This week, I read a short story about an actor who won the Academy Award twice. Despite a successful career spanning decades, Henry Fonda still had stage fright. At age 75, he would throw up backstage before a performance. He would then clean up, march on stage, and act like nothing had happened.
This story reminded me of a public speaking experience when I was 16, the year before I came to America. At the time, I was actively working on my English by watching Prison Break (on pirated DVDs) and ABC World News with Charlie Gibson (free on Apple Podcasts). One day at school, I saw a flyer promoting a city-wide English speech tournament. I thought it might improve my oral English, so I signed up.
On the tournament day, I was backstage with eleven other high school students. The most memorable fellow contestant was the girl who went right before me. Based on her accent, fluency, and confidence level, she clearly went to an international school and spoke English at home.
My heart sank when the audience clapped at the end of her speech.
“Diu (The f-word in Cantonese)…there’s no way I can beat her,”* I said to myself.
It was my turn. I stepped forward and ascended to the podium. What immediately shocked me was how bright the stage lighting was. I searched for familiar faces in the dimmed auditorium, but I was practically blind. I saw only blobs of dark shadow, yet I could feel the audience’s eyeballs. My temple was pounding. My palms were sweaty. My stomach was tied in knots.
Me versus 200 people I couldn’t see.
Will I break the silence?
I took a deep breath, mustered every ounce of courage, and uttered the first sentence. My voice shivered at first, then it steadied. I gradually picked up a rhythm and finished my three-minute prepared speech. The delivery was fine, except I completely forgot to smile as planned. Instead, I looked dead serious (I only realized that when I watched the tape after the event).
My mind was fixated on what was yet to come. The second part of the tournament was what I dreaded the most: impromptu speaking. The panel of judges would give a previously unannounced prompt, and I had two minutes to speak on the topic—like how they do it at Toastmasters meetings.
Before the tournament, I practiced my prepared speech more than 200 times to make it sound smooth and effortless, but there wasn’t much I could prepare in advance for the impromptu portion. I feared it would reveal that I was a fraud, that my English was not as good as I pretended it to be.
The exact prompt from that day has by now escaped me. The question was along the lines of “If you were to promote taxi driving as a profession in the city, what would you recommend?” Thankfully, my brain tends to bury embarrassing memories. I remember mumbling nonsense and praying for the torture to end, but not much more.
After my speech, I found space alone in the third row of the audience to decompress. My mind was still racing as I collapsed into a velvety auditorium chair, but I felt relieved. I savored my newfound freedom.
As I watched from the comfort of my well-cushioned seat, I noticed something odd: I barely listened to the next guy on stage. Ten minutes ago, I was up there just like him, feeling the weight of every word coming out of my mouth as if my life depended on it. Yet, as an audience member, my attention was on something other than the speaker. My brain was replaying my own performance and thinking about where to go for lunch.
This perspective made me wonder: How many people in the audience were paying attention? Were the stakes nearly as high as I imagined if most people were busy in their thought bubbles? What was the worst thing that could have happened?
With twice the age today, I conclude hardly anything from that day matters anymore. Who said what, who stuttered, who won—no one remembers. And fear? That hasn’t changed for me, either. If I were to go on stage now, I would feel the same as I did seventeen years ago, just as Henry Fonda would vomit into a basin behind the curtain before a show.
But one thing did matter: I showed up. It was scary, but I did it.
The pride from that decision is mine forever.
Note: This post is dedicated to Stanley Braganza. Stan is a fellow alum from my high school and was my English tutor for a year. He guided me to turn my shitty first draft into a workable speech. A charming public speaker—with a delightful British accent, I must add, though diluted over the years since he listens to too many NPR podcasts—Stan could have written a much better speech than mine for me if he chose to. Instead, he let me struggle and encouraged me to discover my own voice.
Stan also challenged me to do the most uncomfortable thing ever. A week before the tournament, he took me to the historic district of Taipa in Macau and asked me to rehearse in the middle of a heavily trafficked plaza. “Here? Are you joking?” I asked, “Practice an English speech in front of random Chinese uncles and aunties?” He replied, “Yes, of course. You will pretend no one is here. You must do your hand gestures, too, as if this practice is the real thing.” I can’t overstate how awkward that exercise was, but perhaps because of that, I managed to pull myself together on stage. Thank you, Stan, thank you.
*The actual words were:「屌，實無得贏。」