Yesterday, as my friend and I were heading toward my favorite lunch place, we saw one of our local news reporters and his cameraman standing at the corner where we were headed to cross the street. He had a microphone in his hand and was seemingly unsuccessful at getting people to answer questions.

Yours truly was feeling particularly good looking yesterday, after receiving several compliments- not to mention the fact that I was able to put on a pair of pants in a smaller size that morning. So I was ready to be viewed by thousands. No need in wasting all those good looks on just my co-workers, right?

My friend and I headed toward the signal and were asked a question by the news reporter. All I heard was "taxes". I wasn't prepared for him to ask the question coming out of the gate. I was prepared for him to ask if we wanted to answer a question, so was filling my head with noise such as; "Boy, this couldn't have come on a better hair day". Fortunately he asked my friend the question first.

Let me tell you a little bit about my friend. She's one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. Seriously brilliant. She also has a database of knowledge stored in her head and can pull facts and figures out from seemingly nowhere. So of course out of her mouth comes the most intelligent answer, with statistics even. I was frantically trying to figure out what the actual question was while she was giving her knowledgeable answer having to do with using excess funds to raise school teachers salaries.

I knew there was NO WAY I could ever sound even half as intelligent as my friend, so thought I could get away with, "I agree" and be done with it.

Nope. Next he pointed that evil microphone at me and said, "I hear that you agree with your friend about raising public school teacher's salaries, but do you have a second wish?"

Me:

Now you have to understand that I have made presentations to crowds of several hundred without getting nervous and my words flow like a river. I'm not shy or afraid of public speaking.

What I *am* afraid of is looking like a dork, and that's what I proceeded to do. The rest of the interview went like this:

Reporter: (patiently waiting for my answer for what seems like an eternity)
Me: (thinking...thinking....thinking....) Ummm, ROADS!
Reporter: (looking at me like, "it took you all this time to come up with that?") What about roads?
Me: (thinking...thinking...thinking...squirming...squirming...squirming...) I'd like the money to be used toward fixing the roads faster so traffic isn't so backed up.
Reporter: (looking at me like, huh?) Thank you.

At that point I wanted to grab the microphone and say, "People! I'm smart! Really, I am! I want a do-over!". Instead, I just slinked away with my friend and headed toward the restaurant.

The rest of the day I kept having embarrassing flash-backs and laughing at how ridiculous I was. I hoped and hoped all day that my answer would be edited out and I'd just be shown next to my friend (because I did look fabulous, dontcha know) nodding in agreement to her pithy answer. But in reality, I knew that they often times show stupid people answering questions too.

When I got home I turned on the news. I was turning inside-out with embarrassment about what the rest of my state was about to witness. Not only did I worry about how stupid I sounded, I also started worrying about the fact that my card key made me look nerdy because it was affixed to my jacket, and other assorted minutia. I was a mess.

The trailer for that spot came up and I could feel myself shaking. The commercials seemed to go on for a half an hour. Finally the spot came on.

I was saved! I was nowhere to be found (except a small piece of my shoulder standing next to my friend.) Not only that, they cut my friend's brilliant remarks down to a one sentence sound bite, "Raise teacher's salaries".

I'm happy to report that my big ego escaped unscathed, but the whole thing made for a damned good story for my blog. I just LOVE it when that happens!