It probably sounds a bit silly to some people but that was me aged 5 so crippled by shyness that I would rather stand in a puddle of my own pee than tell the teacher I really needed to visit the lavatory.
I don't know what caused me to become so introverted and timid upon joining the education system but whatever it was brought me to the decision at that tender age not speak to anyone else apart from my family in a register barely above a whisper for the next 2 years.
It's not as if I was always a quiet child, my parents will often regale me with the tales of when I ' the little madam ' would boss my older brother about when we were small. But there was always something about interacting with people who weren't part of my immediate family that terrified me beyond belief .
Various family members who we didn't see that much would often get yes /no answers before I sat in the corner eyeing them suspiciously if they came to visit. To this day I still feel bad that whenever I heard that a certain aunt was coming I would deliberately hide away upstairs from her until she went because her deep voice and loud laugh gave me the heebie jeebies.
And if this was the way I behaved to people I was related to then it doesn't take much to work out that if there was no family connection you'd stand no chance.
One of my favourite trick's on finding that any of my parents friends were coming round to the house was to pretend to be asleep so I wouldn't have to talk to them . In fact I would 'take a nap' so often I'm surprised I was never taken to the doctors to be diagnosed with narcolepsy.
I carried on in this vein for the next 2 years until one kindly old teacher took me aside while reading in a separate room one day and said " let me hear your big voice , no one needs to know about it if you don't want them to ". The " big " voice wasn't much louder than the whisper I had been using for the past couple of years but it was a start and at least now people could ( almost ) hear what I was saying.
Junior school was a bit daunting for someone who was as quiet as me but my advanced reading skills ( well, what do you think I was doing while I was hiding away from people in my bedroom ? ) meant I got on well in lessons . However the downside of this would be in the instance of ' you've read/written that well , why don't you read that out to the rest of the class? Now I don't know about the rest of you but standing in front of 30 expectant faces is daunting enough to someone who is confident in themselves but if you're a shy person you might as well be standing in front of a firing squad for all the sheer panic that's going through your mind at that particular moment . And heaven forbid the suggestion ' Why don't you read it out in assembly? ' should come up...... Someone get the school nurse, I think we might need to call an ambulance !
I've found over the years that there is a bit of a stigma towards being shy , most confident loud people don't tend to understand that repeatedly saying things like" speak up " , " I cant hear you " ," speak louder " doesn't actually help the timid person very much , in fact it tends to make them want to withdraw from the situation even more. In my case I would get so nervous about saying anything at all that I would rehearse it in my head over and over before even daring to utter it by which time I'd be so wound up with terror that it would stutter out of my mouth like a bad Bruce Forsyth impression. People also tend to think your being a bit rude if your not talking to them but they don't realise that your so terrified of speaking that its all your mind can think about let alone come up with that great conversation opener to break the ice.
Leaving school at 16 having let my shyness hold me back from exploring any kind of higher education , I was thrust into the world of work where I could make a new start. People didn't know what I'd always been like and lets face it, in the world of retail you can't not talk . I still wasn't a big one for conversation but I did enough to get me through each working day.
A big turning point came in my discovery of a nightclub that played the music I liked to listen to. At school to try and fit in I'd always gone along with what everyone else would say was cool whilst secretly loving to listen to my mum and dads old records and admiring the 6th formers who dared to dress differently from the pack, listening to the smiths , the cure and other alternative stuff .I'd been experimental on some non uniform days at school and it hadn't always gone down well ( black and red checked woollen trousers when everyone else was wearing stuff like 'I should be so lucky 'era Kylie is a particular one that sticks in the mind )but now those people weren't around to tell me I looked stupid. I started buying old stuff from charity shops and creating a whole new look for myself . With each new look I could become a new character , I was Nina ' the greatest dancer at subsonic' ( ok, I might be exaggerating slightly on that one! ), ' 60s mod girl straight out of Carnarby street or my particular favourite 'the female Jarvis cocker complete with powder blue 70s flared trouser suit and massive blonde afro wig. I might not have been the most talkative person around anyone else but my closest friends but with this new found confidence I did start to bloom a bit more than I had in years .
The biggest breakthrough though was after I had my twins in 2002 whereas before I'd had no-one to protect but myself I now had two little fella's that depended on me even more . After a shaky few years where post natal depression , sleepless nights and the dawning realisation that my life wasn't my own anymore a new person started to emerge . the one who'd let people tell her she wasn't doing things right for her beautiful boys suddenly started answering her critic's back instead of bursting into tears. She didn't take any crap anymore and stood her ground on what she believed was right instead of cowering away from the situation. In fact the change was so noticeable that friends and family started to comment on it . I decided to use it to my advantage . I started going out to the new local indie club on my own and made lots of new friends through just talking to people ( previously unheard of in the world of Nina ) and eventually from this gallivanting about D.J DEE VINYL was born. A confident vintage clothing clad whirling dervish of a woman who with her partner in crime the glorious Miss Hayley Rocks decided to take over the world of the solemn male indie D.J and show them a thing or two about looking good on the dance-floor. And the rest so the cliché says is history, Dee Vinyl has a little bit of a confidence crisis around about 2011 that culminates in a major change of course in what she wants to do when she eventually grows up ( which might happen sometime soon but I shouldn't hold your breath ! ) but it sorts itself out towards the end of 2012 when she finds her true talent. (And that's a whole other blog post so I digress.)
So I finally found my voice with a little help from my two favourite men in the world plus music and clothing .It's not to say I don't have the odd moment when I turn back into shy girl , I still hate having to use the phone knowing that the minute someone answers it I am likely to start doing that fateful stuttering Brucie impersonation but I learned to turn my fear into something productive and with fellow former shyness sufferers as this
David Bowie.
Bob Dylan.
Joan Rivers.
Cher.
Barbara Streisand.
Lady Gaga.
Elvis Presley.
Abraham Lincoln.
Albert Einstein.
i think the timid and quiet should set their sights "shy " high .
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