The Perfect Speech?

Tuesday, January 9, 2007
10 attendees

A few years back, a popular novel made its way to the big screen. Entitled The Perfect Storm, it was the story of an ill-fated crew of a fishing boat in the North Atlantic. The focal point of the story was the convergence of dissimilar elements (time of year, day, navigation decisions, etc) that came together at that moment in time to create a devastating sum far greater than its parts separately.

Tuesday, Toastmasters were treated to this sort of phenomena during a presentation by Club President Falan Guan. It started with Toastmaster Gayle Anderson (Club Secretary) showed those in attendance the proper way to bring a speaker to the podium with a creative and witty introduction, using big bold adjectives and phrasing it in the style of a classified advertisement.

Then Falan proceeded to execute Project 6 – Vocal Variety perfectly. She immediately grabbed our attention by quoting a well-known and topical subject, the I Have a Dream speech by Martin Luther King Jr (holiday this coming Monday). Using a variety of gestures and tones of voice she moved effortlessly through her subject, quoting to popular musicians (Dixie Chicks) and professors to dynamically make her points. She utilized silence to heighten her points and moved about the room making good eye contact throughout. Speech evaluator Gene Hargreaves (Treasurer) called it the perfect speech and even suggested this speech be entered in area contests because of its potential to win. Introduction, presentation and evaluation - all coming together to create a wonderful speech indeed.

Another example of the club’s creativity manifested itself during Table Topics. Sergeant at Arms Kathy Hendry served as Topics Master and carried to the podium a large red coffee container loaded with random objects. Each participant was given (or in some cases chose) an object and proceeded to talk about it.

Tony Li spoke on chopsticks being an example of China’s contribution to the world; Cynthia Jimmerson described an eerie coincidence in the object she was given (a bobble head turtle) and a discussion she had with her son the previous day (on the virtues of being the tortoise or the hare); Paul Burke in typical comic fashion demonstrated (in a very physical manner) his first job as a sentry in keeping holding a Nutcracker doll; Garth Garrett eloquently talked about the religious/spiritual elements of a tied rubber band; Richard Perez used a symbol of Love to described a rough spot in his health history that brought family and friends closer to him; and Topics winner Gayle Anderson tied in a common correction tape into her daily photo touch-up task and her love of conservation and the environment.