I am sure that I am not alone in having stories to tell about standing in front of a class, during my school days, feeling nervous, uncertain and foolish as I tried to articulate the fine points of a book I had read.\u00a0 Even being called on to answer a question would sometimes make me wish the floor would open and enable me to drop to anyplace other than where I was.<\/p>\n
I loved all of the other aspects of school, and the schools in Concord were marked by an excellence that was the envy of many other towns and cities.<\/p>\n
My “tour” of our schools began with kindergarten at the now closed Walker School where Miss Stevens and Mrs. Smith reigned with discipline coupled with loving wisdom.<\/p>\n
Miss O’ Mara gave thousands of locals their first real taste of school as a longtime first grade teacher at Kimball School on North Spring Street. She always made me think of a favorite relative that you wished you could see more often than you did.\u00a0 Although her classroom, the year I was in first grade, was located in the basement, next to the furnaces, due to space limitations, she turned the room into a center of learning for us.<\/p>\n
Years later when I saw Freddie Krueger skulking around the school basement, I wasn’t especially frightened because Miss O’ Mara had made a school basement seem a more welcoming place.<\/p>\n
Second grade was spent with Mrs. Mollica at Kimball and third through sixth was at St. Peter’s Grammar School on Walker and Bradley Street.<\/p>\n
The two years I spent at Rundlett are better left unsaid.\u00a0 I cannot imagine a gulag being more unnerving.<\/p>\n
Bishop Brady High School was my “home” for the four years of high school and I truly reveled in being a part of the school whose reputation, both as a learning institution and as the home of the award-winning “Green Giants”, made the years race by.<\/p>\n
What never changed, however, was the innate fear of being called on in class or the expectation that a book report would be presented while standing in front of 25 classmates, many of whom could have sometimes cared less.\u00a0 I could have been reviewing “Peyton Place” or “Valley of the Dolls” and possibly received nary a raised eyebrow.<\/p>\n
While I could get up on a stage in front of hundreds of people and perform a role in a play or musical, whether strumming a uke while tap-dancing in a Community Players production or flying through the air as Peter Pan in the musical of the same name, just being myself seemed to almost cripple me.<\/p>\n
In 1982 the Boston Public Library invited me to introduce an eight week summer film series in their Rabb Auditorium, which seated nearly 500.<\/p>\n
Despite my abject fear of publicly making a fool of myself, I have never turned down an offer, believing that doing it enough times would eventually enable me to lose the fear.<\/p>\n
I remembered something Harvey Smith, the coach at Brady, told me when I was on the Cross Country team.<\/p>\n
“Brogan, when you start running you’ll feel like you want to stop because its too much and you don’t think you can make it but you can. You’ll hit your pace and suddenly it’ll all be there, what you need, when you need it.”<\/p>\n
I asked the folks at the library to make sure I had a podium that I could lean on and that would hide my visibly shaking legs from the audience.<\/p>\n
In June of 1983, reporter Catherine Mann interviewed me on “Entertainment Tonight”.\u00a0 When it aired I tried watching it but began shaking and found myself with dry heaves.<\/p>\n
Fifty years ago Saint Peter’s Church was well known in the community for presenting, each March, a variety show at the City Auditorium. Irene Deschenes directed the two hour musical revue, with a cast of more than 100.\u00a0 Everyone in the church’s elementary school vied for a chance to perform in the show. The nun’s that taught in the school were the casting directors and the Sister’s of Mercy didn’t earn their sobriquet, “The Sisters without Mercy” for nothing.<\/p>\n
Sister Mary John lined all of us around the classroom, facing the wall. One by one we would turn around and sing a line and then return to facing the wall. Sister would offer a critique.<\/p>\n
The song we were asked to sing a snippet from was the then popular tune, “High Hopes”.<\/p>\n
When my turn came I turned around, facing Sister, and launched into, “Just what makes a little old ant, think he’ll move a rubber tree plant……”<\/p>\n
Sister fixed me with a look that would have stopped Lucifer dead in his tracks.<\/p>\n
“Paul Edward Brogan, when I hear you sing I have to remind myself that you’re a child of God.”<\/p>\n
For years after I couldn’t listen to myself speak and would channel someone else when I had to sing.<\/p>\n
When I first appeared on “NH Now” several months ago, I didn’t listen to a replay of the show, preferring to not hear myself.<\/p>\n
When approached about doing a weekly show, which evolved into “Downtown Dialogues”, I was enthused but vowed to not listen in.\u00a0 I felt I could interview my guests and put together and entertaining and informative 45 minutes without having to endure hearing myself.<\/p>\n
My first guest, several weeks ago, was Concord Mayor Jim Bouley. Doing the show was a great deal of fun and Mayor Bouley could not have been a better guest.<\/p>\n
The afternoon is aired, I was returning from a presentation in Hooksett and, without thinking, turned on WKXL, which is a habit for me.<\/p>\n
I immediately recognized Mayor Bouley’s voice although I didn’t equate it with my show and so listened and found myself caught up in the piece.<\/p>\n
The interviewer was good and it took me almost a minute to realize that I was listening to myself and I wasn’t cringing or sinking into my seat or feeling a wave of nausea wash over me.<\/p>\n
Maybe, it’s possible to overcome our hang-ups after decades of believing what other people have led us to believe about ourselves.<\/p>\n
As for me, I’ve listened to my second and third show with a critical ear but not fearful of what I might hear.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it’s because I am having the time of my life chatting with people like Katrina Lantos Swett and Tony Schinella and next week, Jim MacKay, a local legend and deservedly so.<\/p>\n
At the risk of blowing my own horn, check out “Downtown Dialogues” on Tuesday at 3 PM or, for that matter, check out WKXL. I think you’ll be more than pleasantly surprised at what is going on locally with radio.\u00a0 It’s cutting edge, sharp, funny, human and real and maybe becoming a bit player with the station has finally enabled me to eliminate the word cringe from my vocabulary.<\/p>\n
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