Final Exam

Public Speaking is quite natural to me. I’m not a braggart I just don’t fear being in front of a crowd. I have done many speeches in front of crowds and each time it becomes a little more boring. I am often disgusted and at times amused by the corniness that comes out of in front of people but people like corn. It’s easily digestible and culturally hypo-allergenic. The process of becoming a public speaker of note began for me with an inauspicious and well-received speech for Mr. Tralka’s seventh grade English class. It really marked a turning point for me in terms of my own confidence. In my freshman year of high school I suffered a speech flop that is the stuff of most shy people’s night mares. Instead of creating a phobia for me though it did the opposite and steeled my confidence. They say that after you drop a brick on your toe you’ll never again fear a feather. After that kind of flop, it was all feathers.

Mr. Tralka was very tall and looked suspiciously like Alan Alda. He had a big white mustache and I truly believe that he hated me. Much of his time in class was spent stretched out behind his desk with his gangly limbs extended far too long for his clothes, a scarecrow regaling us with tales of past business glory and completely neglecting the lesson on subject/predicate. No wonder we failed the tests. Whenever he would assign us writing, like a one act play or short story, I would do my best to annoy him with absurd, almost surreal pieces of absolute nonsense. I remember the one play entitled “SHOT the GOLDFISH again!?!?!” Where I oh so endearingly entreated my friend not waste his ammunition on his little swimmy pets and to save it for important things like Mimes and the Neighbors kids. Had I published such a piece of nonsense today homeland security would be called in. He gave me a speech to write on any topic I wanted, though, and I did it on one of my favorite topics. I spent two weeks constructing a well-thought out and well-worded speech that I practiced literally dozens of times. As you might suspect it went off without a hitch and Tralka begrudgingly had to give me an “A.”

One hard puberty later I was in high school and cocky, foolish, and arrogant. Back then I had a penchant for banging my head into a wall for no good reason. I suppose many young people have these self-consuming over estimations of their own abilities but I was a unique flake. Theater and debate were two interests of mine but they were at the same time after school so I had to choose one. I signed up for theater and for debate thinking like a sitcom writer, I suppose, that I could just run from one to the other and no one would be the wiser. I cockily missed cues in the play, I just stopped showing up. I was unhappy that in my first year doing the play I had only secured a minor part. I was, in my own mind, far more talented than any of the other hacks who had paid dues for three years prior. So I focused on debate. I spent a lot of time telling the coach I was her Golden Calf. I made up all kinds of experience that I didn’t have and then the day of the first debate came. I had no strategy, no prepared remarks, and was in all ways completely unprepared. I knew I could handle it though. I stood at the podium to answer to the opening remarks of my opponent. I cleared my throat, took a breath, smiled irreverently and said… Nothing. For it was at that moment, as the fugue began to play across my face, I realized that I had no idea what I was going to say. I turned crimson and stumbled through a horrific mish mosh of unconnected syllables, all the while the moderator regarded with a mix of pity and disgust.

My next public speaking class was with Mr. Duffin, one of the great ones. This man was such a natural born teacher that I’m sure he shared his mother’s womb with a compass. In his public speaking class we did many exercises that made me love being in front of people. I got to act out a scene from Cyrano, it was the opening scene, where Cyrano creates twenty clever insults to chastise a noble for simply stating that ‘His nose is rather large.’ I read the Raven, I enjoyed the freedom to make speeches up on the spot since he never asked for a paper copy. I must admit that the freedom to stand in front of an audience became quite a rush. I learned that with the right words and the right body language they would actually listen to what you had to say. In five minutes you could convince as many people as would listen of something, anything… you could affect them emotionally, happiness, sadness, joy, nostalgia. You have an ultimate responsibility to make the infinitely valuable time that they lend you worthy of having been wasted watching you.

So I was sipping sullenly on a Nestle Quick Chocolate Milk and walking from Psych class to Algebra. In the previous class one of the students had been allowed to teach. I believe that he was going to start student teaching soon and the instructor graciously shared the spotlight to give the new teacher a moment’s practice. He shook so badly that the lines on the board were squiggles and he would stand in front of you awkwardly, searching for his next point even though it was obvious that he was well versed with the material and had much to teach. I approached him after class and offered him some free advice. To his credit he didn’t scoff at me, he acted like a true academic and said, “Sure, what can you teach me?” I spent almost a half an hour telling showing him how various postures and non-verbal communications can get your audiences attention. I told him about different tactics for movement and many other urbane topics that he patiently and intently listened to. He even took some notes, which I found very gratifying. It was all horse flop compared to the last two sentences I said, “The secret to confidence in front of an audience is to practice the material until you can’t get it wrong. Once your past trying to remember all the crap you have to say to the people in front of you, you can focus on speaking to your audience.”