“I have poop coming out of my anus!”
This “tic” of mine is really quite the understatement for my life, haha. Sadly, while in high school this tic somehow became incorporated into my lexicon of words. It is such an embarrassing tic that I made sure to add it as one of the tics that audience members have to utter while I present.
Right before I moved to NYC I went super OCD and purged tons of stuff in my life. During the process, I came across a bunch of letters from a middle school class that had written me letters in response to my post-dispatch article that came out while I was a junior in high school. Due to partly my OCD again and my belief that it is never to late to say thank you, I tried to find the teacher online to reconnect with her. To my surprise, a few days later this teacher called me where I had a chance to thank her seven years later for having her class write me. During our conversation it came up that she had actually heard me speak at the MNEA conference and had to tic during my presentation “I have poop coming out of my anus.” She told me how she will never forget that day. She remembers vividly the sweating and anxiety with the shear thought and eventually act of having to say that phrase for one second during my speech. As I tell people in my speech, “Although you might only have to tic for a single moment during my presentation, this is something that I have been doing for 19 years of my life.”
Lesson of the day: it’s never to late to say thank you!
Dear Marc,
My daughter` class wrote to you and you responded after many years.she was so glad to hear from you and sent me your website to learn about you also. Her name is Barbara Brownell. she teaches in St. Louis.
good luck and best wishes to you.
Ellen Brownell