Speaking of Which
After years, nay, decades of shit-the-bed terror of any situation where I had to stand up in front of two or more other people and speak, I finally joined Toastmasters. I’d been meaning to do it for years, but I’ve always ended up putting it off in favor of less uncomfortable activities - things like root canals, colonoscopy, tax return preparation.
Over the last year, however, I have been asked to speak at a client’s quarterly meetings and I surprised myself by actually doing ok and (gasp!) seeing how I might enjoy it. So, I decided to find a way to get comfortable and improve in a technical sense, and an opportunity arose when a guy at my Nautilus club mentioned he was starting up a Toastmasters group nearby.
Yesterday was the first meeting, and my task was to give a 3-minute “ice-breaker”, a little personal introduction. I arrived at the meeting room late, having had trouble finding it, and was encouraged to find that the only person I knew there was the guy from the gym. I had done enough of the “personal intro” stuff that I really didn’t have to script it very much. I dangled a hook at the beginning by saying that “one of my biggest thrills in college was playing for the Buckeyes in the 1971 Rose Bowl”, and leaving them to ponder how this 5′7″, 150-lb runt got anywhere near Woody’s bench. I set the hook at the end by saying that, “by the way, the position I played for OSU was ‘trumpet’ - I was in the marching band.” It got a good laugh, it was more than they expected, and now I figure I’ve got a little “mo” for the next time.
There was a distinct “12-step” atmosphere about the group, a little corny and imbued with false bravado. Everyone seemed to be there because they were confidence-crippled in some way as speakers. Each speechlet begins with the speaker addressing the moderator as “Mr. Toastmaster” - I kept wanting to visualize him with temperature controls - and each speech ends with hearty clapping. After a couple iterations, it really started to put my teeth on edge. And because we all suck, the session is like one hour of acceptance speeches at the Tourette’s Oscar awards. Newbies like me were paired with mentors, and we got evaluations at the end of the meeting.
My immediate flaw was fiddling aimlessly with my reading glasses as I spoke. I don’t wear corrective lenses, but over the last 5 years, 1.25x reading glasses have become a necessity - I simply can’t read something like an outline without them. On the other hand, I don’t visualize myself as a “glasses” person, and don’t care to wear my dime-store reading glasses in situations where people are forming their visual impressions of me. I also flat can’t see anything beyond 2 feet away when I’m wearing them, and I get into this ridiculous cycle of removing them and putting them back on. I don’t remember what I did with them during the speech. I don’t think I looked at my notes anyway, as I was fixated on just blurting my way through and fleeing the lectern. I guess I should look into buying some glasses that look natural on my face, and that perhaps have an inert clear upper area and a bifocal lower quadrant. I hate to put much money into them, because I lose the fuckers at an alarming rate.
The next speech is supposed to be 3 - 5 minutes, and the subject is supposed to be something we care enough about to project an animated image. I have to be careful to avoid stuff that will push me over the top and cause me to Dean it. I don’t know these people, and don’t want to be the subject of an amateur exorcism in case they’re a coven of fundamentalist gnomes. I’ll keep ya posted.
