The Growth and Communication Program

I originally wrote an outline of this story for a Toastmasters speech that I gave on September 28, 2009. It was my fifth speech in a series of ten I have to give to earn my Competent Communicator designation. The purpose of the speech was to use stance, body movement, gestures, facial expressions and eye contact to improve my speech. Toastmasters calls the fifth speech, Project 5, “Your Body Speaks.” I delivered the speech in 6 minutes, 40 seconds. Here is an expanded, more detailed version of the speech.

I’m going to tell you a story about something that I participated in almost thirty years ago.

The Growth & Communication program was for graduates of the Relationshop workshop. (I previously wrote about Relationshop in “Thanks for having the courage to be here” and “Let Your Love Flow and Relationshop.”) The GCP was “an advanced level program focusing on accelerated personal growth and enhanced communicative ability for those who wish to share Relationshop in a very special way as a Relationshop Prospective Leader.” The GCP program took place over a three month period.

We met for several weekends over that time period, usually in a Manhattan apartment in New York City. One weekend was spent reviewing the Relationshop workshop and one weekend was spent assisting at the workshop. The final “graduation” weekend was held at a retreat and study center called Kirkridge, on the top of a mountain in Bangor, Pennsylvania. It is just south of the Pocono mountains.

On Sunday afternoon the eight students in the GCP went into a room in one of the buildings at Kirkridge. On one side of the room there was a blackboard. On the blackboard written in white chalk was a sentence:

No matter what and regardless of the circumstances,

I will live my life out of the context: Being Satisfied

On the other side of the room was a single chair. The far wall was made of sliding glass doors. There were drapes over them to darken the room. In front of the sliding doors there were mats placed on the floor. They were similar to the mats that you would find in a gym class. In the middle of the room several mattresses were stacked up, one on top of the other. They were waist high. There were a couple of rolled up newspapers about the size of a baseball bat on the mattresses. We were going to beat the mattresses with the bats.

The eight of us sat on folding chairs on one side of the room.  Our instructions were to yell, “No matter what and regardless of the circumstances, I will live my life out of the context: Being Satisfied.”

We were supposed to yell this throughout the event, until everyone had their turn to beat the mattress. We started yelling and the first person moved to the empty chair. There was a person standing by the chair whose job it was to get you angry enough to grab the bat and start beating the mattress. I will call her Miss B. After a short while, the person got up from the chair, grabbed the bat and started beating the mattress. There were two people at the mattress to assist the person and make sure no one was injured. When the first person was totally exhausted, Larry, who led the GCP and was supervising the goings on in the room, must have given a signal to the assistants that the mattress beater had had enough and to take them over to the mat and let them recover.

Then, the next person went through the same thing. When it was my turn, I went over to the chair. In a very short while Miss B. (not her real name) made me so angry that I wanted to grab her instead of the bat. Instead, the two assistants muscled me over to the mattress and put the bat in my hands. I beat that damned mattress for all it was worth. I was soon exhausted and they took me over and dropped me on the mat.

I was on my knees and I said something to someone else on the mat. I then took off my shirt, leaving only my undershirt on. I then collapsed on the mattress. A few seconds later, the two assistants were picking me back up. Someone thought that I wasn’t exhausted enough because I had the strength to take off my shirt, I guess. I had to go to the back of the line and do it all over again! I wasn’t too thrilled, but I did it.

I remember that the second time I beat the mattress, my back was killing me. My arms ached and I was sweating profusely. Finally, I was put back on the mat. Later in the evening we were each given a small marble. The marble was supposed to represent something we wanted to get rid of. We then went outside through the sliding doors and threw the marbles into the woods.

It was a pretty intense weekend.

