As a child, I was shy to the point of both silence and muteness. In year 8, my teachers and my head of house conspired to set homework that explicitly required us to go and ask the teacher what the answer was, and to award me merits every time I opened my mouth. It didn’t work. I kept it up throughout school, although my French teacher could see underneath it. That was partly because of an eagerness to go on all the trips that wouldn’t generally be the kind of thing a kid like me would want to do and partly because of my performance at the school’s Carmen show.
The English Touring Opera came into our school and did a performance of Carmen with my year group. Each class was in a different scene and we were the chorus. We sang the song and we mimed. My class did the Toreado scene and I remember very little about it. What I do remember is that we were asked to volunteer to do a flamenco dance. Uncharacteristically again, I did and that little group opened the show. There’s someone who could probably remind me better but I think I wore something ridiculous like two skirts, five scarves and a hat for that dance and my French teacher later remarked on the unlikeliness of someone so shy opening the show like that.
But day to day, I was still shy and silent and that kind of continued well into my first real adult job. I credit Guiding in general for bringing me out of my shell. Becoming a unit leader will help you find your voice and your confidence and being a solo leader for a section the district has never done before will accelerate that process.
But I think the moment the old me began to burn and the grown-up me emerged was somewhere between September 2013 and December 2017, probably in the earlier half of that time period, when I was doing Guides. I’d always quite enjoyed campfire singing but it was just one of many things that I did and that I never gave a thought to when I wasn’t doing it. But somewhere along the line, I realised that I enjoyed campfire singing and that I wanted to sing more at Guides. Teach them songs, sing together, cook marshmallows over tealights, share the Guiding light, that sort of thing.
One evening, I decided to teach the girls I Am A Pizza. If you don’t know this song, it’s a repeat-after-me song and each verse gets higher from beginning to end before resetting and climbing again in the next verse. I started this song too high and within two lines, realised I was in trouble. To continue, to end up squeaking and shrieking and making unholy noises is terrible. But equally, to suddenly change key and drop an octave is terrible. I pressed on. And you know what? The worse that song became, the more I laughed and the more the Guides laughed. You might see that as humiliating, to be laughed at by the children you’re in charge of but it wasn’t. It was community. It was bonding.
I’ve never expected my kids to put me on a pedestal. I don’t subscribe to “I don’t want to look stupid”. If I don’t know something, I say so because to make something up rather than admit you don’t know everything in the world ever is the start of the path to people like The Orange Thing. Having an adult joining in and looking silly is a great way to get kids to join in something they might not otherwise – “here’s an example of it going wrong and actually, it seems that’s fine so I’ll do it after all”, or “I’m going to show that I can do it better than Brown Owl” or “I can’t do that but giving a try looks fun”, something like that. Being able to fail is important too – for Brown Owl to be sitting on the floor, making a fool of herself while the Guides laughed their heads off, and saying “Well, that didn’t go well!” is a great example of failing and it not being the end of the world.
More importantly, I think the moment I realised I was making an idiot of myself and I didn’t care – while singing in public, no less – was that moment when I cracked open my chrysalis.
My dad used to tell me that he was quiet and shy at school too. Given that for my entire life, he’s had no concept of “indoor voice” and will chat to whoever stands still long enough, I went between flat-out not believing that or accepting it up to the point that “yes, but that’s not going to happen to me” and now I’m on the other side of it… it did.
I had a meeting with my boss yesterday where I noticed that I was telling him “this small thing I occasionally do, you’ll have realised by now that I hate it” (he took it off my list of regular to-dos) and making out a job description together for a person to share my job who I am going to manage. Me, a manager! Twenty, fifteen, maybe even ten years ago, even having that conversation would have been impossible. I’d have sat there in terrified silence, probably, felt like this management thing was something being forced on me very much against my will and possibly I’d have run away to join the circus rather than take my place on the opposite side of an interview table. But I’ve gained so much in my fifteen and a half years as a Guide leader – both in personal development and in transferable job skills, like realising managing someone at work isn’t all that different to working with Young Leaders and Unit Helpers – that actually, this all now seems quite natural and normal and not scary at all.
(except the bit where I’m going to have to sit on the opposite side of the interview table for the first time and ask the questions. I can at least look the part except… I work from home. I don’t have anything formal to wear! Do you need to wear something formal? This was all a terrible idea.)
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