Practice practice practice

Just do the thing

I was frozen. In front of me, my mom stared back expectantly and unsympathetically, brow raised. Behind me, two older women chatted, unaware of my paralysis.

Four words. I just had to face these women and say four words.

After several minutes hyping myself up, I turned to face them. The women looked over. I opened my mouth.

“Gèp dthaang dûay kà.”

One of the women nodded and stood up to grab the check. My anxiety decrescendoed.

“See? They understood you.” My mother grinned at me.

So these ladies did. But other Thai servers, vendors, and the like couldn’t always decipher my American accent. So, I’d learned to shy away from practicing rather than experience the confused looks, the little smiles, or worst, the switching to English to accommodate me.

I grew up hearing Thai all around me and responding in English; it was the nail on the coffin of my Thai fluency as an adult. I later took speaking, reading, and writing classes with a private tutor for two years, but I knew things wouldn’t truly click unless I was placed in real-life situations.

Real life was scary as hell.

Gèp dthaang dûay kà. Check, please. Even knowing the words I wanted to say and practicing them, I was scared to speak. What if they asked me something else and I had to go off-script? What if they were confused and I looked like a dang fool? What if my soul left my body from the sheer embarrassment?!

Well, none of that happened this time. And I suppose if they were confused, that was valuable feedback, and the only way to improve was to keep trying. I didn’t have to let my focus shift from what was helpful (feedback) to my feelings (important, but not helpful here).

Should I keep trying and be okay with fumbling in the meantime, or should I stay where I was and freeze up and fumble forever. Which one was worse?

I had my answer. And with it in mind, I’ll be chipping away at the ice block of conversational anxieties I’ve built around me. With practice.