I Made the Woman Bleed
by Anonymous

For years I told no one about this. And while the statute of limitations has expired, I’ll never be proud of it. The day it happened was the single worst of my career and I was truly ashamed of what I had done. For the sake of a cheap laugh, I made a woman bleed.

It was a stunt I’d done 100 times before without incident other than the surprise and laughter that it always brought. During an audience participation segment, I would throw a yellow paper tablet down on the floor. Or if I held it right so all the papers fly, there is a loud fluttering sound effect to go with the show. Sometimes I had held the cardboard backing in my hand and slapped the papers across the arm of some man sitting on an aisle seat (big surprise, audible noise, much laughter from the audience and no harm done). Occasionally, I had thrown the tablet down the center aisle so it whizzed past the audience at head/shoulder level. No one slept during my show.

Then I was at a national convention. Mercifully, the breakout room was small (fire marshal posted the room at no more than 75 people, but I had 110 counting those sitting on the floor, standing on the sides, in the back and crowded in the doorway. I got to the moment in the presentation when I was to throw the tablet down the center aisle, but this one time it left my hand full speed then immediately switched into slow motion as it spun low, pages flying, straight down the aisle, then lifted, banked to the right like a breaking baseball over home plate. I had thrown a "ball" (low and outside)… which then "struck" a woman seated in the back of the room. In fourteen years of professional speaking, I have never felt worse in a professional setting. My mother would have boxed my ears and swatted me all the way to the woodshed.

The woman who "caught" my pitch was a sweet looking woman, early 60’s, gray hair and grandmotherly. She was dressed up and attending the convention looking for fun, camaraderie, inspiration and new ideas. The last thing she had come for was a bloody nose. Her eyes never left the tablet and she never thought to duck. And until the last nanosecond, it wasn’t even heading for her. Besides, a motivational speaker wouldn’t risk decking a grandmother…would he?

Apparently, I would. And she watched as the tablet made a sudden right turn, lifted to hit her with the hard edge square between the eyes. Fortunately, she was wearing glasses which saved her eyes. Unfortunately, the force from the tablet pushed the nose pads into the bridge of her nose and punctured her skin.

Head wounds bleed more than others, and this was a very small puncture wound that squirted a very light, fine stream of dark red blood — so light that in the shock of the moment she wasn’t even aware of it. But I could see a very small, high pressure stream of blood squirting up in an arch from the bridge of her nose, outward about 20 inches and down toward the floor. As she turned her head left and right, she was like a miniature lawn sprinkler.

"Be careful, you are bleeding!"

"I am? Where?" Then she turned her head left and right looking around, bleeding lightly and unconsciously on the people on both sides of her.

What could I do? Any lawyer would have told me not to admit responsibility. But I have great faith in the power of a sincere apology. So I apologized, and apologized. Then I apologized some more. At the end of the program, there was no way I could do any product sales (a big deal since I was there for travel expenses only, no speaking fee, so the only money I would make at the convention was in product sales). It would have been so completely inappropriate for me to capitalize in light of her misfortune. So instead of pitching my products, I just walked over and gave them all to her.

Back home in California the next day, I wired her a floral arrangement and wrote her a letter of apology (there: if any lawyers got involved, they had it all in writing with my signature). I never heard from her, but neither did she sue me.

The Lessons:Never make your audience bleed. I still do the routine, still throw the yellow tablet. But in the 10 years since the incident, I have never, ever thrown it in the direction of an audience. I throw it left, throw it right and heave it behind me. No people or animals are hurt during this production.

I have also learned that you never know who is in the room. Six or seven months ago, when I thought all the eye witnesses were dead and buried, I was chatting with a small circle of audience members before my keynote when one of them asked me, "Did you ever hear back from that lady you hit with the tablet?" The others in our circle jerked their heads back and forth from me to him and back to me again as if he had asked me if I was still on parole.

"The lady?" I asked, innocently.

"In Washington DC. The one you hit with the tablet. Did you ever hear back from her?"

"Oh,…you were there? No, I never did. I guess that all the apologies, the free books and tapes, the flowers I sent and the letter I wrote did the trick. But I have never felt worse as a speaker."

"What did you do?" someone asked.

"Oh, it’s a long story. But if I start to throw a yellow tablet in here today…duck."