Twenty-Nine
It would be no exaggeration to say that Ruthie had never been so nervous in her life. Her shyness had many manifestations, but fear of public speaking might be the worst. She’d had countless nightmares about it, including the recurring dream in which everyone howled with laughter because she was wearing a majorette’s outfit and trying to twirl a baton during her thesis presentation. She kept bonking her head with the baton.
Before her actual thesis presentation, she’d thrown up so many times that she actually lost a few pounds. Light-headed and almost delusional, the only way she’d gotten through the event was to imagine her professors’ heads as various cabbages. Purple cabbage, curly Napa cabbage, pointy-shaped cabbage. To this day, she giggled whenever she saw cabbage in th
