I think it’s only fair to tell you that I’m picturing every one of you in your underwear.
A few of you should go put on robes. A few of you should not.
I’m glad we’re all mature adults and can tackle these kinds of issues. The issue here being my absolute loathing of public speaking. And by loathing, I mean I will hurl myself to the ground and start flopping like a flounder if no other excuse serves to get me out of a speaking gig.
Really. I hate it. The sweating, the shaking, the roiling, the spasms. And that’s just my face. Throw me up behind a lectern before a group of more than five or six and I’m suddenly that hideous little girl from “The Exorcist.” Head spinning around on my neck, open wounds appearing in my flesh, spewing pea soup . . . and that’s just while I’m introducing myself.
I know what you’re thinking. But, Mike. A guy like you who prattles on in written form — who won’t shut up, in fact — seems like a natural to speak before a crowd and bore them until they cry.
But, no. The last time I had to speak publicly, I found myself at the front of a room at the Portland Public Library. Michelle Souliere, from Strange Maine, was aiming a high-powered rifle to ensure I didn’t try any funny stuff, like the aforementioned flounder act, to get out of delivering a single word.
In my head was sheer eloquence. I would introduce myself, maybe offer up an anecdote or two and really get things going with a few lines from Plato’s “Symposium.” In my thoughts, I sounded a bit like Morgan Freeman, with just a dash of the smooth-talking lizard from the Geico commercials.
What came out when I opened my actual mouth was more like Bobcat Goldthwait, if Bobcat Goldthwait were very drunk. And, you know. Still alive.
I can actually see the sentences I’m about to deliver. To my eye, they look like intricate bows fastened to elegant gifts. But once they leave my head and exit through the quivering cavern of my mouth, bad things happen. Those bows twist themselves into hideous, intricate knots. Fully intact sentences start to crumble and fall apart like stale muffins. Fragments fly from my lips before I can rein them in and the result is a lot of “uhhh” and “errr” and “duhhh” where there used to be meaningful words.
The Geico lizard is dead. Morgan Freeman ate him, I think.
It’s a terrible thing, this speakophobia. I get up there and I see all of your faces looking back. I know that one on one, I’d like to stay up until dawn with you, having deep conversations about everything, up to and including the meaning of life. I could probably handle two or three of you at once, even. But 10? Twenty? Thirty? Forget it, bubba. Those faces blend together and you start to look like the walking dead come to eat what’s left of my brains.
The age of the brain-eating crowd doesn’t matter. I was once invited to speak to a group of fourth-graders in a classroom setting. Just kids bored in their chairs. Kids are awesome. Love kids. But a mob of them? Staring from their chairs like those freaks from “Village of the Damned?” I spent the entire hour eying the door, lest the children rise up to sacrifice me to the corn.
It’s a terrible thing, this fear, likely rooted in some childhood trauma such as bed-wetting or Mr. Rogers’ scary sweater. And it’s a handicap because for some reason that remains mysterious to me, I get invited to a lot of speaking engagements. Libraries, bookstores, the Literary Union for the Clinically Insane. . . . Recently, I was invited to speak before a group of graduating students. The teacher who invited me sweetened the pot by adding that the other speaker is a former porn star. Porn stars, as I understand it, are not shy about speaking before groups.
There are also active invites from a pair of libraries and I can only fake so many seizures. Flop around like a frog in a lab experiment too often and there’s a chance that it will stick. So I go back to the tired old advice I’ve been hearing since I first confessed my fears to a former porn star.
Focus on one face in the crowd. Take copious notes and refer to them where needed. And when all else fails and you feel you’re about to be set upon by the carnivorous crowd, picture them in their undies and just keep swinging.
With all of those tools at my disposal, I should be just fine. I’ve got my thoughts all laid out like tomorrow’s wardrobe. A brief joke, a clever anecdote and I’m on my way. In my head, I sound like James Earl Jones.
And you, sir, look ridiculous in that onesie.
Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. You can invite him to speak to your group of three — dressed or undressed — at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.
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