Hmmmm. So I am a pretty open sort of guy.  In groups and one on one I am pretty vibrant, loud and exuberant.
Whenever I think about having to do this on a larger scale, speak in public, as it were, it never seems to me like it would be all that difficult.  I can figure out what I would have to say and whether or not it will be amusing or not and it just seems so simple to me.  What I have learned is that this isn't entirely so.  All of this thinking that I know what to say is one thing, I mean hell I even get to the point of knowing so well what I would have to say that I get so confident that I never take down notes. I KNOW as I am thinking about it that I can do this.

But then comes me standing up in front of an audience.  What I have been learning over the years, through presentations and seminars is that it isn't nearly as cut and dried or easy as I make it out to be.  I dry up, my throat gets dry, and I forget what I was going to say.  It's not the hardest thing I have ever had to do to push through and talk but you know what?  My wit fails me, it's just gone.  The things that I have to say, they are just not there anymore.  Whether or not I had witty/funny points to make, I can't remember them anymore and I basically have to drag my ass through the presentation.  I also am twice as dumb as I was before, I miss points I was going to make and remember things after that were important for me to make.  Points that I never would have thought that I would have forgotten before I stood up. 

So now let's just ahead to the point I wanted to make today.
Not too long ago I got designated as the person who was going to be in charge of buying the gift for a guy here at work who was leaving.  I wasn't sure when I was designated that I was the best person for the job because, after all, I have only been here for 5 years and he left today after 23.5 years on the job.  There appeared to me to be people with a much longer history.  But I am thought of at work as the type of guy to go to when you need a prank or something pulled on someone and I really do enjoy being a force pulling the people together in my department so I decided that I would go ahead and do this. 

   The person leaving was going to the california so I sort of came up with a plan.  I would spend about half the money on a nice attaché case to help him look professional in the job search he was going to have to enter into once he moved down there.  The other half of the money would be spent on building him a kit of things that would help a canadian survive in the US.  Since the money was all going to be contributed on a per person, per what they wanted to give basis, I figured that this loose style of gift idea would work out pretty well.  And in the end it is what I ended up doing.  And in the end I managed to gather about $250 in gift money so things worked out quite well in that respect.

   The gift was really an assortment of things but each thing had to have a little patter or story about them related back or it wouldn't work as a gift nearly as well.  Even the attaché case itself had a bit of a side story to it to make it amusing.  I won't really go into that as you wouldn't get it for the most part. 

   But the kit itself was entirely obnoxious.  The first thing I did was take a rather big box and attach to handles to the top of it.  Then I took a wrapping paper that I had built and covered the entire box in it.  The wrapping paper was simply an american flag of a rather large size that had a million little maple leaves put into the white lines of the stripes.  Then I put about 30 of these on the box.  It was obnoxious and flamboyant to look at to say the least.  On the side of this in big letters I wrote 'A Canadian's Survival Kit for Life in America"  In this box I put all the little gifts that I had bought.  To each gift I had attached in my head a little story that had to be told.  You might see where this is going....'he attached a little story to each in his head and then had to tell the little story...out loud....in front of a group of people...and remember what he had to say for each one."

   Of course you all expect disaster...
   I even thought about this impending disaster a little.  I realized that there was no way that the gift would have the same impact that it could have it I wasn't standing up there giving the patter. I mean what the hell was he going to think the nightlight was actually for if I wasn't telling him?  And I thought, briefly as I thought about this, that I was going to choke up and that the gift wasn't going to be amusing at all and I was going to be all embarrassed.  But if there is one thing that will never be the end of a pleasant situation to me it is embarrassment.  This is something I don't mind all that much  And I know every single person that is going to be in the audience.  The only reason that I might not want to be at the podium in such a group is because I am not really the most pertinent person to be talking.  See above where I mention I had only been there 5 years.  But I, being the moron that I am, decided not to worry about it at all and to just get on with it.