The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches & Joe Karbo

The front cover of The Lazy Man's Way to Riches by Joe Karbo

I first discovered “The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches” by Joe Karbo while browsing through the Nottingham Bookstore in Hamilton Square, New Jersey. This was sometime back in the mid-70′s. My father, Howard Tedder,  owned the store. It was a paperback book, 6 inches x 9 inches and 3/8 of an inch thick. In the top right corner of the cover it said: $1000 Not the selling price but guaranteed to be what it is worth to you – at the very least. My father had priced the book at $5.00. (Some used copies today are listed for $25 to $50 on Amazon and Ebay.) I don’t know if he ever read it and I can’t remember if I paid him the $5.00 for it. I probably didn’t. I often took books that I liked home and brought them back after I read them. I “paid” for the books by working at the store fairly frequently, cleaning the store, and moving lots and lots of books around.

I took “The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches” home and read it and I have kept it all these years. When I am going through the books on my bookshelves to make some space, I never even consider throwing it out.  I have never seen another copy of it for sale in a used book store anywhere and I have been to quite a few used book stores. The book that I have is Copyright 1973 Joe Karbo, 17105 S. Pacific, Sunset Beach, CA 90742. The book was originally sold for $10.00 by mail order through advertisements that Joe Karbo wrote and placed in newspapers and magazines.  It wasn’t sold in stores. At the time, a paperback book sold in a bookstore for around $1.95. “The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches” was expensive compared to a regular paper back book.

The book is divided into two parts, book one and book two. They each have eight chapters and a question and answer section.  Book one talks about “Dyna/Psyc: the programmed study and practice of achieving success by the planned application of important but little understood natural laws.” It talks about an inadequate self image, fear, making lists, turning lists into goals, daily declarations, affirmations, visualization, and letting your unconscious computer (your mind) solve problems for you.

The back cover of The Lazy Man's Way to Riches. Double click the image to enlarge it.

Book two talks about creativity, turning problems into opportunities and the direct response business (mail order).  Joe goes into quite a bit of detail regarding the mail order business and a lot of the information applies to other types of businesses as well. I think it is an interesting book, well-written, and well worth reading. Joe writes in an easy-going, friendly manner. It is as if he is right there sitting in the room with you explaining everything in person. He gets right to the point of what he wants to say and he packs a lot of good information into the 156 pages of the book. I know there is value in it and I recommend it.

The book sold over 2,700,000 (2 million 700 hundred thousand) copies by the time Joe Karbo died. According to an interesting article on The Lazy Man’s Way.com, Joe died in 1980 at age 55 from a heart attack while being interviewed by a TV station news crew. I have not been able (so far) to find a newspaper obituary for Joe Karbo.

The advertisements for the book are as famous as the book itself. Copywriters and advertising people to this day use Joe Karbo’s ad as an example of how to write a great ad. The subtitle for the ad is “Most People Are Too Busy Earning a Living to Make Any Money.” I remember seeing and reading the ads in newspapers and magazines back in the 70′s.

Although I never actually ordered the book by mail, I did try my hand at mail order in the late 80′s by selling a trivia booklet that I wrote and printed.  It was not a success. I can’t recall though, 20 years later, whether or not I was actually inspired to try mail order by reading “The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches” or whether something else triggered my attempt. In any case, I know that I referred to the book and used some of the mail order information in it when I was working on how to market my product.

The Joe Karbo ad that was placed in newspapers and magazines all over the country. Double click on the image to enlarge it

Regardless, here is a copy of the actual ad that ran in newspapers and magazines all over the country.

If you have any stories or opinions about Joe Karbo and The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches or this post, I would love to hear your comments.

Dead Battery, No Brakes, No Winch, Ramp Stuck, Too Wide, Too Dark, Too Tired

I witnessed a magnificent example of persistence over the weekend. I saw someone who simply would not give up, despite numerous opportunities to do so.  I was sitting on my second floor deck with my wife Mary Lynn early Friday evening when our friend Charlie stopped by. He had a cup of Stewart’s coffee with him as he usually does and we chatted for 10 or 15 minutes. He told me that he had just bought a flatbed trailer and he was going to haul a van to Florida. He had to go home, hitch up the trailer and go pick up the van that was a few miles away on Route 40. I asked him if he needed any help and he said yes. Charlie has helped me out with a number of things around my house and I thought I could pay him back a little bit. I figured, how long could it take to put a van on a trailer? An hour?

