312. Embrace Your Un-Talents

What would you try if failure was acceptable?

We hosted an Un-Talent Show on the TTFA Patreon last month, where people showcased their mediocre talents. It’s free to watch, check out the video on our Patreon page. 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

Nora McInerny:

What would you do if you could not fail?

Whenever I’m faced with a meaningless question like that, I am unable to respond in any meaningful way.

I think that sentence is meant to inspire. To get us to think big, to force us onto the next natural quasi inspirational adage, everything you want is on the other side of fear. Which is it? Are you sure? A better adage than what would you do if you could not fail, if we must deal in adages, which are the de facto currency of the internet, is this, what would you do if failing was okay?

If there were no real consequences. If nobody made you feel foolish, if it was okay with the people around you, that you were still a work in progress. I went to a Catholic grade school, which conjures up images of strict nuns and itchy uniforms and rigorous academics. Our reproductive education ended at flowers, pistils and stamens were pretty racy to us at enunciation. We had maybe two nuns. left by the mid nineties and our uniforms were polo shirts and dockers and our entire school seemed to run at the whims of a magical creative arts teacher named Mrs. Strickland.

She had a short blonde pixie cut, sometimes with like a hint of a mullet. She dressed like Stevie Nicks. Her room was a converted choir box with no overhead lighting and scarves over the lamps and small squares of carpet samples for us to rest on while she played the guitar and just vibed. And that is what we did.

We only vibed. We sang our little hearts out without ever learning any notes or keys or pitches. And she nodded her head and strummed along and reveled in the sound of 25 to 40 children at a time singing Bob Dylan or deep cuts off the free to be record. And in seventh and eighth grade, we were allowed to participate in her annual creative opus Improv.

This was a spectacular, involved lip syncs, choreographed dances, sketch comedy, interpretive dance, all developed, perfected, and performed by us. None of it, I should note, was improvised. It was deeply rehearsed and treated with utmost seriousness. We performed sold out shows to hundreds of parents and siblings.

Every one of us dressed in stage black, lined our eyes with, with black eyeliner. and wore red lipstick, the finest wet and wild products available at our neighboring Walgreens. In 7th grade, my best friend Erin and I did a self choreographed lip sync to ABBA’s Waterloo, inspired, and by inspired I mean ripped off from the movie Muriel’s Wedding, which was rated R.

I kind of can’t believe we’d seen that. Were we on beat? It depends on what beat you’re talking about. We weren’t on the beat of the song. But it didn’t matter. We were the biggest stars to ever shine. And somewhere in a South Minneapolis basement, there’s a VHS recording to prove that two things can be true.

What Mrs. Strickland gave all of us was the freedom to fail, to suck, to be not all that talented and take it to the stage anyway. She imbued us with unfounded confidence and forced us to see each of our equally awkward peers as people worth cheering on. We closed out our performance series with a wrap party in someone’s backyard with coolers of off brand soda and a trampoline.

We were partying till like at least 9:30 p.m. guys. And I don’t know when the magic dust that Miss Strickland sprinkled on us as kids ended up evaporating, but I know it did. I know I spent lots of time avoiding trying anything because I could not bear the thought of not being good at it. I didn’t try out for my college improv comedy troupe because I thought I would, if, if I had to try out and if I wasn’t funny, then those 20 mostly unfunny boys would know I wasn’t as funny as them.

And then I guess I would die. I didn’t learn to play an instrument because I wasn’t young enough to be a child prodigy. And if I tried to play piano and I couldn’t do it, I guess again, the only option was death. I didn’t apply to interesting jobs because there was no way I was interesting enough to get them, and obviously I would also die.

At our daughter’s high school graduation recently, the student speaker got up and told a story about her own high school experience. She talked about how she was forced into her third choice arts elective and ended up playing the saxophone, which was an instrument that she had neither heard of or seen before her first band class.

And she was so embarrassed by her inadequacy that she pretended to play. She fell even further behind her classmates. She missed out on the chance to connect with the music and with her fellow students. And when she finally asked for help, she got it and she got better. And she was never the best saxophone player, but she found out that she loved music once she knew what the notes on the page actually meant.

And her takeaway to the hundreds of people, mostly grownups in the audience was this, don’t be afraid to suck. And so I offer those wise words to you as well, because when I started playing piano a year ago, I really sucked. And even a year later, I still suck, but I haven’t died. I’m still here. We’re going to knock on wood because I don’t, anything can happen between recording and publishing.

I didn’t even die after I went to a recital where everyone else performing was an actual child playing the kind of music you only hear on classical NPR. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t even have to be great. You don’t have to be, as I’ve proven above, good. You don’t even have to be good. Your effort is enough.