Speech Class

I should prob­a­bly friends-lock this, except that my speech pro­fes­sor has specif­i­cal­ly stat­ed that he does­n’t check his email, much less do any­thing else online. The school says he has to have an email address, so he does—but appar­ent­ly, it’s just a bit­buck­et for all intents and purposes.

I gave my first speech today. It was sup­posed to be “a sto­ry that makes a point.” I thought about it this morn­ing, did a run-through with shad­owkatt tim­ing me, decid­ed it need­ed more trim­ming, and left for school.

In my first class, Reli­gion & Psy­chol­o­gy, we were talk­ing about “Heav­en & Hell.” The pro­fes­sors showed the film What Dreams May Come with no warning—and with no tis­sues avail­able. I did­n’t hap­pen to have any with me, either, as I’d elect­ed not to take the Big School Bag with me today. That was Not Fair. I could not stop cry­ing. I left class, went to the ladies’ room, got a soda, went back to the door—and had to go back to the ladies’ room. For some rea­son I asso­ciate that film with both los­ing shad­owkatt’s father, and with fears of los­ing sam­bear to some sense­less accident.

(I HATE hav­ing any­one know that I am cry­ing or have cried. I will do damn near any­thing to keep from cry­ing, and I’m good at it. I can­not remem­ber ever cry­ing at any school before, even as a lit­tle kid. So I don’t know why I just could­n’t con­trol myself today.)

I was real­ly look­ing love­ly by the time I’m sup­posed to give the speech—nose and eyes red, face puffy, make­up washed away or blur­ry. I am NOT one of those peo­ple who can look all pret­ty and fem­i­nine while cry­ing. My voice was a bit wav­ery and I was con­gest­ed, too. So I stood up, said, “Please excuse my voice and appearance—we watched a very mov­ing film in my last class” and plunged ahead.

I got an “A” and the pro­fes­sor specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned my com­po­sure, and that it came from a lot of prac­tice. I’m just very glad he did­n’t ask me how much I’d prac­ticed. Maybe the prac­tice of hav­ing done a fair num­ber of press inter­views and the like counts.