Stroll Off Embarrassment

          Life is full of embarrassing moments, for yourself as well as others. Usually you're supposed to learn from this embarrassment and become a stronger person. Something like that. Also, as a precursor to my story, I'd like to point out the importance of communication. It really is a life saver, so keep that in mind for future use.
         Anyway, I recently had an incredibly embarrassing experience here at TCU. No, I didn't fall down the library steps....again. This embarrassing moment took place at the Sigma Lambda Alpha 8th Annual Stroll Off. This is a large event put on by a multicultural sorority where different fraternities and sororities compete with their strolls (the gist is dancing in a line to hip-hop or cultural music). I was picked to represent my sorority, along with seven other girls. We were given the rule book, yes there are rules, the night before the competition. Instantly, we lost some of our team; people didn't think we had time, doubted our abilities, or just felt they had things of more importance to do. Nonetheless, the three that remained,  myself and two other girls, worked tirelessly through the night coming up with a "stroll." Turns out, we didn't have the slightest of a clue what a stroll was, so we did ours completely wrong.
          Trying to save ourselves from the impending embarrassment, we sent out some emails, hoping we could get out of the event and just donate the $80 entry fee towards the sorority's philanthropy. Sadly, that was a no-go. We got a email asking us to reconsider, explaining how important our presence was. Who could say no to that? We couldn't. Now we had even less time than before and only knew one out of our three strolls. We contacted the sorority letting them know we would only be able to perform one stroll; luckily, they said that was totally fine.
           The embarrassment and laughter really started once we got to the event that night. We planned out our outfits, thinking we were being creative. Another sorority had the same idea as us, so our small group looked like we were copying this large, prepared group. This was when we first started laughing at ourselves. Then, we hear someone practicing their dance, to our song. Already sleep deprived, we found it hilarious that out of all the songs in the world, another group picked the same song. When it was our time to go, obviously we would be chosen to go first. At this point, we were hysterically laughing. We were having the absolute worst luck. We get on stage, do our "stroll," and gradually our smiles grew as our performance went on. Afterwards, we hugged and screamed in a little back room. We did what everyone doubted. We all sat down and just started laughing. All that stress was finally over, but the embarrassment would stay for a while.
          We learned a lot from our Stroll Off experience. Not only did we learn what it actually means to stroll, but we learned that laughing at yourself helps make bad situations better. We could not restrain our laughter after each added factor. Laughing about the situation made us all feel better. Could we have focused on how bad we did? Yes. Did we? Of course not. The only solution was to laugh. So, after a painstakingly long string of unfortunate events and an embarrassing performance, we learned that laughter makes everything better. It definitely helped that we got Fuzzy's after, though.