Facing My Fears #7 [11th July 2017]

This time around I came upon an opportunity unexpectedly, to face a fear of mine. I was out at a karaoke night with my friends and I had submitted my name in the queue for the mic. But my friends were bored with the place, wished to leave, given that my turn will anyway take a long time to come up.

Now I was having a good time there, being in such a crazy karaoke night ( a huge group of drunk people, shouting their hearts out! ) for the first time. Hence, I decided to stay and sing my song without any friends in the crowd. It was scary for multiple reasons. One, I knew that I was going to suck at singing the song. Also, without my friends to cheer, it would be awkward for me. Finally, I had chosen the song “Hey Jude”, which I knew wouldn’t be going great with the current mood of people there.

But as I was leaving with my friends, I saw this as a great opportunity to face the fear of being alone, and of being embarrassed in front of strangers. I gathered up the courage and told my friends that I was going to stay until my song. Contrary to what I thought, they didn’t try to get me out along with them and I was left alone in the bar waiting for my turn. I asked the guy at the desk about my number and he told me that I was at the queue number 20, but a lot of people had left already, hence I might get my turn soon.

It was interesting to wait and observe people. One thing that struck me was the anxiety I sensed in a lot of people — trying to have fun, intermittently swaying to music, giving a forced smile whenever someone looked at them, and nervously looking over at each other. Then there was this other group which was well..er-happily? drunk, sporadically shouting out strange things to strangers.

Then all of a sudden I heard my name mispronounced over the mic. I walked up to the stage. Thankfully for me, around half of the crowd had left by then. I started singing. Right off the bat I was met with a lot of “boo”s from the crowd. Shit. Should not have done this. Damn. But then I was on the stage and had started singing and I thought that I might as well complete it.

Slowly the boo-ing subsided. I overheard a couple of girls arguing with their friends about the song “ Shut up ! It’s a good song” I heard. They came beside the stage and actually started singing the song with me! With that encouragement, I was able to complete singing the song. What was fun was when the song came to the “Naa naa naa” outro part, a lot of people joined me in singing the song! After walking off the stage one of the two girls offered me her beer, of which I quickly took a sip and gave it back (I am not 21 yet :\ ). I hung around with their group for a while and talked about India, my experience in Texas and other things, until it was getting late and I had to leave. I went home feeling happy that this went far better than expected !