My absolute favorite part of Nationals was this program called StuntFest. StuntFest was an event for cheerleaders after the competition was over. You went to an area on the beach where you had the opportunity to stunt (throw someone in the air or be thrown in the air) with anyone else on the beach. StuntFest was the time when a group of four giant bros could approach a tiny girl and proposition her. “Hey! You look fun. Wanna see how high we can get you?” And the tiny girl would likely size them all up and realize this was her opportunity to touch the sun. So she would say, “Sure! Let’s do it.” And then the bros would make a box with their hands and the girl would jump in the box and for some glorious moments she would soar, flip, turn, and twist higher than she had ever dreamed. They do this a few more times and try other stunts until someone gets bored and the group breaks up to find new people. If you ignored the beers and vodka cranberries being consumed all day, it was a pretty wholesome activity. 

After a full afternoon at StuntFest and my pink drinks becoming a lighter and lighter shade with every refresher, I realized that I had hit my stunting and alcohol threshold. I don’t remember whose idea it was to go get something pierced, but I instantly agreed and off we went. The large beachfront piercing and tattoo studio had a line that wormed out the door. In hindsight, this should have been a red flag for me. However, at the time, I considered it a green flag because so many people obviously meant the place was reputable. I waited in that line for 45 minutes to get my tongue pierced. 

When it was finally my turn, I was informed that I wasn’t waiting in the tongue piercing line, I was waiting in the line to get in the van to take me to get my tongue pierced. Evidently, piercings are not allowed in the Daytona Beach city limits, so you paid for the piercing at the shop and then you were supposed to get in a little van to drive 30 minutes outside of the city limits to get pierced. My friend had also paid her $20 for an ear cartilage piercing but she decided to bail after learning this critical piece of new information. It still wasn’t a red flag for me and there were no refunds. I had paid $50 and I was committed to getting this piercing. 

I climbed into an exact replica of the white mini-van I had been warned about for my entire childhood. The van smelled like sweat and cheap cigarettes. I was invited to sit in the front,

where its previous occupant had apparently been laying flat. As I buckled myself in, I spotted a small pile of petrified French fries wedged between my passenger seat and the middle console. The thirty minute ride was completely silent as all the passengers quietly contemplated our lives’ 

choices and silently prayed that we would make it out of this experience alive so that we could make more poor life choices. I climbed out of the van and stood in another line with a couple dozen bikini-clad, college-aged girls all waiting to get various body parts pierced. The girl in front of me who smelled like vodka, redbull, and Malboro menthols nervously told me that she had to take out her first belly button ring because it got infected, but she’s planning to do a really good job keeping this one clean. She didn’t look to me like she had ever done a good job keeping anything clean. 

One after another we lifted up a shirt, tied back our hair, or stuck out a tongue while the piercer quickly poked a hole in whatever body part we had presented him. I was barely comforted by the spray bottle of what I assumed was alcohol that he used between jabs. When everyone in our van had been pierced, we piled back into the van and headed back to the beach. The ride back was way more chatty. 

“It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would!” 

“I barely even noticed the second one!” 

I didn’t say anything; my tongue had already begun to swell. 

My cell phone died at some point in the afternoon and by the time I finally arrived back at the hotel and plugged it in to charge I had a dozen missed calls from my teammates. I was late for our dinner rendezvous and they had left for the restaurant without me. I wasn’t upset. I was afraid to try to eat with my new piercing that was now making my tongue fill my entire mouth, so I hung back at the hotel to suck on ice chips and pray for the best. That evening when I checked my email, I received a message from the private school inviting me to interview for a Speech and Debate summer teaching position. I figured that I’d be good to go for my Tuesday interview. 

By Tuesday, I wasn’t sucking on ice chips anymore and my tongue was no longer hurting. The new piercing had, however, left me with a pronounced lisp. I couldn’t even say my own name properly. As I heard myself pronounce “The-ft-anie,” I was catapulted back to the many years of speech therapy I did in my youth. It took me more than a decade to say words like “six,” “girl,” and “tree” and I decided to undo all that hard work with a quick poke of a needle. 

I showed up at my interview that afternoon with the looming dread that I was about to make a fool out of myself. The school was fancy and the campus was stuffed with spacious quads, Georgian brick buildings, and students wearing $200 t-shirts. I didn’t deserve $200; I had taken my last $50 and purchased a disability at a seedy Daytona County piercing parlor. And now, here I was applying to be a speech teacher and much of my own speech was unintelligible. 

The interviewer threw me a softball first question, “How did you get into speech and debate?” I took a deep breath and launched into the story of how I had a severe speech impediment growing up and was never particularly confident speaking to strangers because I knew they had a hard time understanding me. After more than a decade of speech therapy, I slowly gained

confidence. Competing on my high school speech and debate team allowed me to test that confidence and blossom into an accomplished public speaker. 

As I told this story, I could see her expressions morph into the type of awe one might feel when watching a video about someone with a traumatic brain injury learning to walk again or a child with a new cochlear implant hearing their mother’s voice for the first time. Tears brimmed in my interviewer’s eyes as she leaned across that table and told me “You are so brave.” 

Suddenly, the full weight of what was actually happening in this moment hits me. This woman wasn’t just impressed; she was enthralled. I watched her eyes twinkle with understanding as I struggled to speak and as every mangled word solidified my status as her personal hero. She had no idea that my years of speech therapy were very successful and that just a few days 

prior, I had perfect enunciation until I chose to ruin it by jabbing a metal barbell through my tongue. I desperately want to explain, to clarify, that she was reading my whole story incorrectly but there wasn’t a good explanation for my lisp that doesn’t involve me revealing I’ve just pierced my tongue and I was certain that piece of information would betray that fact that I am not responsible enough to work with children at this elite private school. I couldn’t tell the truth. Instead, I stole the valor. I met her twinkling eyes with what I hoped was an appropriate amount of humble resilience and I said, “Thank you.” 

In the rest of the interview, we moved through typical teacher topics like decision making, good judgment, and time-management skills.”Oh yes, I excel in all of those!” I compartmentalized my entire Daytona Beach experience and presented myself as an aspiring role model and promising young teacher…with a lisp. 

A few days later, the swelling subsided and I learned how to talk with my new piercing. I also received a phone call letting me know that I got the job as a speech and debate teacher. On my first day of work, the woman who interviewed me came to welcome me in my classroom. If she noticed that my lisp was gone, she did not let on. I certainly did not raise the subject.