Have you ever had one of those dreams where you're up in front of the class giving a presentation that counts for roughly a third of your grade, where the use of Power Point is mandatory, and you look down and realize you're giving the whole thing in your underwear?

Freak. My nightmares all involve zombies and babies the size of walnuts. *shudder*

So now let me present a list of things that went wrong during my presentation today, which counted for roughly a third of my grade, and where the use of Power Point was mandatory:

• As class started, I leafed through my handouts. I hadn't done that earlier. Right away, I noticed two things. One, that I'd failed to remove a note to myself from one of the slides. To wit, where I'd meant to include a reference to a USA Today article on the growth of the senior population in Vermont, I'd accidentally left in: "Where is that USA Today article? GAH!" Fabulous, but nothing compared to:


• the fact that the handouts featured not 31 meticulously fact-heavy and organized slides, but 9 slides, repeated three times, plus the end 2. I don't know! I still don't know! It all went horribly wrong somewhere! But I came up with a plan, and consoled myself that


• even though the handouts had printed wrong, I could depend on the Power Point presentation to get me through. I'd just teach the presentation. Wrong! Wrong wrong wrong! 5 minutes in, I realized the handout was right, having been printed from a presentation possessed. 9 slides, repeated 3 times. I think you have 2 options in this situation: apologize and whimper, or balls it out based on how well you know the presentation material--be loud, gestural and funny enough that no one can take their eyes off you, thus forgetting the fucked up handouts and PP. Guess which one I did?

  (No, it was the latter. I used to be terrified of presentations, and then I gave one at an academic conference that went even worse than this and I didn't die. Also: worked too hard this semester for that grade. Damn you, Power Point!)

• Did I mention I'd dropped cottage cheese down my nice black shirt? No? I figured this out 10 minutes before class started, so I had time to freak out, discover that cottage cheese does not wash out of rayon with water and industrial grade bathroom soap and come up with plan B. Plan B? Casually unbutton said shirt to expose tank top underneath. Hope that if people get bored while I'm talking, they can just be content staring at my tits. Hey, it doesn't happen often, they may enjoy the novelty enough that they start doing tricks. You never know.

El Yo and I later determined that the PP collapse had to have happened some time in the last two days during one of the laptop's many, many (MANY) crashes. Either way, by Friday it's all over but the screaming. And personally, I'll take the Demon Power Point over the crazy walnut babies anyday.