Fredericton — Blaine Higgs, premier of New Brunswick, had his whole afternoon ruined minutes ago when he suddenly remembered a really awkward thing he did during his time in high school.
Higgs, who attended Canterbury High School, was in the middle of a Manatee interview in his office, speaking about his fiscal plans for the Picture Province, when he paused, stumbling through a sentence.
“And I firmly believe that, uh, the only solution…is to, um…” said Higgs, trailing off and looking uncomfortable.
“What’s wrong, Mr. Premier?” asked our empathetic Manatee reporter.
“It’s nothing. It’s stupid. I don’t want to talk about it,” muttered Higgs, before delving right into it.
“Ugh, fine. So there was this time in Grade 11 when my English class had a substitute teacher filling in. It was this nerdy-looking guy straight out of university. I really wanted everyone to think of me as the class clown, so I thought I would do something really ‘random’ to make them all laugh,” explained Higgs.
“For some reason I thought it would be hilarious if I proposed to the substitute teacher. So the sub was calling attendance, and when he got to my name, instead of saying ‘present,’ I got down on one knee and said ‘Mr. McKenna, will you make me the happiest Grade 11 student in the world?'”
Higgs revealed that nobody laughed, and most of the class just looked really uncomfortable. But rather than bow out with a little bit of dignity, Higgs decided to double-down.
“The sub was just staring at me and frowning, so I said ‘Fine, be that way!’ Then I kicked over my chair and said ‘You never cared about me, did you? This was our one chance at happiness and you blew it!’ But still nobody laughed. So I picked up my chair and quietly sat down. Mr. McKenna just continued with role call and ignored me. I was mortified.”
Higgs explained that after class, his classmates ran into the halls to tell the rest of the school just how embarrassing his performance was. He was teased for years and eventually moved on to bigger and better things, but the memory of that day still comes up every few weeks.
“It’s things like that that you never forget. Sometimes I can’t sleep at night because I’m cringing so much at my own awkward memory. But all you can ever really do is live with it and hope no one else ever hears about it or brings it up again.”