My personal St. Crispin’s Day speech. I hadn’t actually forgotten. I just kind of did everything but write. And now here we are, a month later, when no one has any memory of me hinting at that story—or they simply knew better. Hey, I know I’m bad at posting regularly. But y’all, I’m ready to boomerang back to the topic.

For the record, my not writing a story has nothing to do with living my introvert-best life while being trapped in the house (the annual Texas winter rite of passage when our Senators mic-drop and board planes to warmer climes), or not having anything to binge-watch on my streaming channels (why does The Pitt only come out one episode at a time??? Is this the dark ages?? Et tu, Hijack??), or avoiding picking up my book. It’s because I want to write. Honest!

Regardless of the reason—which is only ever motivated by my best intentions—here we are. I’m finally sitting down in front of my computer, ready to tell a few of you a story.

I’m going to break one tiny rule of mine, though, and talk about work.

To set the stage: every year, our department hosts an annual banquet for all employees. While the venue might change, the one thing we can count on is that there will be some sort of competition, ranging from blind gift-wrapping to balancing an object while navigating an obstacle course of chairs and people. This year, to mix it up, it was announced that each team needed to sing karaoke. I got scooped up immediately by another team, and just as quickly, I was asked to walk it back—new rule: no cross-team karaoke collaborations. Everyone was going to be super serious.

A meeting was called, a loose idea was formed that included me wearing a Christmas tree outfit, and then I was turned loose to recruit more folks. Now, something you should know about my team, and that’s almost everyone is an introvert, including me.

Just a real quick tutorial for those extroverts out there who believe introvert = shy: they’re not the same. In fact, when it comes to my team, almost everyone can be fairly outgoing when the need arises. Personally, I’m a fairly gregarious and outgoing introvert. I’m often accused of being an extrovert, mostly because my voice carries like I’m trying to reach the people who couldn’t make it into the Globe Theatre. This becomes important later when someone, in a moment of poor judgment, hands me a microphone. Anyway, I’m exactly like most of the folks on the team; I’d really prefer to go home, sit quietly, decompress, and recharge at the end of the day.

Back to my challenge – trying to convince at least four or five people to get up on a makeshift stage and sing with me in front of 100 of our peers in a public setting, when I could empathize with what a big ask it would be.

And that’s when I pulled everyone into a room to give my very Beth-est St. Crispin’s Day speech.

For those unfamiliar with William Shakespeare’s famous speech, it comes from Henry V (Act IV, Scene III). It’s where King Henry goes to his men before the Battle of Agincourt and rallies them to take on the French, a much larger force. The English ultimately defeated the French despite the odds. Anyway, the speech ends like this:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

While King Henry gave a speech to rally his troops that day, it likely lacked the flourish of the Bard. In fact, he is reported to have mentioned not so flourishy things like, “…and the French will cut off the middle fingers of all you archers back there… yep, I’m looking at you, Gary. Want to keep those fingers? Then, best win this battle.” Also, I imagine he ended with a bit of, “Go England! Boo France!” and a Late Middle English version of “Now get out there, lads, I’ll be in the fray, too! Huzzah!”

I dare say, my speech equally worthy of Shakespeare. “If we are marked to sing… We karaoke-ing few, we band of peers, for they who sing with me shall be known henceforth as singers…”

Fine. It actually went more like the actual speech with fewer threats to the loss of fingers:

“Hey guys, ummm… sooooo… uhhhh… karaoke. Amirite?? Huh? This thing is happening where we’re being compelled to sing, and I get it, it sounds terrible, but hey, I’ll be dressed as a Christmas tree. So no matter how uncomfortable you feel, no one will remember what you did, because I’ll be in a really dumb costume. I’ll distract everyone. I’ll be loud. And hey, did I mention the tree costume??? It’s really super dumb looking. Who’s with me? Anyone? Bueller?”

I really kept beating the “big dumb costume” bit, which is in fact big and dumb (and kinda hilarious). I also mixed it up by throwing in something about improv – just me trying to convey that I’ve stood on a stage and acted like an idiot for laughter before and could draw attention, hoping that might sway someone… anyone… or maybe just 3 other people. I acknowledged it would be challenging, we’d be putting ourselves out there instead of just eating our food and quietly avoiding attention, like we’d all like to do, and added something like, “…but hey, if we go first, it won’t matter if we face-plant; more people will take the stage, and we’ll be forgotten.” (Clearly, I’m a gifted motivational speaker. You’re probably already sad you couldn’t join our merry few that day just based on the above.)

And when I finished…

Everyone just looked horrified.

Then one woman spoke up (clearly feeling bad for me and my sad attempt): “Hey, guys, let’s do this for Beth.”

And suddenly I went from needing only three or four volunteers to having nine.

It was awe-inspiring. She had, with one simple request, rallied our team into a singing troupe. (It’s now obvious, she’s actually descended from Shakespeare himself.)

And by the time we performed, we went from one dumb looking Christmas tree performing Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree to having a singing blow-up gingerbread man, a present, three people dancing into the room with blow-up saxophones for the instrumental break in the song, a whole gang of singers and dancers on that stage and throughout the audience while another teammate wore a Christmas tree hat and passed out candy canes. (Also, someone foolish gave me one of the mics. I told you all I was loud without a mic. Bless that person. I’m told everyone could hear better than everyone else. My gift to the world.)

And we came in second place!

(Although we’re all pretty sure we were first in everyone’s hearts.)