Arrow to the back

Sometimes a little arrow comes out of the blue. Mengs needed someone to intro a guest speaker at assembly talk. MC of choice: yours truly.

Fortunately, Cheng isn't difficult to introduce. His claim to fame is that he is the former head creative of a major media company (think big mouse ears) who has since gone freelance as a caricaturist, cartoonist, and sort-of visual-arts evangelist. He offers to teach 'untalented' people to express themselves through cartoon drawing and in the process show them that trained technique in the arts counts for more than any so-called 'natural' talent.

The info I had of our guest was 'sketchy' like that and my further instruction was to remind the kids the objective of the session so that they won't blank out if asked to recount the experience for some KPI survey or other. In my mind, I composed a brilliant intro even including a link to the kids' all-too recent trauma that was the GP mid-year exam. Always good to engage prior knowledge, right?

My usual problem is delivery. Mouth and brain are seldom coordinated, but today I surprised myself with a near word-perfect intro delivered with all the (appropriate) aplomb I could muster. Right at the end, on cue, with a dramatic flourish towards the general direction of where Cheng was last standing, I was met with riotous applause. Wow, that must have been some intro... hope I didn't over-sell him.

I turned to hand Cheng the mike... but he wasn't there. I looked behind me and there on the projector screen he had already finished his first sketch -- PPG's Blossom -- while I was still talking. Guess my intro had gone on for a bit, huh? *sheepishly hands mike over and exits, stage right.