Thomas Jefferson, On Being Afraid of Girls
In his youth, Jefferson didn’t lack for confidence except, it seems, when smitten by an attractive girl. One night at a dance, he worked up a bunch of things he could say to a girl named Rebecca who he was hoping to become acquainted with: “I was prepared to say a great deal: I had dressed up in my own mind such thoughts as occurred to me, in as moving language as I knew how, and expected to have performed in a tolerably creditable manner.” Let’s face it: if anyone could impress a girl with eloquence, it would have been Jefferson. But things didn’t go so well, and here’s how Jefferson described that in a letter he wrote the next day:
“But, good God! When I had an opportunity of venting them [the words he had prepared], a few broken sentences, uttered in great disorder, and interrupted with pauses of uncommon length, were the two visible signs of my strange confusion!”
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