AND OUR NEXT SPEAKER IS...

Eileen Cichello

A friend of mine says, "I hate doing it but if I have to, two stiff manhattans beforehand really help."

Another friend offered this advice: "No sweat. Someone told me ‘Just imagine everyone sitting out there in their underwear.’ I did that and I was fine."

Sure. If I could picture them sitting there in their underwear, they could be doing the same thing to me!

We’re talking about public speaking here---getting up in front of a roomful of people and trying to present a convincing case.

I’ve decided the world is divided into seven groups of speakers."

Group 1--- dynamic...gets up there, entertains and controls the audience, loving every minute of it.

Group 2--- relaxed: hands in pockets, strolls around, armed with information, interacts with crowd.

Group 3--- dull: drones on and on and on and on.

Group 4--- axe grinders: one issue, usually against whatever is happening and willing to talk ad infinitum.

Group 5---flaky: off the wall. You wonder if you’re inhabiting the same planet when they open their mouth.

Group 6---grit-teeth-and-do-it: with varying degrees of success.

Group 7---Never-under-any-circumstances-put-themselves-in-situation-where-they’d-have-to-speak: would consider suicide first.

I belong in Group 7 and occasionally move up to Group 6.

My first experience in this painful arena was my high school graduation. I ranked third in my class and the top three students got to make a speech at graduation. If I’d known this far enough ahead, I’d have definitely arranged to come in fourth or fifth. Better safe than sorry!

However, I didn’t know, this being the first graduation I’d ever attended. In those good old days, you wrote your speech a month before graduation, then practiced it repeatedly with the English teacher. That was Miss Becker, of the spare the rod and spoil the child school. I’ve forgotten the speech now except for the last line. I could have recited the whole thing verbatim for at least five years after graduation. Terror had embedded it on my brain cells. The gist of the speech was to promote the building of a community hospital in our town. I’d selected that topic because my Dad was involved in the effort to build a hospital and I couldn’t think of anything else to talk about.

That infamous last sentence was as follows; "If they can do it, why can’t we?" Supposed to really knock their socks off and convince them of the rightness of this action. The only problem with it was that in my state of terror, "we" always came out being a shrill squeak. Miss Becker worked valiantly on that squeak but it remained firmly in place.

The moral of the story: Never end a speech with a question, unless you’re in Group 1 or Group 2.

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