Halley's Comet

The Rules
Make sure your entry does not have a higher rating than 18+ please!
You must have the proper word count for each prompt.
Follow the prompt and theme if there is one!
You may enter more than once, but will only be awarded one place if you are a winner.
Content must be new for the prompt to qualify.

Round Three's Prompt
Write at least 400 words (no more than 1000 words) about a single moment in time with the prompt "a minute of failure" - The moment in time should not be a long moment, and it should only be a few seconds to a minute at best. Good examples of this are trauma incidences, but there are much more pleasant things you can write about too. Be creative!
The deadline for this round will be February 19th, at 12:01am WDC!

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Halley's Comet

by Indelibleink

It was my first year in college and I was merely trying to knock off some of those annoying prerequisite courses, so this Speech 101 class was just one of many. I had chosen speech simply because it had terrified me throughout my life, and I knew that having the ability to speak in front of large groups without my knees turning into Jell-O would do wonders for my confidence and self-esteem.

Surprisingly, things went far better than ever anticipated. In fact, I had been on quite a roll. My previous two speeches had exceeded my expectations considerably and, heck, the way my classmates had responded to the humor I had interjected into my topics, I was now seriously thinking about possibly developing a stand-up routine. I was convinced that, at the rate my talents were evolving, I was on the brink of embarking on a new world - a new profession - as it were. Two speeches in, and I was, like, invincible!

Then, of course, there was Rachel. Let me talk about Rachel for a moment. With the figure of a Greek goddess and a smile that would melt any man's heart, I was in love from the moment she first sat next to me in the very first class. (It should be noted here that it is not to imply that she had any desire to sit next to me; it's just that she was always the last to arrive before class started, and the seat next to me was the only one - excluding those in the dreaded front row - available). I was so overwhelmed by Rachel's beauty that I wouldn't allow myself to glance at her - even for a second - while I was giving a speech. You didn't need to be a rocket scientist to realize that if my eyes met hers during a speech, I would immediately forget all I had memorized and would look quite foolish; instantly being relegated to the status of something commensurate to "village idiot." It's sort of like looking at the sun: you're curious and therefore want to sneak a peak, but scorching your retina is too big a price to pay, so you force yourself to look elsewhere. Keeping my eyes off of Rachel while speaking in front of the class was probably one of the most difficult things I ever had to do. Really.

When the day arrived for me to give my third speech, I was pretty pumped. We had to give an instructional speech of five to seven minutes duration, and mine focused on the game of golf.  Plus, for this presentation, we were allowed to use slides, and I had prepared a number of humorous slides to supplement my definitions of golfing terminology. For example, when I went to define the term "bunker" - which in golf typically refers to a sand trap - I put up a slide of Carroll O'Connor, who played Archie Bunker in the hit TV series "All in the Family" way back in the day. And, naturally, I would then feign surprise at its inclusion, like, "How'd that get in there?" kind of reaction. Once again, they'd be eating out of my hand, and it would be oh so glorious.

Speaking of eating, I had stopped in the school cafeteria prior to class, consuming a salad just before class started. While eating, I got a bit of carrot stuck between two of my upper front teeth, and no matter what I did, I couldn't loosen it. Aggravating, to be sure, but worse things had happened to me. Or so I thought...

When it was my turn to take center stage, I lugged my golf bag and slides up to the podium, and began stage three of my "rise to speaking stardom." The first few minutes went great; I was indeed master of the universe, until that one fateful moment that would forever alter my life's path.

While demonstrating the proper method of hitting a golf ball, I took a slow-motion swing, and thought it would be funny to include my own sound effects. So, when my club hit the imaginary golf ball, I made a sound like, "Thwap!" to mimic the sound of club striking ball. Apparently, making the "th" sound was also the secret formula used to dislodge food from one's teeth, as the tiny bit of carrot was dislodged with the impetus of a space shuttle launch.

For an instant, everything went into slow-motion. I could easily see all eyes in the class focused on that small, tiny orange projectile, and I hoped it would quickly fall harmlessly to the ground. It was not to be, however, as it only seemed to gain in speed - as if tiny secondary boosters had fired - and it climbed even higher into the air. Even though this was happening in slow-motion, I was starting to hear the first gasps of astonishment from those witnessing this historic event.

Now, my only hope was that this little sucker might achieve and maintain orbit far out of sight, affording me the opportunity to shrug my shoulders and say, innocently, "Did anybody else see that? I wonder what that was..."

Not only did that not happen, it even got worse. Like the "slice" in golf, where the spin of the ball dramatically alters the flight path, I finally discovered the true definition of "sliced carrot." For this little gift from the garden, with seemingly a mind of its own, slowly made a change in its flight plan and found its target: Rachel's forehead!

For a split-second, Rachel appeared cross-eyed from her eyes following the carrot's path onto her forehead. With the carrot so perfectly centered, my Greek goddess had morphed into a cross-eyed Hindu woman sporting an orange bindi.

Suffice to say that Rachel never really saw much need for me after that day.

And I didn't go on to do stand-up. This experience set me back just a bit!

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Words: 1000