RECORD STORE TALES #1211: Public Speaking

The year:  1980.

I stood there in the gymnasium, in front of the whole school, holding my two cue cards in my hands.  I had the whole speech memorized.  This would be the second full performance.  I was already chosen as the best speech from my class, so now I had to say it in front of the school:   “My Trip to Alberta”, written by Mike Ladano with a little help from his mom.  It was the story of our summer 1979 trip to the mountains.  The exciting climax to the story was the moment that I fell into the Athabasca glacier.  It was August and I was excited to make a snowball.  ‘Twas the adults who gave me this idea.  “You’ll be able to make a snowball in the summer!”  So I ran towards the snow, and fell into a cold icy stream of water.  I was soaked and it kind of ruined the day for me, but on the other hand, it made for a great speech.  I did a great performance of it, certainly better than most of the other kids.

I came in second, because the teachers thought I probably received too much help from my parents.  I didn’t.  My mom provided the neat and tidy printing on the tiny cue cards, but the words were mine.  It made me bitter and I didn’t put that kind of effort into writing a speech in later years.

Public speaking topic in Grade 5:  Pac-Man

Public speaking topic in Grade 8:  Kiss

Public speaking topic in Grade 9:  Iron Maiden

The Kiss one…oh the Kiss one.  It was good.  I started it by shouting, “You wanted the best, you got the best!  The hottest band in the land, KISS!”  I know I was pissing off the Catholic school teachers every time I mentioned the album Hotter Then Hell.  I can’t say this wasn’t intentional.  I no longer wanted to participate in the big speech-off in the gymnasium.  No matter how great my Kiss speech was, there was no way I’d ever be chosen, so it was the perfect topic.

I have a love/hate relationship with public speaking.  I’ve always been good at it, but the creation of the speech and the anxiety leading up to it lead me to procrastination.  I had to do several more big ones through school.  In my grade 13 year, I had three class-long presentations to do, all within the space of a week.  I had another speech to do in my first year of Sociology at university.  I don’t remember a lot of specifics except that they went over well.  I try to be expressive and speak naturally.

There’s a line that kids always said back in school.  “When am I going to need to use this in my real life?”  Remember in Superbad, when Jonah Hill was talking about making tiramisu in Home Economics class? “When am I going to make tiramisu? Am I going to be a chef? No!”  I haven’t needed public speaking in my professional life, but in my personal life, the experience sure did come in handy.

I’ve spoken at two weddings, and now three funerals.  These things are necessary.

The year:  2025.

I did a eulogy at my grandmother’s funeral recently.  I spent a few weeks working on the speech and polishing it, but not rehearsing it.  I didn’t want that emotional experience, of reciting the speech.  I wanted the first real reading to be live at the funeral.  I was nervous as hell.  I had this idea in my head that I would know everyone in the room.  That was not the case.  My mom has a large family, and so many people came that I kind of recognized but could not remember well.  I became more and more nervous.  I had two panic attacks that day.

The priest, Father Phil, took us aside and told us the order in which the funeral would proceed.  I was last, but I knew my cue.  Fortunately, Father Phil was great (this is not always the case at a funeral).  During the service, he told us of a Bible passage that said “God’s house has many rooms,” and there is a special room prepared for everyone.  He asked what room my grandmother would choose to go to?  There was a long pregnant pause and so I said “the gardens!”  Father Phil said “Great; she would love the flowers in the gardens”.  Suddenly something clicked in my head.  I unrolled my speech, which by now had become a tight scroll.  I found two spots in the speech where I could tie into Father Phil’s gardens.

My moment came.  I started rough.  Starting is always the hardest part (unless you start with “You wanted the best grandma, you got the best grandma!” but I chose not to Kiss-ify my speech).  It took three or four sentences to find my voice and my rhythm, and I was off to the races.  I was brisk and expressive.  I started making gestures with my hands to emphasise words.  I was loose and improvised here and there.  Then came the two moments I was preparing for.

“It was always fun to visit Grandma’s house.  My dad and I would pick carrots from her garden – remember what I said earlier about the gardens?  She had the best carrots, and we took them all, much to her scolding!  [Improvised portion in italics.]

Then the second instance.  Speaking about driving her to the lake, and placing my hands in the steering wheel position, I said, “she would point out all the flowers along the way – remember what I said earlier about the gardens? – which I couldn’t stop to look at because I was driving!”

People laughed in all the right spots.

I sat down, and my dad clapped once, and shook my hand.  My mom and my aunt said “Great speech”.

The funeral ended.  My knees were limp and my hands were numb.  I sat, exhausted, and drank some lemonade (with gingerale, a delightful mixture), and just tried to unpack and unwind from what had just happened.

I was approached by friends.

“Great speech!” they said.

I was approached by distant relatives.

“Great speech!” they said.

I was approached by old friends of my parents.

“Great speech!” they said.  Even Father Phil said it.

I started to think to myself, I think I just gave the best speech of my life.  A moment that can never be re-captured.  It was live, it happened, it existed for a fleeting moment and now it is just a memory.

“I wish I had recorded myself,” I lamented.

“No, it was great, we will always remember it,” said everyone else.

But if I had recorded it…would it have been the same?  Would I have been distracted by the recording device?  Would I have been able to perform it exactly the same, if I knew it was going down on tape?  Would the added pressure have hurt the performance?  These are quantum questions we can never answer.  Sometimes the mere observation of an act can change the act, in physics and in life.  (Maybe there’s no difference between physics and life.)

One of the warmest moments came when an older gentleman walked up to me, rubbed my shoulders, and told me that the speech made him feel like he got to know my grandmother.  I was so overwhelmed with faces and names, that I have no idea who he was anymore.

One guest even told me he watched me on YouTube.  That was pretty cool.  He liked the speech, too.

The most important comment came from my mom, who said that my grandmother would have loved the stories I chose to tell in my speech.  Of course, that is the most important thing.  I have told a lot of stories about my grandmother over the last eight months.  Some of them were hilarious, but she wouldn’t have liked them.  For example, the time she gave me some money and told me to “go and buy one of your CD records.”  That’s funny, but she wouldn’t have wanted any stories that made fun of her, so I left all of that out.  If I had kept them in, the speech would have been more like a stand-up comedy routine!  And that would be fine for another time.

I think this speech was the best public speaking I’ve done to date, and I think it’s my proudest moment in my life.  And it all started in 1980, in a glacier in British Columbia.  If I hadn’t fallen in, maybe I would never have been able to do a speech like that for my grandma.  The universe is a multitude of possibilities.  Maybe I was meant to fall in, just as Gollum was meant to find the One Ring?  In this reality in which we all co-exist, I’m just trying to make it through day by day.  However it came to be, I did something that somebody had to do, and my grandmother is now smiling down on me.  I can hear her voice.  She would say, “That was lovely, Michael.  Just lovely.”

That’s more than enough.  However it came to be, the culmination of all these experiences coalesced into a moment that was there, and gone.  I’m just glad I was the conduit.  And it was a heck of a lot better than the 1983 Pac-Man speech!

To read the written version of the speech, click here.

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