Many years ago, a young, unseasoned teacher was the Forensics coach at her local middle school. That year, the team had done pretty well in the city-wide division and had won third place overall. At the conclusion of the season, all the students and the coach had come back together for awards night along with the other spring sports of softball, baseball, and field hockey.
The auditorium was packed with parents, school officials, teachers, and students, and the teacher was nervous. She was not very good at delivering speeches and off the cuff remarks in front of a crowd which was ironic since she was the Forensics coach. Nevertheless, she was trying not to squirm in her seat and project a sense of calm and an aura of effortlessness.
When the time came for her to mount the stairs to the stage, her hands were clammy, and butterflies were crashing into one another in her stomach. She reached the podium and called her students up on the stage, and began to give out her awards. Just as she was congratulating herself on pronouncing the last student's name correctly, she noticed the students waving at her and pointing. This seemed a little strange, so she glanced in the direction they were point near her legs and saw her slip sagging slowly down her calves way past her skirt.
Cheeks heating with embarrassment, she knew she couldn't hike up her slip on the stage, nor could she walk away from the podium without it falling around her ankles. In a moment of desperation, she bent at the knees and yanked the end of it, so that it dropped to the floor, and she kicked it underneath the podium. By this time, all of the students were laughing hysterically. Quickly she finished the award presentation and headed back to her seat in the auditorium. Much later, after all the awards had been given out and all the parents had carted their children home, she went back and fished her slip out from under the podium, and she threw it away on her way home.
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