i was asked as a child during my kindergarten years to dance Ten Little Indians on stage. i had no problems with stage fright. in fact, i own that shit like a bitch. problem was that i had a problem with being NAKED on stage. the costumes gave us long green navy pants, some face paint and decorative leaves around our body like some autistic rendition of Adam in the bible. an extra bra and skirt for the girls, making the autistic biblical couple complete. as you could tell, we had to dance shirtless.
the dance was simple enough, march around a tree until the song ends. easy and done in 3 minutes, aside some specific movement in key moments. i won't fuck this up, right?
i was fucken terrified.
it was my first time on stage. it was like a dream to me as a child. basking in the spotlight and hogging the glory was a childhood dream back then. and the competition was virtually non existent, as the other kids were literally shaking, pleading in tears not to get on stage. i was laughing them off during all the rehearsals, thinking i was gonna make a name for myself in not only my class but the school as a whole. i was so engrossed in my fantasy that i forgot to listen to the given fine print that we were gonna dance with our top half exposed
then the day came, we were told to put on our costume and only then i realize we had no shirt on. while the other kids already got over their fright on being on stage, i was met with the fright of having my body exposed to a crowd mere minutes before it happens. i was body conscious back then, okay? Terminator was a favorite movie as a child and i told myself unless i got abs harder than a washing board, no way am I exposing my baby fat tummy to the world.
then it's time to get on stage.
i was fucken on edge. i was going on autopilot, barely moving my hands and feet as the fear creeped in from the seams between my toes to the back of my neck. the song began, and i clumsily shuffled my way as i tried to comprehend reality with my childish head, copying whatever it was the guy in front of me was doing. problem was that the guy in front of me was a GIRL, and while the guys were making muscular moves, i was doing the fucken hoola hoo with a blank expression of panic.
that wasn't the worse part, by the way. the worse part happened right after, when my autopilot finally lost its grasp and my consciousness came back to me. the moment i realize what's going on, shame settled in. i wasn't one to be acquainted with the concept of shame, as we all are as children, but this was something else. i rarely had to deal with the emotion, and now it's fully blasted in my face. unable to cope with the emotion, i did the only thing i knew and that is to escape.
i bolted off the stage in tears, running to find my parents.
a seated masses with numbers reaching up to hundreds watched as this skinny-but-chubby-bellied shirtless kid in black-and-red face paint flailed his arms, stumbling across all sections of the seatings, trying to find his parents. the amount of times i tripped and fell, only to get back up with snot all over my cheeks, crying for Papa and Mama. problem was that even i had no idea where my parents were seated. i only cowered over pair after pair of confused and bemused parents, asking if they've seen MY parents. it went on for such a moment that my autopilot brain actually had the idea to go bilingual, asking in Malay towards Malay adults asking if they've "jumpa ibu dan bapa aku". i didn't even remember i did that. it was my parents that told me they've heard me elegantly switching from sobbing english to sobbing broken malay as i ran across the seats.
as for my parents, they were seated in the middle. imagine their shock as they were proud to see their eldest son perform for the first time in front of their proud, wet eyes, only for it to breach beyond levels of realism not even 4D can attain as said son JUMPED off stage and began sprinting across the place kid usain bolt speed trying to look for them both. my mother was stunned for the first few moments before she started calling out to me, telling me where she is. now the circus has two main attraction: the crying child dressed as discount Rambo and the hysterical mother screeching his son's name in frantic chinese. my father just went silent and sank down his chair uncomfortably, at least that's what my mother told me.
all this while, the kids on stage were frightened. they were so prepared for anything to go smooth like clockwork that they didn't expect this hyperactive wrench to be thrown inside and wreck the whole thing. they did continue the dance with nothing wrong, but as i was told by the teachers when i got older, they all had expressions of terror and horror as they witnessed the cog in the system go haywire and crying for papa and mama. there was a recording of the whole event, but the camera only had full view of the stage, not the whole place itself. i could watch it and see their true reactions, but i'm not sure if i can handle the cringe to watch THROUGH the whole thing.
it was when i went down screeching for a decent moment when the teachers finally decided to jump down to chase me down. now not only do i have the utmost important mission of finding my mother, a new extra objective popped up in my Child HUD, and that is to escape the frantic pursuers trying to drag me back on stage. they weren't; they just want to bring me backstage and calm me down. but i was a kid, and the sight of aunties in juggling bellies didn;t translate well to my rationality.
long story short, the chase ended when i finally found my mother. she was seated in the MIDDLE of a row, which meant i had to belly crawl and cower over thighs to get to my parents. the amount of slobber and spit i spread across the legs i crawled over, i wouldn't dare to imagine. when i finally got to my mother, i laid the vice grip comparable to welded steel bars holding onto her hips while the teachers pried me apart finger by finger like crowbars. they managed to pull me away and, at one moment, lock me in a fireman carry because i kept punching her back like crazy, trying to go back to my mother
the rest is history i don't feel like being nostalgic over
