.
Usually that meant that I got in and looked over the news and
announcements and then give it a barely funny reading. On occasion I
would try and be more than passingly funny or I would prerecord a
video short. That was almost always a bad idea. My humor when given
time to ferment has a tendency to get more and more edgy and naughty.
I had a recorded interview with a good friend of mine who was a star
football player, insofar as you can have a star player on a one win
team. He was a running back and so I asked him to tell the ladies in
the audience who were into bigger guys who in his opinion had the
best butt when viewed from his unique prospective. He told me someone
who most people knew and we laughed about it and then I edited the
tape and the thing was funny because he was so offhandedly sure and
quick about his response, like he had considered it many times before
and he had an answer right at hand. I sent the tape to
teacher-adviser and she said absolutely not. I was a little pissed
and I left school for the rest of the day with my poopy pants on.
After I left a kid from the junior class took the tape and ad-libed a
hilarious voice over where I asked the kid where her got such an
amazing shirt and he answers that his mom bought it at Mcfrugal's on
sale. It was clean and fit for general high school consumption and
light years funnier than what I had recorded in the actual interview.
The tape was approved and we played it the next morning. People loved
it because the voices and content was so funny. I was on the tape
doing the interview but none of the credit for the final product was
mine. I had mixed feeling about that, I wanted to be the star and for
people to love me but at the same time I realized that this kid had
done a much better job at being funny and that hurt my ego. I had a
hard time admitting to myself that someone had done a better job at
the thing I thought I was the best at. I did my best to be gracious
and I complimented the kid and his work and every time someone told
me I did a good job on that skit I made sure and tell them that it
was not I that was responsible for the voice over. It took me a while
to be okay with sharing the spotlight and the credit but fortunately
he never made another masterpiece like the first and I was gone in a
little bit anyway.
