I Almost Died Today.

And now I know what it's like to see your entire life flash before your eyes.

And when you get through reading this, you're going to hate me for scaring you into thinking I almost died when in fact I was nowhere near death. But I wanted to die.

Here's how it went down:

I am taking a music class this semester called History of Jazz. Today we were scheduled to have a guest speaker who's a famous jazz drummer from New Orleans, named Adonis Rose (he toured with Harry Connick, Jr.!). It is also important to note that I almost skipped this class today, because of something going on in another class that overlapped with Jazz. However, when I heard we were having a guest speaker I was intrigued, and decided to work around the other thing.

Normally when people hear a guest speaker is coming to class they think they're going to like, come to class and talk and stuff, right? I thought he was going to speak about being in a jazz band and his background, and maybe play some drums for us.

Instead, he came into class, introduced himself and gave us a little bit of his background, and then he quizzed us.

Meaning, he picked on random people in the class to answer questions about jazz history. He called on me once. I didn't know the answer, but it wasn't a big deal. Most people didn't know the answers.

He then wanted to know who in the room were musicians by show of hands. So we raised our hands and then he asked specifically for singers, of which I am. So I kind of shyly raised my hand, but he was all like "Raise 'em real high!" so I raised my hand higher along with a couple other people in the class.

And then he was like, "Great, we'll have to get y'all up here to sing for us," and went on to ask if there were any rappers. We all chuckled when he said that because it was a funny joke.

It wasn't a joke.

And this is where my life starts flashing before my eyes.

After finding out if there were any rappers or poets in the room, he called on one of the singers to come up and sing a song. Per a fellow classmate's request, he sang You Are My Sunshine.

After that, he called on the only poor guy in the room who said he was a poet and made him recite a poem. I felt bad for the poor chum who recited this sappy love poem to the entire class. I'm sure it wasn't written for public recitation.

Then he goes back to the singers and I'm sitting in my chair shaking panicking convulsing and he calls on a girl in the front row. She sang At Last by Etta James, which is very appropriate for a jazz class. She sounded really good, but she hit a few bad notes, probably because nerves and big songs don't go well together.

Then he couldn't remember who else was a singer and I'm all like yes I'm off the hook! Praise God. and then he looks at me and points and says "You in the striped shirt" (and I regretted immediately wearing a striped shirt, though I'm not sure that made much of a difference).

And then I died.

But my vocal chords were still very much alive, which meant I had to get up and do this thing. He asked me what my name was and I squeaked out "Kayla". I could almost hear the Death March as I walked to the front of the class, which so conveniently has a stage.

I avoided all eye contact with the audience until I started singing. Adonis asked me what I was going to sing, and I tried to make a joke because I use humor as a defense mechanism. I said, "I'm going to sing a country song. I would do jazz but I don't know many of those."

I know what you're thinking...that's not funny. That's a perfectly normal statement to make...yeah. I know. It sounded funnier in my head.

So then I sang my song. The Night Before (Life Goes On) by Carrie Underwood. I sound good on that song and it was the first one I thought of so I went for it. And I sang through the first verse and chorus of that song, and I walked back to my seat to a reprise of the Death March, and then I died again.

And then another girl came up and just showed up all of us with her stupid confidence. She sounded like Norah Jones and she sang a song she wrote all by herself because apparently she's a budding singer/songwriter.

And now it's been about an hour since this horrific experience and I'm sitting in the cafe, still recovering. Still shaking a bit.

But on the bright side, my Facebook status about this experience has 15 likes and counting.