He had just picked up the trailer that day and brought it home. He backed his pickup truck to the trailer and connected everything. We tested the trailer lights and turn signals and everything worked except the license plate light. It was still daylight so we didn’t worry about that yet. We drove over to Route 40 and parked by the van. It was a 1994 Ford Mark III van that had a wheelchair lift in it. It looked like it had been sitting there for a while. Charlie jumped in and tried to start it, but it was quickly obvious that the battery was dead. He grabbed a set of battery cables and we tried to jump start it from his pickup truck’s battery. It made a weak groaning sound as it tried to turnover. We let the charge run for a while longer and then tried again. No luck. Charlie went and got the owner of the truck who was in the back yard behind the house. The owner of the van is 78 years old and tireless. He had a portable battery charger that he put on the van. We let it charge for a minute and then tried to start it again. It fired right up. We let the van run to charge the battery.

The trailer was parked across the street at an old farm stand that was no longer being used. I then learned that the van didn’t have any brakes. Someone was going to have to drive the van across the street and get it lined up with the ramps on the trailer. But first, we had to get the ramps out from under the trailer where they were stored. They were a little rusty. I don’t know when they had been last used, but it had been long enough for them to be stuck with rust and corrosion. Charlie crawled under the trailer and tried to dislodge the first ramp. After a lot of banging and pulling and cursing, the first one came loose. The second ramp was even worse. No amount of banging, pulling and cursing would make it budge more than a few inches. The van owner went and got his lawn tractor. We hooked up a chain to the lawn tractor and tried to pull the ramp loose. It barely budged. We were going to need something bigger.

I called Mary Lynn and asked her to drive over in our Honda Pilot. I’ve used the Pilot lots of times on my 4 acres of yard to haul large limbs that fell out of my 100 foot tall pine trees. I wrap a tow strap around the branches and attach them to a very convenient hook under the driver side rear of the Pilot. I drag them over to a fire pit behind my house. Charlie and the owner didn’t think there was enough room to get a full size vehicle next to the trailer and between one of the structures at the farm stand. I assured them that my Honda would fit.

When Mary Lynn arrived, I moved the Pilot into position and hooked up the chain. It took several tries and we heard some horrible noises that made me wonder if something awful had happened to my truck or the trailer, but the ramp finally slid out completely onto the ground. We attached the ramps to the back of the trailer.

Next, it was time to move the van across the road. Route 40 is a two lane highway with a speed limit of 55. Traffic whizzes by at a pretty good clip, but fortunately it is not a busy road with constant traffic. The owner of the van hopped in and tried to put the van in gear. He had some difficulty for some reason and the van slipped into neutral and lurched backward into a bush, snapping part of the bush off. At least it didn’t hit the fence and pole that was right behind it. Somehow, he got the van going forward and crossed the road safely. At one point I was concerned that he was going to hit the Pilot before stopping and then I thought he might hit one of the farm stand buildings, but he didn’t. Then, after a series of maneuvers, he aligned the front tires with the trailer ramps.

The trailer had a winch on it with a strong metal cable. The only problem was that it didn’t work. We had another dead battery on our hands. I moved the Pilot into position and we jumped the winch battery. The winch then made noises like it was working, but it wouldn’t pull the cable  back into the housing. Charlie and the owner tried a lot of different things, but could not make the winch work. At this point, I decided to take Mary Lynn home because I didn’t know how much longer we were going to be. It was dark already at this point or almost dark. I can’t remember exactly what time it was.

When I arrived back at the trailer, Charlie and the owner had rigged up some sort of a pulley with a block and tackle. It was going to take the place of the broken winch. I think a lot of people would have given up or stopped trying at this point. If Charlie or the owner had not had a block and tackle and pulley or if they did not know how to use one, that would have been it (at least for the night). I suppose someone could have tried to drive the van onto the trailer, but it didn’t have brakes and what if you missed and fell off the ramps? You would have a damaged van.

