Terrifying. The very idea of standing in front of the class for five minutes by myself made my eight-year-old heart hammer so hard I could feel it in my ears. I could hardly sleep. I remember the first time I got up in front of my classmates to deliver my first speech (topic: catching mackerel on a fishing boat during a camping trip to P.E.I.), I must have torpedoed my way through it so fast that the teacher politely asked me to give it all over again, slower this time. I took a deep breath, which must be a natural instinct, and the second time actually went better. In fact, toward the end I was starting to enjoy myself. The kids were even laughing at the funny bits.
The next year I thought I’d conquer my nervousness by practicing my speech (topic: the imaginary friend I’d had when I was little) so many times that I knew it in my sleep. The obsessive practicing somehow worked and I won for my class. I won again the next year when my topic was the dysfunctional gymnastics camp I’d gone to. At the finals, a girl my age also gave a speech on her camp. One of her lines was, “My camp was very beneficial.” At the question period, a judge asked her, “Can you please tell us what beneficial means?” The girl stammered in panic, trying desperately to read the lips of her mother, who was sitting in the front row, mouthing, “HELPFUL” over and over. It was obvious to the rest of us up on stage what the mother was mouthing, but for some reason, not the to the girl. “Um,” said the girl, “it means…ready?”
The girl won anyway. I remember my mother saying something about how that wasn’t setting a good example, rewarding cheating.
Now, my son is in Grade 4 and has just gone through the agony of speeches himself. Topic: unicycling, his choice. But when it came time to write it, he didn’t seem to have a clue what to do or where to begin. I told him one good way to start might be right in the middle of the action, when he first learned to ride the unicycle, how exhilarating that felt, something like... “There I was flying down the driveway, not falling off after three seconds like I’d been doing all summer…” I got so carried away I started researching everything ever written about unicycles, then actually started writing the speech itself.
Meanwhile, Quinn was playing with Lego.
Good god. I’d become that mother, the one who’d stuck ‘beneficial’ into her kid’s speech. Now I understood her.
Right away I deleted what I’d written and told Quinn it was his speech and he had to write it. But I did suggest he keep my attention-grabbing opening.
Being a writer, I just couldn’t help myself.