Aaron Drake: Icarus Academy

Humiliation & Glory

Well, 7th Grade was coming to a close when in mid-march, alongside my Captivate the Audience poem, I also recited a poem for the Annual Icarus Elecution. I thought I'd be good at poetry reading, but I was oh so deadly wrong.

It was a normal day, and the teacher came in asking what house we're in. I said I was in blue house along with everyone else, and she pointed at me and said "You're in the elecution". I was a little flustered, but I tried my best. I only had one day to memorize my poem, fortunately the morning before the elecution I got to cut class to memorize with that other girl, Ariana, who was Dana's cousin.

When the elecution started, they called my name and I stepped up to the podium. I began reciting my poem. It was something about rocks and the ocean by Lord Alfred Tennyson. I completely choked and sucked out there. I kept looking at my sheet for every other word, and I didn't say anything right.

It the most humiliating and embarrasing thing that ever happened to me in the whole year. Even in 8th grade, a group of girls asked me if I was the boy who "choked up during the elecution"

But, in the play I was really good. The play was The Canterbury Tales. Obviously the real play is too long to do, so we just did the story of Tom, Dick and Harry.

And because the grade is full of dirty minded individuals, everyone turned that into the story of "Tom's Harry Dick".

I was Harry, and my friends George and Mason were Tom and Dick respectfully. We totally rocked our rolls, and tried our best to die, look drunk and act like thugs. Despite our hard work as the leads, Lahin, a kid from Section B, same as Mason, played Ambrosius, the leader of Tom, Dick and Harry's little gang, and acted drunk with us. He was only on stage for maximum FIVE minutes, yet he was praised as "The wonderfully drunken Ambrosius" and he got SO much attention, even though we did all the work, while all he did was prance around the stage like a dying monkey, which is basically what he did anyway.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The moral of this chapter is: You may mess up in life, but you can always make up for it in future successes. People will forget about the bad stuff eventually, and even faster if you cover it up with good stuff! People praised me for months after the school play on my good acting. Now we move onto Grade 8.