They hooked the chains to the van and started to pull it up the ramps. They had to reposition the pulley and chains several times, but it was moving up. We chocked the wheels every time we moved the chains. When the front tires got up to the trailer wheels, we realized that the van was too wide to fit through. If we had another 2 inches it would have worked, but we didn’t. The tires on the trailer stuck up higher than the trailer bed. They had a strong fender over them. We were going to have to use more blocks and lift the van higher over the wheels.

I told Charlie that this van did not want to go to Florida.

We drove to Charlie’s house in the owners pickup truck. Charlie had a lot of blocks in his basement. They were 4 inches by 4 inches and about 2 feet long. We packed them in the truck and headed back to the trailer. It was definitely dark out by now. We were working with a flashlight and the truck headlights. We built a strong ramp on the trailer using the wood blocks and wooden ramps that appeared from somewhere. Slowly but surely the van inched onto the trailer. Charlie and the owner did the heavy, important work of moving the chains. Finally, the van was positioned where we wanted it on the trailer. We called it a night. It was 3:30 in the morning. I was tired. Charlie had to be at work Saturday at 7:00 AM. I went to bed at 5:00 AM and got up at noon.

Charlie stopped over Saturday afternoon around 5:00 PM and we went back to the trailer. He spent some more time chaining down the van and  moving blocks around to make sure it was as safe as it could be. He then drove the trailer back across the street so that he could put air in the tires of the trailer, the van, and his pickup truck. The owner of the van had a compressor in his garage. We worked on the license plate light again. We tried to pick up a new bulb, but it was almost 8 PM and the auto parts store was closing. We wouldn’t make it in time. We stopped at Kmart and Radio Shack,  but they don’t sell those types of bulbs.

Charlie drove the trailer to my house and parked it in my yard. My property has a large parking area. The first floor used to be a tavern.

Late Monday morning, Charlie came and hooked up the trailer again. Earlier that morning he had fixed a problem with the right front brake on his truck. He had some new, additional straps that he put on the van and he put a new bulb in the license plate light. It didn’t work right away, but after playing with the bulb housing some more, he got it to work. He decided that he needed to fix the left front brake on his truck too. We went to the auto parts store, got the part, and he put it on. Then, Monday afternoon, he pulled out of my parking lot and headed to Florida.

Tuesday afternoon I called him on his cell phone. I thought he might be in Florida already. He wasn’t. He was still in New York. His truck had had some sort of problem driving down Route 88 and he had to stop and get it fixed. When I called him, he was back on the road, but still in New York.

I called him at 1:00 PM on Wednesday and he is cruising through South Carolina.

I know he will make it to his destination in Florida. Charlie had all kinds of opportunities to quit, but he didn’t. He kept on going.

Charlie called at 9:15 PM Wednesday to announce that he had made it to his destination in central Florida.

The Content Of Their Character

Today is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States. He was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. He died on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. Had he lived, he would have been 80 years old on January 15th. In 1964 he won the Nobel Peace Prize and was Time Magazine’s Man of the Year.

Dr. King is remembered for many different things. On August 28, 1963 he gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. If you have never heard or seen the entire speech, you should take 20 minutes and do so. It is an inspirational speech, but it also describes a divided America from 40 years ago that didn’t come close to treating African-Americans as real citizens. I am glad that I don’t live in 1963 America anymore. I was 10 years old at the time and didn’t really grasp what was going on, but I’m glad that we have made progress.

I don’t understand how we as a people could have allowed the discrimination and intolerance against African-Americans to go on as long as it did. We fought the Civil War where hundreds of thousands died, to stop the spread of slavery to more states, and then did virtually nothing to actually “free” African-Americans. The Emancipation Proclamation may have freed some slaves on paper, but in reality, did not. African-Americans have been discriminated against in every way possible for more than another 100 years.

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution officially ended slavery on December 6, 1865.

Dr. King points out in his speech, speaking about the Emancipation Proclamation, “But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.”

That Jim Crow and segregation were allowed to exist at all, much less for as long as they did, is a terrible, painful memory for America. In 2009 America we have made progress towards equality. We have come a long way since 1963. But we are not there yet. As long as there are ignorant little men, we are not there yet.