   So flash forward to today.  There are 35 people in the banquet room, all joined up there for lunch. I am sitting at my table and rather than thinking about any of this stuff, I just ignore the situation and go on with my lunch.  At one point I remember have a flash of fear.  One of the other organizers came to me and asked me how we wanted to handle the speeches and when.  Luckily a manager had mentioned to me earlier that he had something to print out for lunch so I sent her over to ask him what he had to say.  She asked me who should go first and amidst the flash of fear I felt creeping up my back, I just said to her, 'either or, I don't care which.'  Nonchalant in the face of fear I do well. But let me tell you it was the first real feeling of dread that I had felt.  Hell even my manager had had the brains to write it all down before he started to talk. But then I got a second plate of food and decided to ignore the fear for a little while longer.  So my manager goes up and does his speech.  He does a not bad roast.  He makes some jokes and gets us all to groan and laugh.  If I had been thinking clearer I might have been a little bit nervous about the fact that I was going to have to top whatever it was that he was saying

   So boom all of a sudden he sits down.  No transition comments, just sits down.  Eek.  So I stand up and walk over to the podium.  I get up there and I don't' really notice anything at first because the first thing I have to do is participate a little bit in a joke. He had always been compared to a now defunct political leader from our province and as a prank I put a picture of the leader on the podium with the phrase 'goodbye x' above it.  X being our guy's name.  This is what was up on the podium all during lunch and it got the requisite laughs.  Well when I went up there my first task was to very quietly flip the picture to the other side where I had our guy's picture with 'goodbye y' above it where Y was the leader's name.  Then I looked up saw all the people.  These people...right away they weren't my friends...they were just a bunch of people in a crowd.  A huge block of ice hit the bottom of my spine for a second and I felt the same ache of fear that I had felt all those other times.  Right away I knew that I was a fool, just as I had been a fool all those other times.  But, this didn't matter much, I had to go on because he had to get his presents.

   I remember when I was watching the mgr that the microphone was just a little bit lower than we would have liked and I would have to either adjust it or remember that I had to ensure that I was speaking to the mic.  I can remember thinking about that as i started talking.  The first bit was easy, i introduced the present and called the guy up so i could give them to him.  So i gave him the first present with the patter and i got it mostly right even.  Not exactly how i was going to say it originally but damned close anyways.  I got the laughs i was craving, uh, i mean hoping for.  You know, i don't remember if i looked up during this time or not, i don't remember if i made eye contact with the audience at all, but you know, i think i had to have, because there was nothing else to do with my eyes that made any sense. i can remember seeing the microphone really close and i can remember sensing where it was and when i had to lean in a little more or whatever.  I do know that i didn't have time so much to look up at the audience during the rest because after i had brought up the Kit, i was either digging into it or i was presenting. I am not sure. i do know that i kept to the stories for each time well and got laughs all the way through.  So i guessed i had kind of done ok. 

   But then came the reactions.  Of course at the end there were applause but i expected that no matter how well i did, after all they were for a guy who was going away.  But...the reactions they overflowed over me.  Before i had left the room i had a couple of people say that i had done an excellent job that it was really funny.  As i was leaving the room, two people asked me if i could handle their going away parties.  And they weren't joking.  By the time i was back at work i had been told by a few more people that i had done a very good job.  at one point a friend, who had already told me that i was funny, said it again and out of the blue said that she was really proud of me.  With a couple more i tried to be self deprecating and they pshawwed that attitude and made me take a bow. Some others started calling me Mr. MC. I will tell you something, i don't take such complements well and i was either dodging them in some way or just standing there blushing like a head bobbing radish.
   Now i don't really think i did well enough to warrant such a reaction as i was doing it.  But you know, this was way beyond a polite reaction from a group of people that definitely is not the most polite of people.  And i just think that is very very cool.

   The strange part, the part that still makes me wonder if i am going to be able to stand up to do this sort of thing without the rush of fear, it doesn't' feel like it has learned anything yet.  What it does remember is the wedding i went to where i was asked and had accepted to be the MC, and how incredibly relieved i had been when a relative had asked to be such instead.