The trouble with speaking engagements is they are alway so far off when you make the mistake of agreeing to them. In fact, that is usually why you agree to them at all is because they’re always so far off. Speakers are usually booked a week or two beyond the normal human being’s range of time comprehension and so really, it’s like agreeing to nothing at all.
In September, you are asked to speak in November. “November, November,” you say. “Yeah, I think I’m free in November. I’d be glad to speak.” And the world might be a big charred cinder by then too. Who knows?
But November has a way of getting here, time comprehension or not, and finally the date begins to loom in your daily consciousness. Like a guilty conscience, it won’t go away until the deed is done.
This is how I recently found myself in the circumstance of worrying daily about a speech several weeks down the road. Not a natural speaker with the spellbinding style of a John Kennedy or a Martin Luther King, I forgo the pleasure when I can. That is, of course, unless I’m asked far enough in advance.
As well, it helps if the engagement is a one-hour drive away from home, as this one was. Nobody you know will be there to verify or deny the truth of your statements. You can create an image of yourself, your career and your life, free from contradiction and the restrictions of reality.
And so I rehearsed, with a frequency and intensity which increased as the weeks flew by and the big day came near. Daydreaming in my car, I introduced myself to the audience, trying different openers as I drove – some dramatic, some humourous, some emotional, some direct.
In the bathtub, I spoke to the towel rack, spinning tales about a youth that just didn’t seem as exciting in the telling as the living. Maybe I’d have to skip the youth part. Go straight to the part where I start grinding out a living.
Falling asleep at night, I searched my memory for that joke or two that would have them rolling in the aisles. But all the jokes I thought of suffered because they were plain rude, politically incorrect, unsuitable for the occasion or had endings which had gotten lost in the mists of time.
By Saturday night, with the big moment now a mere half-day away, the pressure was getting to me. So badly, in fact, that I tossed and turned and got little sleep. By Sunday morning, I felt like a Titanic survivor who’d just been pulled from the ocean after a night of fighting off sharks. I shaved, showered, climbed in the car and pointed it in the direction of my doom. With each mile that passed, the image of audience members falling asleep, walking out or throwing dinnerware my way, loomed more vividly in my mind.
Entering the hall I began making my way nervously to the front, greeting people and trying to look for all the world as if the moment I’d been working for all my life had finally arrived. In a chair near the podium, I spied a woman I know and was surprised to see her familiar face.
“What brings you all the way down from Stratford?” I asked her.
“I’m the guest speaker,” she said.
And she was.
A very good one at that. Interesting youth. Lots of drama, humour, emotion. Terrific ending.
She deserved every bit of the warm reception we all gave her.
As for the person who had asked me to speak six weeks ago, I’d rather not go into what he deserves for having booked two speakers by mistake for the same occasion.
Except to say that for starters, I think he should have to sit and listen while I tell him the long version of the story of my exciting youth.
©1992 Jim Hagarty
