I was watching the comedy show on a cruise with my friends when the comedian asked for a volunteer. I watched to see if anyone would raise his or her hands. There were many but I was not one of them. Then the comedian went into the audience and picked out a person – that person was me. We were in the front row and all my friends were pointing at me to get comedian/magician’s attention. Part of me wanted to stay because I was afraid I was going to mess up, but the other part wanted to go onto the stage and have fun. Before I could decide, I was already onstage with the comedian and I saw thousands of people watching me. What I thought in my mind was “uh-oh.”

Onstage I saw nothing but the stage lights. It blinded my vision of the audience. The lights seemed to be burning my eyes, and along the sides I saw the curtains. I’ve always wanted to know what goes on backstage. They were red and looked to be velvety and it was like a cup cake in curtain form. I saw the curtains swaying back and forth, like a tiny little toddler on a swing being pushed by his father. Then behind red curtains I could see pitch-black chairs. The straight-line patterns on the chairs made them look like round conveyor belts. Next to the chairs were lights. Each one had a stand to hold them up. The lights were all different colors. There was bright blue, ruby red, perky pink, and a lot more.

My heart was pounding out of my chest and beating at 186,000 miles per second. Sometimes I think you can die of stage fright and this was one of those frightening moments: being on a stage in front of thousands of guests on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean wanting good, amusing, impressive entertainment. At that moment I felt as if I was in a room full of broken glass and nails, and that is the feeling of despair and misery. Suddenly I saw the entertainer babbling to the crowd and then he told me to do something. I didn’t know what to do yet and my heart was pounding “boom clash thump boom clash thump” every millisecond. Then the entertainer told me to hold on to a plastic egg that he called an African ostrich egg, which was a name used to impress the audience.     

“Now I want you to hold this egg,” shouted the magician. I held the tiny, miniscule egg. He now hollered, “hand it to me.” Then he took the egg and hid it under his armpit. He did this in a way that made it amusing, and made it obvious for the audience to see. The audience burst into laughter. Then the magician purposely dropped the egg and now the audience was going wild. Then he told me to put the egg in a purple leather bag. He twirled it around and told me to say the magic word “presto” and he opened the bag and he told me to reach in. It was empty. I gazed inside the bag. There was no egg. I was amazed. Then the entertainer and the audience gave me a round of applause.

I started to walk off the shiny, black stage when the magician called me back and gave me a magic kit. It said, “Learn 15 magic tricks in 15 minutes!” So I took the kit and walked off the stage. Once I was on the very edge of the stage the magician called me over yet again. This time everyone was laughing. The magician gave me a CD, too. This one said “Your Friends Will be Amazed!” There was also a picture of the magician on the cover. He was doing the floating card trick.  It looked astounding. The card actually looked like it was floating in mid-air. After I received the CD I walked back to my seat. This time he didn’t call me back onstage. He did another fantastic trick. Now that I was sitting in my seat again I realized that when I was onstage it wasn’t frightening, but it was a very memorable moment.