toastmasters and tripping

I went to a Toastmasters meeting this week. It was probably one of the most surreal experiences of my life.

(Most of my surreal experiences have come from dropping acid and doing mushrooms. Certainly, going to see Rocky Horror should be a required activity while tripping; during the movie we were either cowering in fear at the stuff being tossed around or hollering and giggling wildly.

Tripping and enjoying cocktails while watching highly skilled performers make balloon animals--and then stand there looking mean and expecting a tip--was another frightening, surreal experience. [Wow, how did they DO that? Man, that's cool....Whoa, what? They want a TIP...? Uhhh, shit, we gotta get OUT of here, man.]

Shrooms made me feel as if every bodily orifice was oozing something.)

Toastmasters ranked right up there with tripping in surreality.

The meeting was in a church basement, of course; aren't all slightly subversive meetings of people with some kind of problem held in church basements? There was no sign outside, so I made my way in gingerly...one look at the crowd, and I wondered if this was in fact an AA meeting.

"Heh heh. No, this is Toastmasters. Hi. I'm Garrett. I got your email."

Garret seemed to be a nice guy. The rest of the group appeared to be nice, completely ordinary, geeky individuals who would have looked quite at home at a Star Wars convention.

It was a very highly structured meeting, with a timekeeper, a grammarian, an "ah" and "um" counter, an MC..everybody had some kind of job. There was only one main speaker (she spoke about memory, but I forget what she said). Then there was the table topics guy, who'd ask others to come up, ask them a question and watch with glee as they melted under the hot light of extemporaneous speaking.

And applause. They applaud everything. Everybody who gets up and speaks, no matter how poorly, is worthy of applause. I found this rather distracting and...surreal.

Toward the end of the meeting, the MC got up, explained how people can choose to speak or just say no...and then leers in my direction.

"Would our guest care to come up and speak?"

Now, I've done a lot of theater. I announce at sporting events. I usually don't have a problem with speaking in public, even if the audience is in my lap. It doesn't mean I'm particularly good at it, although I have brought people to tears--intentionally--but I'm comfortable with it.

But now, I felt incredibly inept. I didn't know what to do with my arms...I'm very animated and tend to wave them around a lot. So I crossed them, uncrossed them, held my hands in front of me, behind me, couldn't ...control...my...arms...so I ended up waving them around anyway as I told the audience about my girlhood experience of getting lost in Atlantic City, and being rescued by Mr. Peanut.

Yup. THAT Mr. Peanut, that 7-foot tap-dancing, cane-twirling top-hatted legume. I had wandered onto the boardwalk (this was before casinos) and evidently followed the aroma of fresh roasted peanuts. I used to collect Mr. Peanut memorabilia, so it seemed quite serendipitous to find the man/nut himself, strolling on the boardwalk.

So I told this story, embellishing it where it needed a boost, waving my hands all around, nervous as I've ever been before an audience...and they laughed. They LAUGHED! They LIKED me!

And then, they applauded!

It wasn't a good speech; in fact, I think I went over my allotted time.

But since they were so nice to me, and applauded and laughed and generally gave my ego the stroking it needs...I might just become an offical Toastmaster, and learn all the very serious toasting skills necessary to one day, perhaps, WOW an audience.

Without tripping.