15 Minutes of Fame

[socksoff]

How many of you have had yours yet?

I guess mine was when I was 11 when I walked out to center ice to receive a trophy for "MVP" for my Hockey team.
Can't say if I've had anything dramatic since.

Socksoff

 

[Azrael]

I was asked to read a fairly dark and sensual (IMNSHO, anyway) poem I'd written, in front of a crowd of 700+ people that included a number of college professors and state senators. I balked at the time, but the administrator of this particular gathering (at a state college up on Massachusetts) read my poem himself, and later went looking for me and tried to get me to check out the university for my own college career. I got a letter of appreciation from one of the senators a few days later.

Also, a different poem I'd written, thrown away, and later found out was fished out of the trash by the instructor of the writing group I was attending at the time, was submitted to a county fair when I was 13. It was accidentally entered into the adult category, where it proceeded to take 2nd place out of about 56 entries. It later made its way into parade magazine, and I was interviewed, and I received about 13 items of fan-mail from across the country.

Including panties. Yowza. Most were letters, though, one of them from someone who is, I gather, a fairly well-known Christian-country singer of some sort. She included a tape with her letter.

 

[jugner]

Not yet, I tend not to stand out from the crowd.

 

[the_Baron]

mine haven't been too exciting. its either the time i received an award for the highest master's GPA (see, boring), or when i sang karaoke in hawaii, and people actually got up to dance to it.

 

[Haltickling]

Oh, I had my fair share of fame already, I'm not too keen on it anymore.

When I was 18, I was elected spokesman of about 70,000 students in my home province. I held my own press conferences and was thrown out twice by our Minister for Education and Culture because of my criticism of his policy... 😀 At around 20, I anchored a stage show of our local evening schools and played small roles in theater plays (Chekhov, in Russian).

Later, during my job as a travel agent, I spoke in public on many occasions. I even had my own weekly radio show as a "travel advisor" at a local station (Radio Gong 2000) for about a year, and I lectured about traveling at various conferences.

Once, I appeared on TV as a quiz show candidate, and I got a one-time role in a daily court series as a rather evil witness who turned out to be the real culprit.

All that this fame brought me (apart from a few hundred dollars) was a certain disgust for mass functions. I don't think I'd do this again. Today, I'm jobless and live rather secluded. So much for fame...

 

[Knox The Hatter]

Back when I was thirteen, I won this contest at school. Participation in the school's 'Declamation Contest' was mandatory for all. You had to get up and recite some long poem, or a soliloquy, or a monologue, or whatever the heck. The class winners got to perform their material in front of a school assembly, where they were graded by the audience.

At the time, I was in the ninth grade, and undergoing a terrible pubescence. I chose a popular comedy routine of the period, and went up there in front of a packed house on a tuesday morning in the spring. My family was seated in the audience, in the back. I think I went last. I went out there, and brought the whole fucking house down. Down! I couldn't believe it. The assembly graded each contestant on a score of one through ten. They were giving me thirteens, fourteens. I wound up winning the whole damn thing, and did this with the other finalists a few more times, at other functions.

I became the school's biggest celebrity. Everywhere I went, people couldn't get enough of me, they greeted me in the hallways, they wanted encores. This after spending the previous eight years as an outcast, one of the nerds, someone with more personal problems than anyone could possibly handle.

My parents moved us all the following year, and I never did get to do an encore. Oh, well, my fifteen minutes of fame.

Kid across the street from me, in my grade, wouldn't stop bugging me to do it again, in the street, in front of strangers. Pain in the ass. Good guy, but clearly a pain. Unfortunately, he passed away a few years ago, in bad circumstances.

Good time while it lasted... 😛