"Did you hear about it?" a deep voice murmured, "He's coming today."

"He's actually coming? This is awesome!" answered another much higher-pitched voice.

The voices in the room ahead of me just kept becoming less and less coherent. The voices of the entering patrons morphed into a jumble of sharp vowels and clicks of tongues. I stood in the doorway of the stage's opening, trying to work up the nerve to walk out and begin my speech.

My sweating hands were starting to moisten the papers I held. I balanced the papers in one hand and wiped my other hand on my suit. No matter how many times I did this I was still nervous about messing up and making a fool of myself. I took a deep breath and walked onto the stage, my eyes focusing on nothing but the podium I was to stand at.

My eyes never glanced at the crowd in front of me. It always scared me how many people were willing to take every word that I had to say as truth and nothing but the truth. My breath faltered when I dropped my papers when trying to stand them up on the podium, missing it by a good two inches.

I heard some giggles and chuckles in the audience as I dropped to my knees scrambling to pick them all up. The papers were so scattered and there were so many of them, there was no possible way for me to put them in the right order again. Without using him of course. So, I just gathered the papers in a pile and plopped them on the podium. I decided to speak the parts that I could remember from my speech.

"Hello," I stammered into the mic, my voice tripping on the words. "My name is James Bauer and I am-" I cut myself short when the mic decide it was exactly the perfect time to have feedback. I cringed and pulled myself away from the horrible device. I realized that I was on a schedule and only had 30 minutes to speak, so I started again.

"My name is James Bauer, and I am the world's smartest man."