by Margaret Lee Runbeck
When I was graduating from high school I was a very self-conscious and awkward child. But by reason of sheer brute scholarship I found myself on the platform during the earth-shaking commencement exercises with the valedictory speech seething in my frightened little head.
Our class was ranged along the stage of the auditorium, and down below us in a dizzy, blurred sea of drowning faces were our parents. Among them were mine, my mother’s blessed forefinger still pricked from the thousand of tiny hand stitches she had put into my graduation dress, my father spending one of his precious day’s leaves in order to witness the great event. If I disgraced them today – as I most likely should – I couldn’t possibly forgive myself.
It had been arranged that we four dry-mouthed performers – the class prophet, the valedictorian, the class poet and the grind who was to be given a university scholarship – were to sit in conspicuous segregation in the center of the stage. Having to mumble a speech was horror enough, but having to sit there where all could gaze upon my plumpness and the fever blister which had popped out from sheer terror was agony unbearable.
To make the whole thing worse, next to me was an empty chair for the invited speaker who was to deliver our Commencement Address. My English teacher had said firmly that I must chat cordially with him during the few minutes before the exercises started. It would show the audience how completely at ease everyone was, she said. This, of course, was the final ordeal, for what could I possibly find to say to a strange grownup?
When he came swinging gracefully onto the stage, while the high school orchestra was screaping through the Blue Danube, my despair reached its climax. But my English teacher nodded imperatively at me, so I smiled deliriously at our speaker and treid to give a pantomime impression that all was well.
“I’m supposed to talk wittily to you,” I gulped in a breathless croak,” but… but…I haven’t a thing to say. I’m scared to death.”
“I’m scared, too,” he said. “I’ve got a speech written down, but I don’t think it’s much good, and besides -”
“But you don’t have to be afraid,” I said in amazement.
He looked at me carefully, not as a man looking at a child but as one human being measuring another to see where help might be given.
“Neither do you,” he said. “I’ll tell you a secret; then you’ll never need to be scared again. Everyone on earth is shy, self-conscious and unsure of himself. Everybody’s timid about meeting strangers. So if you’ll just spend the first minute you’re in the presence of a stranger trying to help him feel comfortable, you’ll never suffer from self-consciousness again. Try it.”
In his handsome face I saw a kindness that made me suddenly aware of what a fine thing a man with sympathy and insight in his soul can be.
“I will try it,” I said, very loudly, from the bottom of my heart.
Then suddenly, to my horror, I realized that The Blue Danube had come to its end, and that my voice had blazed out like a bullet in the silence. Our principal, a stern narrow-faced little man, was staring at me, and all my classmates were gazing open-mouthed. It was a moment which easily could have toppled into neighborhood disgrace.
But the man beside me laughed with assurance, and reached out and patted my shoulder in such a friendly way that everyone in the hall felt good, and pleased, and friendly. In spite of myself, I had done exactly what my English teacher had said I must do – I had talked pleasantly with our guest, so that everyone would feel at ease.
I don’t remember how the speeches went off, either his or mine. But I do remember how happy I was, and how wonderful the whole occasion seemed. Most of all I remember the advice of the man who generously gave a frightened, unattractive child his secret for getting over discomfort by losing self in helping a stranger.
I’ve used his secret thousands of times; I’ve watched it work with all kinds of strangers; and increasingly I’ve been grateful to the man who gave it to me. I often wished I could remember who he was so that I could tell him of my gratitude,
Recently I had to dispose of an atticful of valueless treasures and trivia hoarded through the years. In a box with a few old letters I found the Commencement Day Program of Eastern High School, Washington, D.C. It has a blue-and-silver seal on the front, and a line which says:
Commencement Address, by the Honorable Franklin D. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
It is too late now for me to tell him of my gratitude. But I can pass along his secret to help others, as he passed it along to me.
Taken from Independent Woman. March 1947.