I have a few fears on this Earth, but none are quite as bad as my fear of public speaking. I'm fine in a small group, even with people I don't know that well, but make me stand in front of people and the problems start. I shake, turn red, and suddenly can't form a cohesive sentence (I am taking a class for it over the summer though, so I should get a little better). Anyway, I won my grade's spelling bee in 8th grade purely because I got easy words and nobody watched except for the judges. When I went before the whole school to compete, the whole student body was there. My first word was "prairie," which isn't a tough word to spell, outside of the "ai" part. But, being in front of everyone, I had my involuntary speaking reaction, and spelled prairie... P A R T Y. How embarrassing. Luckily I moved before entering high school (not because of this incident).
Something to remember though, only you remember your own embarrassing moments forever, no one else does. If you fart in class, its forgotten within a week. So its usually not that big of a deal if you embarrass yourself.