In his “I See The Promised Land Speech” that he gave in Memphis, Tennessee the night before he died, he tells this story:

“You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, “Are you Martin Luther King?” And I was looking down writing, and I said yes.

And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that’s punctured, you drown in your own blood–that’s the end of you.

It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I’ve forgotten what those telegrams said. I’d received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I’ve forgotten what the letter said.

But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I’ll never forget it. It said simply, “Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the Whites Plains High School.” She said, “While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”

He ended the speech by saying, “Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

Some people are saying that when Barack Obama takes the oath of office tomorrow, Dr. King’s dream will be achieved. I don’t think so. I think we are still far from it. America still has too many citizens suffering in poverty and despair, without any hope for the future. Too many of our children live with violence and the fear of violence on a daily basis. Discrimination still exists. We are not there yet.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in his “I Have a Dream” speech, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

When Barack Obama takes the oath of office tomorrow and becomes the 44th President of the United States, it will be because America is a better place now than it was in 1968.

Dr. King was a courageous man. He was as brave as any soldier on a battlefield. He gave his life to free this nation from shameful behavior that divided it.

This country is a better place because of him, the people who marched with him, and the people that supported him.

How To Quit Smoking Today

I quit smoking on January 8, 2001. I smoked for 31 years. I am going to tell you how I did it so that it might encourage or inspire you to quit too. Sometime in December of 2000 a co-worker asked me if I wanted to make a New Year’s resolution to quit smoking. I said yes, I’m ready to try to quit again.

He picked January 8th as the quit date. It was the Monday after the first of the year. I bought a box of patches. I also had two people in the office who encouraged me to quit.

On the morning of January 8th, I put a patch on my arm and went to work. My fellow quitter continued to smoke and did not make any attempt to quit. As far as I know, he still smokes. I just stuck with it. In the office, my two friends kept encouraging me and congratulating me on how well I was doing. After two months, I decided that I could stop wearing the patch.

I’m not sure how I knew that. I just thought that I was ready. I saved the last one and carried it around with me wherever I went. Just in case. I never used it and eventually stopped carrying it around.

I am so glad that I finally quit smoking.  I always thought that even if I could quit, I would always want a cigarette. That has never been true. I have no desire for a cigarette at all.

Every once in a while (once a year?) I think about it and it passes in a few seconds. I am around smokers all the time and it doesn’t bother me. I wish I had never smoked that first cigarette. You don’t need cigarettes and they don’t do anything good for you.

Smoking is just a terrible addiction and you don’t really understand that until you quit. If I can quit smoking, you can too. I smoked constantly. I never went anywhere without my cigarettes. They ruled my life.

At one time, some people thought that going “cold turkey” was better than using a nicotine substitute to quit. I just suspected that or sensed that from some people. They thought that you were somehow a better person if you quit “cold turkey” and less of a person if you used a substitute. That’s a bunch of nonsense anyway. It is perfectly acceptable to get help to break your addiction. Six months after you quit, it won’t matter anyway.

I started smoking in 1969 when I was 16 years old in high school. I had very bad acne in my teenage years and thought that if I smoked I would eat less candy. That was pretty stupid logic, but I was a teenager. I didn’t inhale the smoke when I first started, but eventually someone taught me how. I still remember where I was when I learned that. Also, when I first started inhaling, I got dizzy from the smoke. I guess I thought that was a good thing at the time. My school actually had a smoking area in the parking lot where you could go and smoke. I remember being dizzy for the beginning of my first class after lunch.

My first attempt at quitting came when I was in my twenties. My father always encouraged me to quit. He read about a Dr. Funk in Philadelphia who had been to China and brought back a form of acupuncture to help people quit smoking. A group of us, including my father who didn’t smoke cigarettes, went to the hospital in Philadelphia. We listened to a short lecture and then had a surgical clip placed on our ear. It lightly pinched for a second while going on, but all in all it was relatively painless. For me, it was quite amazing. Wearing that clip just killed my desire for a cigarette. I did not want to smoke anymore.

