Unfortunately, in high school, I was horrified when I accidentally signed up for a public speaking class called, SPEECH 1. When I was choosing electives, I marked the box for SPEECH 1, but I meant to pick POTTERY 1. Everyone wanted to take POTTERY for obvious reasons -- it was in a different building, so we could walk slow and goof off on our way there, the teacher often had red eyes and said she had "something stuck in her eye," and we could make things like a penis vase without the nuns realizing it. Anyway, by the time I went to change my schedule, of course the hippieland of POTTERY was full, and all of the other electives were full, so there I was, stuck for an entire quarter in the horror show also known as SPEECH 1.
When it came time for our first speech, while madly preparing, my stomach had been in knots for weeks and for some reason, the teacher reminded me of a crazed parrot, which didn't help matters. The first assignment was similar to an acting class; we had to create a three-minute character sketch. Three whole minutes. That night, I guess I saw Jerry Springer on T.V., I dunno, but I picked him as my character. At the time, I think he had a mustache, or maybe I just felt his "inner mustache." So when it came time for the speech, I wore a big, thick, fake mustache.
I hobbled on up to the podium, literally shaking as I went. It started off all right, although I was sort of stuttering. Suddenly, about one minute into the speech, the mustache slid down and got half-stuck in my mouth. I reached up to fix it, but by then, a bunch of hairs were stuck in my mouth. I wasn't sure what to do, so I just did what was natural. I stopped the speech, and I started spitting and picking hairs off of my tongue. This lasted for about one entire minute.
The whole class was rolling. Everyone thought I was doing it on purpose, so I kept spitting out hairs and really owning the character. By the time I was done with my three minutes, they thought I was a genius.
Well, I made it through SPEECH 1, and I recall my final speech, a "persuasion" speech, was a fifteen minute rant on the anti-fur movement. The last line was this: "Fur isn't cool. It's cruel." We weren't allowed to dress up for that one, but I totally wanted to wear a bear suit.
Anyway, I made it out of SPEECH 1 alive, but I still didn't like speaking until I was at Hollins University for college. Poetry and fiction readings were weekly performances really, even if they didn't seem like it, and for sure, these events involved a lot of whiskey. After attending a slew of them, I realized that authors often used this weird tone that rose at the end of lines for emphasis, stuff like that. So I'd show up half-wasted, wearing all black (and black Chucks of course), and I'd really use my voice to hammer home "deep lines." I totally embraced that high brow madness. I ate it up.
Weird, the last time I gave a talk, which was two weeks ago, it came out damn raw and afterwards, I felt quite exposed. It's not always like that, but for some reason, I was in a mood. Speaking of moods, here's a picture of the cool, Vertigo-ish stairs in the Moody Student Center at Hollins University:
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Pretty rad. Hey, I'm giving a talk tonight actually. Wish me luck. Don't think I'll wear a fake mustache this time. I learned my lesson. A mustache is damn hard to pull off; however, just to be creative and embrace the memories, I may slip in some anti-fur propaganda.
C.A. MacConnell
P.S. Man, I should totally be an script editor on TV or a movie or some crap. I could iron that shit out, just sayin.
