When You Were Young

At request, I am about to divulge a memory that I realise now has probably scarred me for the rest of my life. And is the source of hilarity for others. I'm looking at you Marianne.

In Year 5, we had this play for Italian we had to put on for the rest of the school. My class was going to do a whole 'Minestrone' thing where there would be a large cardboard pot at the front of the stage and each of us had an oversized cardboard ingredient to 'put' into the pot. My ingredient was salt, or 'Sale', as we had to say in Italian while we went up to the pot. I only still remember my ingredient now because they made me repeat so many times, due to the fact that I didn't sound 'enthusiastic enough'. Okay. So. People who know me well enough know that this is my normal voice. I am not being sarcastic all the time. You have no idea how many times they made me repeat it, while exclaiming, 'BE MORE ENTHUSIASTIC!'. I remember having no idea what they were talking about, and that I was trying my absolute best to be as damn 'enthusiastic' as bloody possible. I remember tearing up at one point because they were all telling me to 'sound more enthusiastic' and I was trying so hard. In the end, when we were actually performing it, I remember walking up to the microphone that a boy in my class was holding for us to talk into, and he whispered to me, 'dead man walking!'. And then I said the two words with really bad enthusiasm and a sigh. In the end, it made me sound even more sarcastic, by trying to not to sound sarcastic. OH THE IRONY. They had recorded this, and when they were replaying it back to the class, that same boy told our teacher to look out specifically for my part. I wonder if my primary school still has that on tape. I would very much like to see it again, and pity that young child for not realising her sarcastic future ahead of her.