Inspiring Your Audience

I wrote this and delivered it as speech number ten for my “Competent Communicator” designation in Toastmasters. I hope you enjoy it. The purpose of the speech is to inspire your audience.

“Never Give Up, Never Surrender.”

That is what Tim Allen says throughout the 1999 movie “Galaxy Quest.” It’s kind of corny, but I like the movie and the quote. In the movie Tim Allen plays Peter Taggart, the captain of a starship and crew on a weekly television show. It’s totally a parody of Star Trek. Real, friendly aliens from another galaxy watch his show after the television signal travels through space to reach them. They base their whole society around the show. Those aliens are on the verge of being wiped out by real, unfriendly, unattractive aliens. They come to earth to recruit Tim Allen and his crew to help them. They don’t realize that Tim is just an actor on a television show. Naturally, Tim and his crew never give up and never surrender, although of course it looks hopeless for a while.

Jack Cust was signed to a professional baseball contract by the Arizona Cardinals after he graduated from high school in 1997. He went right to the minor leagues and stayed there for 10 years. He made very brief appearances in the big leagues with 5 different teams, but always went back down to the minor leagues. In 2007 he was playing for the San Diego Padres in the minor leagues.

He told his agent to see if he could get him a contract with a team in Japan. On May 2, 2007 his agent called him and told him that 2 teams in Japan were interested. Twenty minutes later his agent called him back to say that the Oakland Athletics wanted him to be their designated hitter. (Mike Piazza had gotten injured and the A’s needed a new designated hitter.) He is in his 4th season now with Oakland.

The July 31, 2007 Sports Illustrated has a story about him called “The Legend of Jack Cust“. The last paragraph of the article says: Cust was five years old and sitting behind first base at Yankee Stadium when he first told his father that he wanted to be a professional ballplayer. “As long as I can remember my goal was to be a big league player — to make it in the big leagues,” says the legend. “I keep saying that this, right now, is my last chance at it. But really, it’s my first.”

Jack never gave up. Not even this year when he was sent to the A’s AAA team in Sacramento to start the season. I admire him for that.

In 1994 I found out that I did not get a job with Bell Atlantic that I had interviewed for and had wanted for a long time. I was crushed and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I put on a suit, grabbed a copy of my resume and went down the street to talk to a small company that sold computers. A few minutes after I got back home, about an hour later, I got a phone call. It was an offer from Bell Atlantic to start working for them on Monday. This was a different job than I had originally applied for, but it turned out to be the best job I ever had, at more than twice the money I would have accepted, and I ended up working for them for 12 years. I went from despair to wahoo in an hour. You just never now what might happen if you don’t give up.

In 1967 I was the starting pitcher on Hamilton PAL, a Babe Ruth League team in Yardville, New Jersey. I was 14 years old and Jack Cust’s father was the center fielder. Bob Demeo was the catcher on the team (Demeo Field in Veterans Park, Hamilton, NJ is named for him.) I couldn’t throw a curve ball to save my life. Bobby always put down a 1 for a fastball. I would shake him off and try to throw my curve ball. I can still see him shaking his head in disgust. I lost every game I pitched that year except for one and my arm hurt. I still wanted to pitch though.

In 1968, I was 15 and I taught myself to throw a great curve ball. I can’t remember how I learned. I think I just experimented in practice until I got it right. Jack Cust was still the center fielder, but I had a new, younger catcher. That one pitch made all the difference. I could throw it for a strike whenever and wherever I wanted. I won every game I pitched that year except for one that I lost, 1 to 0. I shared the leagues best pitcher award that year with Kenny Andrews, another pitcher on my team. 1967 was a terrible year and I could have given up. But I knew that I could do a lot better. I didn’t give up and 1968 was a great year.

Let’s go further back in the “wayback” machine.

June 4, 1940
Winston Churchill’s “We Shall Fight Them on the Beaches” speech to the House of Commons following, “Operation Dynamo,” the evacuation of 338,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk, France to England during WWII. These are the last few sentences of Winston Churchill’s speech.

“Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

I’m certain that Winston Churchill meant every word he said. He was the right man, at the right time, in the right place.

I very good friend of mine, Larry Lewis, used to say, ” The only way you don’t get what you want is you either give up or you die.”

I’m not giving up. Don’t you give up either.

In the immortal words of Captain Taggart, “Never give up. Never surrender.”

The Fastest Kid in 5th Grade

I wrote this story and presented it for a Tall Tale contest at my Toastmasters Club.

I was the fastest kid in 5th grade. I was in Mr. Clappaloochi’s class at Hamilton Square school in the early 1960s. He liked to have races between students during our class recess.

We would just go out in the ball fields and run. He would pick a couple kids for a race and say run to that pole and back. It was good exercise before I ever knew what a gym class was. I kind of liked running because I was fast and I usually won.

I even beat Tommy Schrudenfaster and Carly Runallday on a regular basis. They came close, but they never beat me. Carly was a girl, but she was pretty fast too. I was smaller than I am now and I could run all day.

Eventually, Mr. Clappaloochi got bored watching me beat all of the other kids in our class all the time so he challenged another 5th grade teacher and her class. I beat all of them too.

Mr. Clappaloochi got tired of watching me beat all of those kids too so he went to the Principal, Miss Ezzler Mezzler. He asked her if she would challenge another school to a race against me. Ezzler Mezzler said yes. I beat those 5th graders too.

Miss Ezzler Mezzler challenged every grammar school in Hamilton Township to a race. One by one, I beat them all. I even got my name and picture in the Hamilton Tattler, the local paper.

