Panic

It's amazing how many flashbacks to my childhood I have been getting since moving to Cairo. Today in Arabic class the teacher was going round the room asking us to read aloud a story in Arabic (transliteration- not quite up to the Arabic script just yet!!!) and I felt the panic rise in my chest and sure enough I managed to get about a quarter of the way through before the tears formed and I had to excuse myself from the room.
It was as though I was back at school as a young child having to read aloud to the whole class, petrified and totally self-conscious. It's amazing because I can get up on stage and dance in front of literally thousands of people, and although I sometimes get anxious about it (stage fright is a good thing anyway, in moderation) it never freaks me out the way reading aloud does. Why?