There I was, standing in front of my own worst nightmare. The lights were cast down on me, people were staring and awaiting my next move. A man beside me spoke into a microphone, and suddenly, thrust it in my direction. 

I stared back blankly, and shook my head. 

“Sorry, but I really don’t do public speaking,” I replied to the offer. 

The awards moved on without my speech, and I was left feeling awkward, hiding behind the Taste of the Town award plates. 

This was the scene for those who remained at Taste of the Town to catch the awards. I hope you weren’t disappointed at my lack of ability to spit out a couple of words, but I know had I even attempted to, nothing would have come out. 

I chose to be a journalist so that I could take part in people doing public, cool things, and leech off of their accomplishments without being in the spotlight myself. It was a strange way to go, I admit, because what I do is completely in the public eye. But, everything I do is carefully edited, (up to eight times, by the time the Fitzhugh is sent to press, if you were wondering) corrected and fact checked. We use a dictionary constantly and our noses are nearly always stuck in our Canadian Press style books to get everything as close to perfect as humanly possible.

At Taste of the Town I was terrified every time my name was announced as a judge. I noticed people staring at me once they realized I was in fact Annaliece Grant (as the MC unfortunately mispronounced my name), and I cowered. At six feet tall, cowering is a tricky and very obvious operation.

Then when I climbed onto the stage, I had no idea what to expect and was caught completely off guard at the request of a speech announcing the winner. 

I hid behind the awards, frantically wondering if there were bits of lamb chop or elk steak in my teeth. Did I have sweet and sour sauce from that pork or yogurt dill sauce from the salmon slathered all over my face? Had some curry rice landed and clung to my hair? Had bison soup dribbled down my chin, and joined the artichoke dip on my shirt, or was there a bit of icing from the chocolate cake mashed into my neck... perhaps my lips had been stained red by the wine I had been sipping, but that didn’t matter because there was probably a shrimp dangling from my ear. 

When I got home, I found no shrimp in my ear and no horrendous slabs of meat were removed from the crevasses between my teeth, in fact I looked fine. I was calm, cool and collected – but no one else was in my bathroom staring at me. 

At 22 you’d think I’d be more confident in public, but the truth is, until I got into my second year of journalism school I was so painfully shy that I could barely conduct an interview. This career has forced me to be outgoing and now I thank myself for deciding to go for it. 

Maybe in a couple of years’ time I will climb up on a stage and not care about the crustacean hooked to my earlobe as I burst into unrehearsed banter with a crowd. 

At this point, however, I prefer to remain behind the lens and the type you read in these pages – and I think I’m going to have a chat with my editor about that photo in the corner of this page. 

DISCLAIMER: The Last Word is an opinion column, it is meant to provoke thought and debate. As such, any opinions written here are the writers own and do not reflect the viewpoint of any other Fitzhugh staff member or the directors of the Jasper Media Group Inc.