It said, “John Tedder, The fastest kid in 5th grade.” The picture of me was posed with me looking over my shoulder smiling at the camera pretending I was running.

Mr. Clappaloochi really liked his races. He arranged for me to run at the Mercer County Fair. He took out a newspaper ad and he said I could beat any 5th grader in Mercer County. I was really feeling the pressure, but I won again.

Next, I raced at the NJ State Fair when it was a really nice fair with cows and everything. I got new sneaks for that race. I got a pair of white, high top U.S. Keds. They were $2 a pair.

At the State Fair, Mr. Clappaloochi and Miss Ezzler Mezzler cheered me on at every race. I beat all of the other 5th graders and it wasn’t even close. Well, some of the races were close, but nobody beat me.

After that, I got invited to race at the 1964 Worlds Fair in New York City. What an honor. It was there that I met, for the first time but not the last, —-Forrest Gump. Thee Forrest Gump.

Nobody knew who he was at the time. He wasn’t famous or anything yet. There was no Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. He wasn’t a ping pong champion. He hadn’t met Lieutenant Dan yet either. But he was fast.

It was a close race, but he beat me fair and square. I think it was Jenny cheering him on from the sidelines that did it. Mr. Clappaloochi was inconsolable. He wept. Miss Ezzler Mezzler said to me, “Ya done good John. Ya done good.”

Forrest, I found out later, wasn’t really a 5th grader. He stayed back a year in 2nd grade. He should have been a 6th grader.

So you see, I really was the fastest kid in 5th grade.

The Charlie Rose Show

Charlie Rose is one of my favorite television shows. Charlie interviews a lot of interesting people from all different walks of life. He interviews politicians, reporters, soldiers, writers, scientists, business people and artists. I “meet” a lot of new, interesting people on his show. It has been broadcast on PBS since 1991.

He is on your local Public Television station Monday through Friday. The show is broadcast out of New York City at 11:00 P.M. each weeknight but, the show actually airs at different times depending on your location. Check your local listings. I shouldn’t stay up to watch it because it is so late, but I often do.

Sometimes he will interview several people at once, but usually it is just him and the person being interviewed sitting around a big, round, oak table. The background is always black unless he is not in his studio in New York. The show is an hour long. The hour may be split into two or three segments. Sometimes the whole hour will be the same person or group of people. It is commercial free except for the normal public television promotion of the sponsors at the start of the show.

I know that I can watch each interview on the shows website anytime after the original show airs, so I don’t worry about missing anything. On the website, each interview is a separate video. If a topic or guest doesn’t interest you, you can just skip it and watch the video you want.

I often see people on the show that I don’t know.  If I find them interesting, and I usually do, I’ll look them up online later. There are a lot of interesting people out there doing some amazing things. The show can be very inspiring.

Charlie’s first guest on October 13, 2009 was Ezra Klein of the Washington Post. Klein was in Washington, D.C. for the interview. Charlie was asking him about the health care vote in the Senate. Klein is a very good speaker. He doesn’t fill in what he says with a lot of umms and aahhs. A few fillers slip in, but not many. Since I joined Toastmasters last year, I notice this type of thing.

Representative Ike Skelton, a Democrat from Missouri and the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee was the next guest. He was in Washington, D.C. too. Charlie asked him questions about the troop request from General McChrystal for 40,000 additional troops and the recent corrupt elections in Afghanistan. He thought we needed to stay in Afghanistan to deny a safe haven to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

David Finkel of the Washington Post was the third guest and was interviewed for the last half-hour. He recently completed a book called, “The Good Soldiers.” He spent eight months in Iraq with a U.S. Army infantry battalion of 800 men from Fort Riley Kansas. Their average age was 19 years old. They spent 14 months in Iraq and then came home. They are now back in Iraq.

Finkel carefully describes EFPs, an extremely violent and destructive type of roadside bomb that these soldiers had to deal with on a daily basis. He describes the horrible wounds of one soldier in particular and how he eventually died back in the United States. The battalion lost 14 men killed and 75 received Purple Hearts during their time in Iraq.  You can read a review of “The Good Soldiers” in the New York Times.

Charlie asks probing questions and then lets his guests talk as he listens intently.

David A. Kaplan, who called Charlie Rose “the hardest-working man in TV news”, wrote a great article about him for Fortune magazine. It is titled, “Why business loves Charlie Rose.” I think David should  have chosen a different title, because the article is much more interesting than that. It has a lot of background information about Charlie and how he got to be where he is. I even learned that Charlie found the oak table himself and it is 60 inches in diameter. I highly recommend the article.

While doing some research for this post, I found out that Bloomberg Television is now rebroadcasting the Charlie Rose show in prime time. The previous nights show is rebroadcast at 8:00 P.M. in my area. If you go to Bloomberg Television here and put in your zip code, the page will tell you if the Bloomberg Channel is available in your area and on what station.

I watched some of the show on Bloomberg Television for the first time this evening. It was a little annoying because of the changing news messages at the bottom of the screen and the “crawl” on top of that. It is distracting. I am used to the oak desk, black background and Charlie interviewing a guest. I’ll have to wait and see if watching it at an earlier time is worth the distractions. My first guess is that I don’t think it will be worth it.

You can read a New York Times story about Charlie Rose and Bloomberg Televison here.

So now you and I have three different options to watch Charlie Rose: PBS, Bloomberg Television or the Charlie Rose website. I can never again say, “there is nothing on TV” because I will always be able to find a Charlie Rose show I haven’t seen.

Charlie Rose is always an excellent, well done show. If you are not familiar with it, do yourself a favor and check it out. If you are familiar with it, leave me a comment and let me know what you think about the show. I appreciate it.

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.

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.