Ugly Shoes

Getting caught unprepared is always a risk when you have ADHD.

Even in high school, I was lucky to be asked to speak to a crowd during events, at times. This one day, I had a soccer game before the big assembly night at my school. Well, I had remembered most of the things that I needed to remember for that day – I had my soccer uniform, I had my suit.

I only forgot my dress shoes.

It’s possible that I would have been able to get away with wearing soccer cleats with my suit, while I went up front to speak at the assembly, were it not also the case that it was held in the gymnasium, and that the wooden floor – and the risers that the choir was standing on (I was also in the choir) – didn’t amplify all the click-clacks I made when I walked.

Okay, so that time, it didn’t work out so well.

I did get a little mantra for myself from that experience, though, which has actually helped me throughout the years when I have performed or spoken in front of a crowd.

If you can keep people’s attention on your face, no one will know that you have ugly shoes.

Any performance, any speech, has to draw people in. It has to be engaging, and even entertaining. It has to tug on their curiousity, their minds, their hearts, their spirits.

So it may help, when you are performing, to pretend that you are wearing ugly shoes.