Clara Barton Moments

When I was in second grade I went to a small private school. My parents weren’t always into the details of the activities that were going on, so I often missed things like, “Dress Like a Pioneer Day” and “Bring an Ethnic Dish to Share Day”. There was also this one time I missed the part where I was supposed to give an oral report on an historical figure. I’d chosen Clara Barton because I thought her name was cool and the drawing of her on the cover of the easy-reader biography in the school’s library was pretty. I didn’t open the book, though, until right before it was time to give my report; I had it hidden under my desk while other kids gave their presentations, desperately trying to find out information on this Clara Barton person before my turn. Micah (who came from one of those families where the mom makes quilts and cookies from scratch and stuff, and who grew up and married my dear friend Jen) even had a chart or something, I’m sure, and probably gigantic pictures glued to pieces of foam board or whatever to illustrate his report, but me? Nope. No foam board. No charts. No dot-matrix printed notes. Nothing.

The night before, I had remembered the report was due, and that my book was still in the classroom. I called my grandparents to see if they had anything to help me, and my grandfather dug something out of a history book and read aloud the handful of sentences he found on Clara Barton. I was like, “That’s it?” and he was like, “That’s it.” so I wrote down what he said and hoped it would be enough.

Back to the class room: there I was, stomach sinking, heart pounding, hair everywhere because I hadn’t discovered hair gel yet, armed only with a few notes scratched on paper, some information about her early life from the book hidden under my desk (it hadn’t occurred to me to SKIP TO THE END to get to the important stuff), and the sentences from my grandpa that I knew I couldn’t repeat verbatim because that was a kind of cheating called “plagiarism”, which we had just learned about.

“Amber!” said the teacher brightly, “You’re next!”

I trudged to the front of the class room.

The report was a disaster, of course; I stumbled through it, making things up for a while, and then I trailed off and shrugged, and just stood there while everyone looked at me.

“She founded…?” my teacher prompted.

I shook my head.

“…the…Red…?”

“The Red…” I sniffed.

“The Red…uhhh…” A tear rolled down my cheek.

“The…Red…er…I don’t know.” My tiny shoulders slumped, and I felt like a total loser; a feeling I can remember like it was last week.

Clara Barton founded the Red Cross; it was her biggest achievement by far, and I had forgotten it in my report.

I hadn’t thought about all this in years, but it was on my mind when I went to bed last night, and disrupted my sleep. With the move(s) going on, Hey Brooklyn has gotten shoved around a bit, and I had only scratched the surface of preparing for today’s noon interview (normally I write the questions a few days prior, let them “marinate”, and then come back and edit to final the evening before). It was fine; they were great guys and I’m pleased with how it turned out, but the behind-the-scenes of it all was rougher than usual.

I’ve never actually had a bad interview, and I don’t have a reason to believe I ever will; I have a strict “Awesome People Only” policy, and having an awesome interview subject is 98% of the battle.

Still, every time I sit down behind the mic to do an interview, there’s always part of me that flicks to “worried about ‘Clara Barton moments’”, and I get the faintest hint of that “oh! shit!” feeling. Then, of course, I crack open my notes, and rock it out, and it’s great. But I guess I’ll never really grow up in that way.

At least now I have better hair.