I should not have picked cancer

I found out that another member of my (non-immediate) family has cancer. It's official -- members of both sides of my family have been diagnosed with cancer. And we all know how cancer can be hereditary, right? I figured I'd better do some research.

So I decided to talk about cancer for my English oral test. My printer was being a pain in the rear end, so I had to copy the important stuff out on a piece of paper, which I would bring up to the front of the class with me. I don't think I've mentioned before here how much I love Wikipedia.

I LOVE WIKIPEDIA.

Anyway.

I nervously volunteered to do my oral test today (because next week, our teacher will be taking pictures of us while we speak, and everyone knows how much I'd hate that) and went up to the front of the class, clutching my piece of paper. Honestly, I can't even remember how I started, although I'd planned it out in my head.

Everything was different in my head, though. In my head, there wasn't any of that hysteria-tinged laughter, nor any blanking out (even with the paper in my hand). I would stand straight and deliver my little speech on cancer in a very matter-of-fact manner, boring and nerdy as anything.

Things played out a little differently, though.

I stood and I talked, all right. But when you're standing alone in front of thirty-something people, with all of them staring at you, the entire world shrinks to only that one room and those thirty-something people. And you feel this tightening in your chest, as though the sixteen years of atmospheric pressure's finally taking its toll on you, and you won't let yourself look at the paper, because you'd have to find your place and think about how to word the point, and how awful would that look?

And then you see your English teacher start to blink, blink, blink back tears and freak out a little bit, and when you're done, she starts to tell the class about how her father died from lymphoma two years ago, and you are horrified.

Man, if I'd known that, I wouldn't have touched the topic with a six-foot pole.

In actual fact, I didn't do too badly. This is just me being stupidly pessimistic again.

The next oral test I do for which we get to pick our own topics, I'm just going to talk about some little-known, non-controversial topic. Like gardening. Something like that.

Okay, so I'm lying. I always need to be 'different' and 'special' and 'unique'.

WELL, THAT CERTAINLY PROVED TO BE A 'DIFFERENT', 'SPECIAL', AND 'UNIQUE' ORAL TEST, DIDN'T IT?