Vignettes #38

Up to my mid 20s I used to be an extremely shy person. I was afraid of embarrassing myself in any situation and avoided public displays of myself whenever possible.

Once I was invited to the birthday party of one of our film club members. She was a very nice and friendly person, she was a bit of a hippie type of girl. The party was to be held in the apartment of a couple who were close friends to her - and who were members of one of the richest families in town. So, the apartment was situated in a huge fin-de-siecle house and had the size of a house itself. There were about 50-60 guests present who were scattered in all the rooms, and 90% of them were completely unknown to me.

On arrival each guest had to draw a number and was told that the number had relevance for later in the party. I thought that was a bit mysterious, but I took mine. By the time the majority of the those invited had arrived there was an announcement. There was some kind of raffle concerning our numbers, each person was assigned to a certain task. My assignment turned out to be that I was to impersonate Marilyn Monroe!

You can imagine my panic! All through the evening there were interruptions, and each time someone had to fulfill their assigned task. They were all not quite exciting, some did better than others. I found out my turn would be at about midnight, and I tried everything to get myself out of this impossible duty. However, my hosts found it quite amusing that I was so nervous, I shouldn't take it seriously and it'll all turn out fine.

I was determined not to do the performance. I had the choice of either making a fool of myself or being a bad sport. I picked the latter option, and shortly before it was my turn I sneaked out and left the party.