Shame, Shame, Shame!

The lost Lenore continues her search for childhood failure stories, as well as moments of prepubescent humiliation, so naturally I'm happy to chime in...
"When I was a wee lad, since I had very low self-esteem and was afraid of everything, the result of both nature and nurture, I rarely would speak for myself. My poor social skills were noted on my kindergarten report card as I had this habit of speaking through my friend, Markie. Now Markie wasn't an imaginary friend, he was flesh and blood, but if I had to give an opinion, it was usually prefaced by "Markie says," a defense mechanism to turn attention from myself and on to another target, i.e. Markie. To give you a sense of my inner fragility, when asked as part of some class exercise to "be a tree," I refused, as I was terrified that, should I surrender myself to the concept of becoming an oak, I might never be "Dan" again. Speaking through or "behind" others became a habit, but the tide may have turned one day in grade school during a "Parents Day" event when I was asked a solution to some odd numbers problem. Afraid to give the wrong answer, I said, "I agree with (insert name of kid who had been asked previously and didn't have the right answer either)," which struck the parents in the room as being incredibly funny. Nothing like being laughed at by adults in front of your peers and your own parents to make you feel so small you wouldn't be picked up by an electron microscope. As I recall, my father took some action at this point and got me focused on my arithmetic, but the real result I think was my realization that this strategy of hiding behind others was doomed to failure, particularly if you choose people who are bad at math. Today, I am a self-actualized, confident, bon vivant and writer who never met a camera he didn't like, so yes, one can face shame and humiliation as a youngster and yet still rise to celebrity heights...at least in his own mind!"