Slap & Tickle

I signed up for a speech class at work and now I have to actually go. Why do I do these things? Why do I put myself through this crap?

It’s a class on “impromptu speaking,” which I suck at and desperately need to work on my skills. But, it’s for the very reason I suck at it that I don’t want to go there. I have to stand in front of small group and speak! Put me in front of 1000 people and I’m okay, but in front of a small group, I choke.

Now I have to go stand in front of a small group and practice speaking to them. I ditched the speech class yesterday because I had to prepare a 2-3 minute speech in advance. I could think of nothing of any substance to discuss. I’m shallow. I fully admit it. Dare I say, I embrace it. I couldn’t hold a significant thought with a bucket. And I’m supposed to stand in front of a group of intellectuals and talk about something?

Things got busy… (or did I make things get busy…) and I had to cancel. Awww. I was SO disappointed.

No such luck in creating a diversion today, so I’m off to class… I’ll write when I get back.

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Well, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. About a hair above painful root canal.

First thing our facilitator, Sharon asked was “Who was at the class yesterday?” I slunk down in my chair a bit (if you call being fully under the chair “a bit”). “For those that attended that class, this will be a piece of cake!” F’ing fantastic…

Because I had no coffee this morning and because of my desperately short attention span, I began to look around the room and realized two odd things. First, I was the only guy in the room. Great! Now everyone will know I’m gay. If I’m in a room with at least one other guy, then I’m okay, because then it’s a 50/50 thing. But the second I’m the only guy in the room, they all just know. It’s a fact. Unless it’s a dude that is just oozing testosterone, but I don’t ooze… or at least I try not to in public.

The second thing I noticed, and found far more menacing, was a video camera in the corner. Oh, Christ… they’re going to tape us! F’! F’! F’! I do weird things when I’m nervous, especially in a small group and I seriously thought I was going to distinguish myself in a way that would make me infamous throughout the entire company.

My stomach gurgled ever so loudly as to indicate that it was working on a long, loud and quite heinous fart. I groaned.

“Come on, Chris,” Sharon mused, “it’s not going to be that bad.”

She was in the middle of talking to us and I wasn’t paying a damn bit of attention. What if she gave us some key information? What if she told us something not to do? What if she explained ‘the rules?’

I realized that my panicking was not helping me listen and my chastising myself for drifting off only caused me to miss even more of what she was saying.

Thankfully, a woman arrived late and Sharon felt it necessary to recap.

We would pick from two boxes with topics. One was marked “Issues,” which had questions relating to political or social issues, the other was marked “fun.” Take a wild fricken guess which one I was going for?

We were to critique people on their performance, telling them what worked and didn’t. Thankfully, I was not first or last, I was right in the middle, where whatever embarrassments I might commit could be forgotten.

The first woman got up with a serious case of THO. My gosh, those high beams reminded me of the Fembots in Austin Powers. I think she spoke well, but I kept looking at those monsters—not that I’m into them (ewww), but how could I not notice?

The next few speakers were okay. Boy, we were a sad group. No one jumped up there and knocked us out.

Then it was MY turn…

I picked “What makes the best pet? Why?” I got up and told them my topic and went on about why dogs are the best pet—“they love you. Cats suck. Fish are dull. And birds? Whatever. But dogs, dogs are great.”

It wasn’t until after I sat down that I began to really come up with some fun ideas for my speech. Ideas like: How many cats have saved someone’s life? Have you ever heard of seeing-eye fish? Name an animal movie hero other than a dog? (Note: “The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh” was not about animals and stunk on ice.) You can’t name other hero animals in movies. There are no hero cats (I’m sure one could come up with a poor argument for “The Aristocats” or even “Gay Purr-ee,” but those are animated and I’m talking Lassie and Rin-Tin-Tin.

Oh, it could have been brilliant, but as it stood, it wasn’t horrible. And then came Jennifer.

Jennifer works in “relations” so she already had a jump on us. She also was cute and had a hot-muscled bod. Her topic was on how to relieve stress and she jumped right into exercise and the whole Zen bull that comes from it. I began to hate her more and more as I realized that her talk was everything it was supposed to be: quick, to the point, funny, brilliant, well spoken… oh, it was f’ing dagger into my heart. Whatever success my speech might have been was quickly forgotten.

Once the torture was over, we passed out what we wrote about each other—entering into a whole new realm of torture. One person wrote my conclusion sucked. Someone else loved it. Some felt I had good physical presence; other’s felt I was awkward. Half liked my use of my hands; one wrote I should only use it when making a specific point. In other words, these idiots didn’t have a clue and were messing with my mojo.

We went through the process again, this time, without critiquing. We had to say what we were going to work on and then do another topic. Interestingly enough, what everyone stated they were going to correct was the one thing they didn’t. It was ridiculous. I began to feel more at home with this band of merry fools.

My topic was “Which do you like better, Chess or Checkers? Why?” That was easy: “Checkers. I can’t play chess. I’ve had friends explain it to me again and again and I still haven’t a clue. Frankly, I don’t care. It just doesn’t do anything for me. Besides, checkers is fun, while chess is thoughtful. Thoughtful is another word for dull. We give the Checkmate to Checkers! King me!”

Thankfully, we finished early. Sharon asked us if anyone wanted to go again and three fools said yes. I said only if I could redo my first one… (ha ha—what a card).

As each person got up there, filled with their new confidence and determined to correct past mistakes, they all crashed and burned. Sharon looked at me and said, “want another go?” I politely smiled and declined. It’s like those idiots that didn’t get a perfect SAT score, so they go back and re-take it only to get a lower score.

All in all, I learned I’m an okay speaker, but would prefer to forget this morning and this experience. Of course, the last thing we had to do before we could escape Sharon’s clutches was sign up for a time to review the tape of our session, so we can relive the f’ing magic one more time…