Twenty-five Years of Toastmasters

 

        A quick check the the VP of Education confirmed what I had already guessed. As of May 1, I have been a member of Small Town Toastmasters for 25 years. I may possibly be the first person in the history of the club to reach that milestone.

        In honor of that achievement, I thought I'd share a few memories and things from the last two and a half decades.

        Few people know that this was not my first time in Toastmasters. My first club was in Albert Lea. I discovered it through a woman who was a few years ahead of me in high school. The club met in a law office conference room and consisted of lawyers, legal secretaries and a court reporter. I was the only person not employed in the legal profession. The only memory I have of that club was the time meeting coincided with the announcement of the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial. A TV was rolled into our meeting room and the lawyers watched the proceedings. I read a book while waiting for the verdict to be announced. 

        Some of the lawyers didn't understand why I wasn't interested. I told them I was pretty sure the verdict would be not guilty. They wondered how I could be so sure in the light of all the evidence. To me, it was very simple. At the time Simpson was a beloved public figure, no one was going to put him in prison. (The verdict was indeed not guilty.)

        Fast forward to 2001. I had moved to a new town and had a new job. Having already seen the benefits of Toastmasters from my previous experience, I was eager to find a new club. The Small Town Toastmaster club was small club but growing and vibrant. They met in the meeting room of the local YMCA. I was happy to be back. 

        A few years later, I decided to compete in the fall speech contest. As a person not known for having a sense of humor, I competed in the humorous speech contest.  My speech was about how I had stood for the bride in four different weddings and how all of them ended in divorce. To help me keep track of each wedding I held a silk flower bouquet while talking about the wedding. When I announced that the marriage ended in divorce, I tossed the bouquet over my shoulder and picked up the next one. I ended the speech by talking about how I had stood up for my sister at her recent wedding and worried that it would end like the others. (It didn't.)

        I took second place which was fortunate because all the rehearsing I'd done was hard of my props. One of the bouquets exploded when it hit the floor. There was no way I'd be able to put it back together if I had advanced. 

        Buoyed by my success, I competed the next year. They speech I wrote was about things I said I'd never do and wound up doing anyway. The title was 'The Stone You Throw the Farthest' after a proverb my grandmother sometimes said. I threw four small stones and talked about the various situations. I took first place at Area Contest and won by default at the Division contest as the other speaker did not show up. I was still awarded a trophy as if I'd actually won, which was embarrassing. I advanced to the District Contest, a contest I have mixed feelings about. I was glad to have the experience, but my speech, which was fine in smaller venues, did not work well on a stage in a ballroom at district. Two people competing were professional speakers which I thought was very unfair. One of the speeches was about urinals, a men's locker room joke that should never have advanced as far as it did. Another speaker lifted a section of her speech out of a Phyllis Diller monolog without attribution which is against contest rules.

        I only competed one other time many years later. This time I competed in Tall Tales. I had always joked about how hell would freeze over if I got married and the speech was about how it actually did happen a few weeks before my wedding. It was well written and I ended it by pulling a singed piece of paper out of my pocket and reading it. It was a note from the devil telling me never to make a joke like that again. I took second place behind a speech that I felt was not as good as mine. My writing and delivery were better. The winning speech was a tall tale about a Toastmaster meeting which I felt some of the judges preferred. I don't mind losing, but if a speech needs to be about Toastmasters then it needs to be in the rules. I never competed again.

        2003-2004 was an interesting period of time. The woman serving as club president was engaged and would give wedding planning updates at the beginning of every meeting. It was fun at first but I think many members soon grew tired of it. I was also engaged, but kept my plans quiet. My wedding was going to be smaller and I didn't think it was polite to talk about it. However, I did  need to practice the toast I planned to give at the end of the dinner. 

        The meeting before my wedding, I practiced the toast telling members that it was to be given at a family event. Once I finished it, the club president said, "For crying out loud, she's giving it at her wedding this weekend." My secret was out. The next week, the members gave me a quilt as a wedding present. I still have it.

        I followed the club from the YMCA to the library to a learning center eventually landing at St. Patrick's Church before we went to an online only format. In that time I completed many manuals. My favourite was Interpretive reading. I still remember choking up while reading the speech of dedication that the late Queen Elizabeth II  gave on her 21st birthday. 

        C joined the club for a few years. We used to have some humour at the end of the meetings. C and I did the Obstinate Lighthouse and a reading of George Carlin's Baseball vs Football. Our best one was when we did Who's On First?

        I've used the skills I learned over the years at work and to teach Sunday School at church. I even got to speak to a group of vision impaired senior citizens about medication safety. 

        I'm grateful that I joined that club all those years ago. When we moved to Minnesota, I made sure to move someplace so I could continue my membership. I have met a lot of really nice people who became good friends. I'm not sure what the next few years will bring. Definitely more fun and more speeches.