I wish I could have left it on forever, but I went back to the hospital to have it taken off after a week. That was the prescribed amount of time to wear it. Supposedly, the nicotine addiction was broken after a week and the device was no longer useful. The first time I ended up quitting for a couple of weeks. This stop smoking technique was soon offered at other hospitals. I tried this method two more times over the years. It was always a good way to kick start a quitting program. I knew that I wouldn’t want a cigarette for the week that it was in my ear. The rest was up to me.

I tried cold turkey a few times too. Merriam-Webster defines “cold turkey” as the abrupt complete cessation of the use of an addictive drug. Once I quit for three months and I thought I had my smoking addiction beat. I really felt bad smoking again after quitting for three months.

I chewed Nicorette gum for a while too at some point. I don’t remember how long I was on that. It was probably at least a month.

When I finally quit for good using the patch, I also took Wellbutrin for the first week. I talked to my doctor and he wrote me a prescription. I was a little crazy on Wellbutrin and stopped taking it after a week. It made me paranoid and I would occasionally shout things out for no apparent reason. That wasn’t good and I stopped taking it.

I was a little angry at the fact that I had to pay so much for the patches. I figured that I had paid so much in cigarette taxes over the years that the patches should be subsidized by the government or the tobacco companies. No such luck. The Marlboro Man wasn’t going to help me quit. I’m glad I invested in the patches though. I have saved a lot of money over the past eight years. At $4.00 per pack, 365 days a year times 8 years, I saved $11,680. I smoked more than a pack a day though usually, so I saved even more.

Some friends of mine have used Chantix to quit recently. I have never used it, but they recommend it. It’s worth looking into.

A recent story in the New York Times says that most people attempt to quit 8 to 10 times before they are successful and that 21% of the U.S. population still smokes. That is way too many. If you have tried to quit before and failed, it is worth it to try again.  Do it today. Right now. You don’t want to be the last smoker in America do you?

Decide which nicotine replacement method you want to try and get a supply of them. Find a friend or co-worker and ask them to support you. Throw those cigarettes in the garbage where they belong. Let’s put the cigarette makers out of business due to lack of interest in their evil product.

I didn’t know that my last attempt to quit was going to be successful. I just knew that I wanted to quit because it was so bad for my health. Keep trying. You can do it.

Can Kindergarten Scar You For Life?

Can one stupid incident in kindergarten scar you for life? Can it hold you back from doing certain things for years, until you are finally able to overcome your fear? Yes. It can.

I still remember being in kindergarten at Hamilton Square School. It was 1958. Fifty years ago. I can still see the teacher in front of the class. I will call her Mrs. L. instead of using her real name. I was sitting far to her right in the first row. She asked the class a question and I was eager to answer. I stood up, waved my arm wildly in the air so that she would see me and yelled, “Hey Mrs. L., hey Mrs. L.” She turned and looked at me and admonished me for saying “hey.” I can’t recall exactly what she said, but the whole class laughed at me and I sat down embarrassed and dejected.

It took me 23 years to get over that. I don’t think that she meant to “scar me for life”, but I’m also sure she didn’t realize how much she hurt me either. Whenever I think back to how I became afraid to speak in front of a group, this is where it leads me.

Except for the antics of one young boy who didn’t want to leave his mother at the beginning of the year, this incident is all I remember from my first year of school. In fourth grade my class put on a play about Christopher Columbus. My best friend played Columbus and I was in charge of pulling the curtain. I did not want to be on the stage facing an audience and having to recite lines.

In fifth grade one day, my teacher asked me to go to the front of the class. He then began grilling me with questions about what I was going to do on my summer vacation. That was just torture to be in front of the class like that. I was enormously relieved to be able to sit down again.

I don’t recall every incident in middle school and high school where I had to give a report in front of the class, but I do know that I dreaded every single one. Dreaded. I would worry about it constantly from the time the assignment was given, until it was over and somehow I survived. I was involved in all of the class plays, but behind the scenes working the lights. I knew the actors on stage and I admired them and respected them just for getting up there. I dropped out of a college Sociology course after the first class, when I learned I was going to have to give a presentation to pass the course.

