I Was Born To Do This. Maybe.

Despite all my big talkin', I am deathly afraid of standing up and giving a speech in front of people. Especially people I don't know. Double especially in front of people that are considerably better at public speaking than me--you know, people who are part of a public speaking club.

However, it had to be done, and so I jumped in to do it last night, giving my first speech at Toastmasters.

Let me remind you that I did not necessarily sign up because of an intense desire to speak in front of large crowds of people. I signed up as an activity to do with my dad as an adult. But I do still need to go through the motions of actually participating in the activity.

I've spent the first part of this week trying to put together a 4-6 minute speech about myself that I thought others would want to hear. The biggest obstacle being that I'm really not that interesting of a person. I stay at home and my activities don't range much in variety. No one wants a 4-6 minute speech on the amount of time I spend on the computer a day or how much laundry seems to accumulate over the course of the week.

While I do have outside interests, like running and my bowling league, it's hard to stretch those into a speech because of my mediocre ability. Who wants to hear about the 11 minute miles I ran last weekend or the 115 score I got in bowling?

So, the first challenge was writing a speech that would be entertaining and not sleep-inducing. Within minutes, I had the best opening line that I've ever produced:

"On May 1, 19__, I made my grand entrance into this world, aided--I'm sure--by a gentle push from my brother, with whom I'd been sharing tight living quarters with for the previous nine months."

Gorgeous, isn't it?

I went on to describe how big we were--8 lbs 4 oz and 8 lbs 11 oz respecitively--and then I talked about where my name came from.

Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee.

Kidding.

I'm actually named after the nurse that delivered me and Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court.

I described two past accomplishments I'm most proud of; running a marathon and getting my bachelor's degree. I know, surprised, right?

After briefly touching on my day-t0-day life, I talked a little about what I wanted to do in the future.

I sat down, relieved, but nervous as well. I couldn't remember if I pronounced my words correctly or if my sentences even made sense. I could hardly recall what I had said. The only thought that was running through my head was that this was EXHILARATING. I had so much fun and it was light years different from speaking in church. Probably because in church, 95% of the audience knows more than I do.

The evaluator of my speech stood up and gave a raving review. I was genuinely impressed by what she had to say. Apparently, my voice--quavering as it was to my ears--was clear and my speech was wonderful.

Of course it was. There was no doubt, right?

The Grammarian--the guy that counts my ahs and ums (4 to be exact)--made note of two sentences from my speech. He likes to point out sentences that use great words and structure; "a love of numbers does not neccessarily a mathematician make" and "my plans were thwarted--as even the best laid plans can be--when I fell in love".

I know. I'm surprised they came out of my head too.

Every week, the other members of the club pick the best speech of the night. You guessed it. I won on my first speech. Of course, Wade thinks that they let all the new people win on their first speech so that they'll keep coming back. That may be true, but I still won, and I'll be coming back.

And not only did I win the best speech for the night, I also won best Table Topics--the speech that is given off the cuff--for the night as well. Take that.

I wasn't entirely at ease up there, but I think I'm getting the hang of this. And I'm having a blast. That's all that counts, right?