Oh, you guys, I spent the afternoon talking with Bradley George from WPLN about Timothy Demonbreun and showing him around the family cemetery. It was awesome, but now I’m feeling all self-conscious. I bet I said “um” a million times. I bet I sounded ridiculous with my terrible French pronunciations. Argh, I want a complete redo.
And the worst part is that I was trying to sound natural, but my god, the SECOND a public radio person puts a microphone in your face, it’s like you can’t help but put on the NPR voice. How bad was it? I was talking about a man best remembered for his prodigious libido and it’s me and I didn’t say “fuck” even once. I don’t even know myself anymore.
It’s weird, but you know, on the one hand public radio gets made fun of a lot as being kind of nerdy and the pledge drives and everything. Why be nervous?
But for me, public radio is like a really cool cocktail party I want to attend, but am just listening to from the hallway. And then, all of a sudden, they’re like “someone from the giant, never-ending brilliant cocktail party of your dreams wants to talk to you about something you know a little about.” He’s honestly lucky I didn’t drive him around while wearing heels and pearls. I wanted to sound erudite and witty. Worthy of the attention.
But I babbled. Oh, god, I babbled.
People, I swear, I shut up when I’m not nervous.
Well, kind of.
Anyway, if it does become a story, I will link to it. And then I will die of cringing. And of delight.
If it makes you feel any better, some of us say “fuck” a lot. We just edit it out before you hear it.
Along those same lines, back when I was married my wife had a radio on her desk at work and used to listen to us all day. One day when I was on the air she stopped one of her co-workers and made her listen for a minute and said, “That’s my husband.” Her co-worker listened again and finally said, “Does he *always* talk like that?”
I just feel like a more-at-ease me would have been dropping f-bombs left and right. But I was nervous and wanted to sound smart.
Here’s my question–when you have a voice that people associate with authoritative trustworthiness, does it make it easier to get out of speeding tickets? “Why, no, Officer. I didn’t realize I was speeding.” “Oh, that’s fine, Scott. Have a nice day.”