It’s interesting to me, writing about this, and remembering that I played organized baseball from the time I was 9 until I was 18. I pitched in Little League, Babe Ruth League and Senior Babe Ruth. When you are the pitcher, everyone is watching you and you are the center of attention. That never bothered me. In fact, I liked it. I was very confident when I was pitching, even when I wasn’t pitching well. I just never connected pitching with speaking in front of a class or being on stage in a class play.

In 1980 I participated in a three day workshop in New York City called RelationShop. I have already written about some of that in a previous story, “Thanks For Having The Courage To Be Here.” In the workshop there are two co-leaders and several assistants who help them. They run microphones, hand out name tags, keep the room clean and make sure the chairs are lined up straight. I volunteered to assist at several workshops.

At the end of the workshop, the assistants are invited onto the stage to be recognized. Now, you don’t have to give a speech. You don’t even have to say anything, I don’t think. You could probably just smile and wave if you wanted. Of course, on the last night, just before this is supposed to happen, I am freaking out. I did not want to have to go onto that stage. No way. Fortunately, some of the other assistants supported me. I explained the situation and how panicked I was to Carla. She supported me by holding my hand and walking onto the stage with me as the other assistants followed. Carla was a Montessori school teacher at the time. I might have even been first in the line on stage.

Larry, one of the co-leaders of the workshop, was standing a few feet away. I remember starting out by saying something about how terrified I was just to be in front of so many people. I think there might have been 70 people in the room. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I ended up talking for 20 minutes!   Someone said it was the longest “thank you” speech that anyone in RelationShop had ever given. I remember that the audience was very supportive of me too. Once I admitted that I was scared to death, I just kept going. I got a big round of applause from everyone at the end. It was a really big deal for me. At the end of 20 minutes, I wasn’t afraid anymore.

I think that was the day I finally graduated from kindergarten. I was 28 years old. A week later, I went to a Retrospective for the workshop in New York City. It’s an opportunity for graduates of the workshop to get back together and introduce their friends and family to RelationShop. One of the participants who heard me give my 20 minute talk, asked me if I would come to Rockefeller University, where he worked, to give a talk about the workshop. It took me a minute or two, but I said yes. I went there a few weeks later and spoke for quite a while to a group of approximately 100 people about the workshop. I didn’t have any fear or anxiety. It was quite amazing to me that I could do that.

In the years since, I have been able to speak up at meetings and events with out any fear. It is truly one less thing to worry about. I’ve read that fear of public speaking is the number one fear that some people have. Jerry Seinfeld even made a joke that some people would rather be the dead body in the casket than give the eulogy at a funeral. I don’t know about that.

If it is such a big fear, why don’t schools try and identify kids who have it and help them? The younger the better. I would have been a much better student if I wasn’t glossophobic all through school. I don’t recall ever hearing the word glossopobia until recently. The name comes from Greek, glossa, meaning tongue and phobos, meaning fear or dread. There is even a website called, “Glossophobia.com” where you can read more about it.

I went to my first Toastmasters meeting recently. Steve Pavlina has written some stories about Toastmasters on his blog. Those articles got me interested. Then, a few months ago, I found out through a story in the newspaper, that a good friend of mine belonged to a local Toastmasters group. For some reason he never mentioned it. That is kind of ironic when you think about it.

Toastmasters International helps people become more competent and comfortable in front of an audience. I really enjoyed my first meeting. It lasted about two hours. Everyone was very nice and I really felt comfortable. I will be going back next week to give my “Ice Breaker” speech.

I would love to hear your comments about this topic and about this post.

The building in the picture at the top of this post is where I went to kindergarten. It was called Hamilton Square school at the time. It has been the Board of Education building for at least 25 years, maybe more. It’s hard to see in the picture, but over the doorway it says, “Knowledge Comes, But Wisdom Lingers.” There are also four icons below the saying. They are an open book, a candle in a candle holder, a lamp that looks like if you rubbed it a genie would come out and a globe. My kindergarten class picture was taken in front of these doors. I still have the picture.