I've discovered that, when there are 15,000 people before me:
- I get emotional and cry when I "practice." I have a very hard time saying "My son is a soldier in the U.S. Army," without crying.
- But I can say it okay, in front of 15,000 people. I didn't cry. Yay for me.
- I get cotton mouth. My tongue is like a nice warm terry cloth towel, and I have to fight back an urge to make gagging-up-hairball sounds.
- My voice wavers, and I insert words in places they should not be, and I laugh nervously, like this: "heh heh."
- I develop a Palsy. My hands shake like leaves.
- I cannot, with the palsy, hold my own microphone with one hand. When the microphone begins spinning like a baton, I have to grab my right hand with my left, to keep it steady.
- I cannot judge if I'm talking into the microphone, or not. When my voice gets loud, I jump.
- When my audience of 15,000 gasps at the idea of 7000 beanies, I like it.
- When my audience of 15,000 applauds, which I totally do not expect, I nearly drop the microphone, and I get all breathless and forget what I was going to say.
- I lose any ability to make an accurate head-count of my audience: Photographic evidence later reveals that 15,000 stern, scrutinizing adults were really about 50 happy little kids in a vacation bible school.
I have no idea what I said to them.
