I felt tremendously honored two weeks ago after a faculty member from my elementary Alma Mater broke it to me gently they were considering me as this year’s commencement exercises’ speaker. It felt exactly like being in love with a virtuous woman who’s at the same time a stunner, who I thought kept on ignoring my adoring stares, and suddenly confessed she loved me too through her official messenger.
Right at first bat, without batting an eyelash, I said “NO” in capital letters even if tempted with a check or cash.
Nothing could persuade me to do it even if PNoy himself would bid since by just thinking about it I’m already getting a nosebleed. I told myself my school probably knew me inside out, for they sent a lovely lady representative who unleashed all her charms out. Yet all of her diligent efforts still proved futile, regardless of the lady’s magical eyes and hypnotic smile.
You want some top secret reasons behind why I don’t want to speak? It’s because my spirit is willing but my tongue is weak. I discovered my Achilles’ Heel when I was compelled to deliver a speech decades ago, in that same school for that similar activities also.
In that instance, I happened to suffer a mental block long before Alzheimer’s was heard in the Philippines and I found myself, for any word, groping. And the worst in me was revealed as in frustration I unwittingly uttered, with the mic on, that Karay-a’s equivalent of four-letter word of cursing, followed by a deadly “lightning.”
After the lady left, my mind was struggling if I did the right thing. Oh, No! For the very first time in my life, I said that scary word to a lady no less, pronto! As I followed the despondent lass with my eyes as she left, I was wondering, was that my instant reaction too, when some other lady told me twice that same word “NO”?
To be candid, that invitation initially tempted me to think I’d need this opportunity to redeem myself from that personal humiliation on that “unfateful” day. However, I have come to realize that that faux pas I’d had committed, with those words I messed, could never be undone still even by a soul-stirring Churchillian speech.
Once you’re already convinced you’re better read than heard, people would take your next speech only as a mere revenge of the nerd.
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