Comfort on Stage

It's amazing.  I remember that when I was growing up, I was very scared to be at the head of the class for oral book reports.  This stage fright also affected me when I started my career.  I recall, I was about 26 and I had to present my accomplishments and my objectives to my department at work.  I was sweating bullets up there.  We used an overhead projector to do our presentations and I managed to place my viewgraph (that's what we called them back then) on the overhead projector and it appeared upside down.  My supervisor at the time, Rich, stood up and said "Ralph.  There is not need to ge nervous.  Let me show you a trick.  I look at the overhead and if I can read it, that is how I place it on the projector. Everybody can read it then.

Fast forward many years and I spend a lot of time giving presentations to major corporations, technology consortiums and other events.  Just recently I gave one, and there were about 150 people in the room.  They came to hear about some cool stuff that we were working on.

Last week, I sat down to see my 14 year old, Nick, stand in front of the stage for a school pageant he was in called, Mr. Wren.  He was the first person up and when he came through the closed curtains, he sat down with his guitar.  He was going to do his talent portion of the competition, which is to sing a song from the Beatles.  Before he began, he asked if the people in the back can hear a few notes from his guitar. Then he said a few words about the song, the fact that it was from the Beatles, his favorite band.  Then he said "let's begin.". He then played an amazing song.  At one point, he pauses and the audience thought the song was over and they are applauding his performance.  He just looks up, raises his index finger indicating that it was not over yet, to give him a second.  He closes his eyes, bends his head down, opens his eyes, looks at his guitar and continues to finish up the song. 

He then got up and thanked the audience, who was applauding his performance, again, turned around, and walked away.  Nick is going to be a performer. It is something he has always wanted to do.  But the comfort he showed there, was so unlike the lack of comfort I had, when I was young.  Here he was performing like a pro. 

Years earlier, our oldest son, Dan, did practically the same thing for the same competition.  He got up there and sang a Michael Buble' song.  He said he wanted to bring some class to the event.  He told me that he was ready to throw up before hand but felt great afterwords.

Nick, won his category, Mr. Freshman that evening.  I believe it was not just because of his performance, which was spectacular.  But it was primarily because of the comfort he demonstrated on stage.

Needless to say, it was one of my proudest moments as a father.  It also brought back memories about how scared I was just being in front of my class to for an oral book report.

I'm proud of both of my boys for what they can do and looking forward to see what they do next.