Embracing Embarrassment

I experience moments of embarrassment pretty much every day in Thailand. Sometimes these moments are voluntary, like when I opt to mimic Gangnam Style in front of my classes, but other moments are so very not voluntary that I can only laugh to keep from bursting into red-faced flames. Monday was by far my most embarrassing moment to date in this country...or perhaps anywhere in the world. 

During the morning assembly each day, an English teacher is required to stand on stage in front of all the students and faculty and sing a song or do something English-y. I normally miss the morning assembly because I help a 6th grade girl practice for a spelling competition instead, so I’m fairly out of the loop when it comes to the routine of the morning assembly. On Monday, it was my turn to be the English representative and since it was the start of a new week I figured I would introduce a new song. I chose “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” because they know the song and motions in Thai and because I’ve already taught it to two of my classes. I figured it would be kind of awkward, but manageable. It was manageable, but more than kind of awkward. 

As I stood facing the flag, listening to the children sing the King’s Song, one of the head English teachers came over and told me it was time to go on stage. My friend and fellow teacher, Mimi, offered to come up with me and sing the song as well. This turned out to be more than necessary because as I reached the stage I was handed a microphone, and everyone knows you need two hands to perform “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Without much thought and with a small intro statement, I just started singing Itsy Bitsy Spider into a microphone in front of thousands of kids and dozens of teachers. I honestly couldn’t tell you what the kids or anyone in the audience was doing. I simply sang like it wasn’t weird and like I didn’t have a fear of public speaking, let alone public singing. Then the head English teacher guy whispered in my ear to hold the microphone closer to my mouth. That’s when things went downhill (not that it was going well before this moment). As I went in for round two of the song, Teacher Mimi was doing the motions next to me and accidentally bumped the microphone. I couldn’t help but to chuckle considering I’d nearly taken an elbow to the face, which resulted in me singing the lyric “Down ca-a-a-ame the rain” in a jolted, man-ish laughing voice. I’m not sure if other people laughed, or if the kids continued attempting to sing along, but I am sure an unnatural shade of red overcame my face. I pushed through one more round of the song, said good job to the students, and bowed out before I could even ask anyone how bad it was. 

Despite my public butchering of the beloved childhood song, I have continued to get requests from all of my students to practice it with them during class. Turns out nobody cares how poorly you perform things around here, as long as it’s in English it automatically gets 1800 cool points.