It is good to know that love is not the only thing that can turn me into a gibbering idiot. Although I did not actually gibber during my first ever screen test today, my performance did border on the idiotic. I have a faint hope that this is a feeling similar to hating every first draft I’ve ever written, but I’m afraid that of the twenty aspiring actors, I’ll be the first to be unselected.

An old university classmate works for a casting agency and is determined to land me a part someday – so she’s been slipping auditioning opportunities to me for years. So far, I’ve always had to decline, but when she called me last weekend, I felt it was time to just go ahead and take the afternoon off for the screen test. It’s a part in a 20-second commercial for lottery tickets, but hey, you have to start somewhere, right?

So I studied my lines (a whopping twelve words), let myself get coached on presentation and appearance, and reported for my screen test at 12:45pm today. And even though there’s nothing riding on this role – I have a day job as well as a budding writing career – I was as nervous as a kid on a first date. So of course I forgot to say my second line on the first take, stuttered, forgot to pay attention to what my hands were doing, neglected to look down when I was supposed to, and generally made every conceivable beginner’s error.

The only thing that might save me is that the part is actually that of a mortified young man.