It was only a few months ago that I had a presentation with only a handful of people in attendance. Not a  problem as I stopped worrying about the numbers attending many years ago. However, nothing feels better than having a standing room only full of men and some women waiting to hear one of my presentations. The last presentation I had two weeks ago was one of those. The chairs soon ran out and there were nearly as many men standing as sitting.

This talk was going to be different however as my eldest daughter was going to be in the audience. She had wanted to come to one of my talks and this surgery was just around the corner from her. Now, this was my second visit to this surgery. I had come at the arranged date and time just before Christmas last year and due to a miscommunication, their end, they thought that the presentation had been cancelled. With perfuse apologies I was sent packing with the bribe of a tin of Quality Street.

I bumped into my daughter as we were both making our way to the surgery and we entered together. There were just a handful of men waiting when I first got there. The staff said that the TV in the foyer was not working properly so we had to use the room upstairs. I got set up in there, practically drooling over the large screen TV I was about to use. There not enough chairs, so I went back downstairs to get some more and the number of men waiting had doubled.  I went upstairs again and came back downstairs 5 minutes later. The number of men had doubled again. The upstairs room was no longer an option. Not a problem I thought, I would just have to get the monitor to work. It took about 10 minutes to get it working and we were good to go. The numbers had swelled to about 50 with men standing all around the edges.

I started my talk with a proud daughter looking on and an equally proud dad happy to have her there. Early in my presentation I have a slide for audience participation. I ask the audience to put a few countries in order of prostate cancer rates from highest to lowest. Once, I had given them the answer a voice from the middle of the seated group calls out,

“What about Peru?” He shouted.

Peter to self: What the heck, are you Paddington Bear?

“What about it?” I relied

“What are the rates for Peru?”

“I have no idea”

“Why don’t you know?” He responded.

“I don’t have the rates for the world in my back pocket. I’m sure if you go online you can find them.”

“So, it’s just European countries you talk about then?”

“Well, if you look at this list there are only two countries in Europe”

I left him mumbling to the woman sitting next to him while licking honey off his paw.

I continued my talk and got into my happy stride. The woman next to Paddington was now talking so loudly we were competing.

“I’m sorry do you have a question” I asked her sweetly.

“No, no I’m just talking”

“Well, I am not going to compete with you”

 That silenced her and not another peep for the night. I continued.

Five minutes later.

BANG!

CRASH!

I had turned slightly to talk about a slide, so I didn’t see the actual event. A guy that was standing up on the wall had crashed face first into the nibbles and drinks table. None of this TV programme slide slowly down the wall type of collapse. My guy took the very noisy atomic option.

Before I could say a thing, my daughter had rushed over to him and was cradling his head, while talking gently to him. She told him to sit still and when he insisted on getting up, she took his arm and slowly helped him up, while telling him to take his time. Once he was seated, she was kneeling before him and completely took over.

“What’s your name?”

“Do you want an ambulance?”

“Do you know where you are?”

“Do you have someone at home to stay with you?”

 She even offered to walk him home.

My superhero.

Now I have seen enough boxing matches to know that the lights were on in this guy’s head, but he clearly was not in. He could had gone food shopping with honey on the shopping list. The food in the room was scattered all over the floor and the room lights were still down. The staff behind the reception counter were nowhere to be seen.

“Is there a doctor in the house?” I shouted with urgency and heavy sarcasm.

Now from the guy’s atomic fall to my daughter helping him to a seat was probably 3 minutes and eventually the staff turned up. They stayed at the back and one had a cup of water in her hand. Quite handy if the guy’s toupee happened to be on fire but not much else.

This was the chocolate staff in a sauna moment.

The guy eventually returned home from his shopping trip and seemed OK. I continued my presentation but shortened it by leaving out my story.

This was another dubious first in my eight years of presentations.

I wondered what could have happened if my daughter wasn’t there. On the way out we discussed our shock and amazement at the night’s events. I thought she was a trained first aider but amazingly she wasn’t.

Most importantly, I discovered that Superhero’s do also wear pink lipstick.