Doublecrossed

When I think of embarrassing moments in life, I think of an incident that took place on a live stage.

Rewind to a time when I was travelling and performing as a musician. I played trumpet and travelled with 3, sometimes 4, other guys. For the most part, the other guys were pretty straight-laced and although they each had a good sense of humour, they were generally serious.

That of course was the recipe for John, the one other group member and me to regularly have fun at their expense.

Our usual routine was to go on stage, play a song or two, and then introduce ourselves, starting with Dan, the group leader on the left, then me, then John.

On this particular occasion, we were playing a sacred concert staged in a church – fairly serious crowd. John thought it would be fun to liven things up a little during the introductions. So he said to me just before we went on, “When we introduce ourselves let’s all say we are Dan!” I thought that would be really funny and help to be a great icebreaker.

We played a couple of songs and then it was time for introductions. Dan started first…

“Hi my name is Dan so and so and I am from such and such a town.”

Then, playing along with the joke I said, “Hi, my name is Dan so and so and I am from such and such a town.”

Then John said, “Hi, my name is John and I am from such and such a town and turning to me he said, “Steve, what are you doing? You’re name isn’t Dan!”

Needless to say, red-faced, I had to backtrack in front of the audience and try to recover some semblance of my dignity.