Camera shy

I remember the day as being nondescript till the evening hit, which is unfortunate because it means that this pretty much ruined the quiet and calm that morning and afternoon had so tirelessly strived to create. I was told to go down and meet the others for an urgent meeting. I think the trouble started there. Urgent. I didn't like the sound of that, it put me under immediate stress. It wasn't just the fact that I had to go down there quickly. It was also an ominous feeling that it was something important that was awaiting us - and, in most cases, that meant someone important wanted to see us and talk to us. I never did feel comfortable with these sorts of meetings, if only because the questions that were natural to ask had no answers in my case. If one were to ask why I came here, well...the opportunity was there, and since it seemed promising, I took it. There was nothing exciting about it, and it was dry enough for me to feel as though such answers were left unspoken. Instead, I would have to try and make something up, something exciting. Even as I was making my way there, I felt some pressure building, as though I would have to come up with something truly genuine, rather than fake pleasantries that everyone could see through.

When I got there, I remember having to wait a little while. Frustration set in - I didn't like having the flow of the day being disturbed, and having to wait only made things worse. It was perhaps twenty minutes later that we were escorted outside. That was where a camera crew was lying in waiting. I saw two girls saying something to the camera, and realized that this was going to have to be me staring at the camera, espousing the exciting answers that I had come up with in the walk here.

For whatever reason, I thought that maybe there was some chance that I wouldn't have to go on camera after all. Maybe it was all voluntary, right? I actually believed this enough to ask someone. I felt some amount of surprise when I was told that no, I would have to speak. I began to feel distinctly uncomofortable, and wondered how I would pull this off. We had to wait a bit longer while they found a place that was just right. I remember hearing snippets of conversation between some of them. What I remember even more is how my pulse was steadily increasing, and their innocuous words were somehow given a dark, cruel complexion. They were far too casual to fit in - they did not explain why I was about to break into a sweat. They were not evil, and so, to set things right, I imagined that they were.

While there were others yet to go, I felt only nervousness, but at no stage was it bad enough for me to reconsider the whole thing. But, seeing two of them go in and put those mics on...ah, it's hard to explain, it was as though there was some primal fear that awoke. I could not imagine myself sitting there and going through all of this. I'd had such feelings under different situations in the past, but this time it was different. Perhaps in the past, it was for something that I knew deep down was important, or that for some reason I had to do. In this case, it was neither, and I inevitably began asking myself why I had to do this in the first place. Pure panic had set in, and as I think about it now, it does not seem too far-fetched to suggest that I would have actually fainted at the time. Well ok, maybe that's going a bit overboard.

I don't know how, but I mumbled something and walked out of there with no regrets. I don't know why, but as I did so, I wondered if I was rejecting it on the basis of principle. Maybe I didn't want to be a part of a case-study, lumped into a group in the process. It all sounded nice enough, for a minute anyway. But then I stopped and realized that this was all nonsense. I just couldn't be on camera.