Mastering the Toast

A few months ago, my old team from work (I say old because unfortunately for me, I have since been moved to a new team with a new boss. I'll spare you all the complaining.) joined a cult group called Toastmasters. If you've never heard of Toastmasters, I'll take a moment to fill you in on this new found level of Hell.

I'll start by pointing out that in our specific club, the majority of the members are above the age of 45. There might be about 6-8 of us who fall below that. During our first visit to Toastmasters, we thought we were lost and had found an afternoon game of Bingo with the retirement home.

Personally, I would advise you to stay far away from anyone in Toastmasters. They will do their best to recruit you on a regular basis and will not stop until you join their group. They will tell you how much fun it is and all the great things you learn. But, they won't tell you how serious they take this group and how much torture it will be.

"Toastmasters International is a world leader in communication and leadership development. Every Toastmasters journey begins with a single speech. During their journey, they learn to tell their stores. They listen and answer. They plan and lead. They give feedback - and accept it. Through the community of learners, they find their path to leadership."


The Toastmasters mission statement is : "We empower individuals to become more effective communicators and leaders."

Basically, Toastmasters is a club to help improve your public speaking skills. During the weekly meetings there are many roles that must be filled. The roles rotate around to different members of your club so that you get a chance to do everything. So far, I have participated in the roles of Grammarian, Invocation, Jokemaster, and Speaker. I'll break those down for you to understand a little better.


The grammarian chooses a word of the day and presents it to the club during the meeting. The goal is for each person with a speaking role to incorporate the word of the day in whatever they are saying. The grammarian keeps track of those that successfully use the word of the day to give a report at the end of the meeting.


For the invocation, you get to help start off the meeting. The goal is to lead the group in a positive reading, prayer, exercise or thought process to get everyone thinking on a more positive note. After that, you lead the group in the Pledge of Allegiance.


Jokemaster is pretty self explanatory. After the invocation, you lighten the mood with a few jokes!


Speaker is also pretty much self explanatory. When you fill the role of speaker, you are giving a speech!


The absolute worst part of Toastmasters is Tabletopics. The Tabletopics Master comes up with questions that are usually centered around the theme of the meeting. For example, two weeks ago the theme was EGG-tastic so the Tabletopics Master came up with questions relating to eggs. During the Tabletopics portion of the meeting, the Tabletopics Master chooses different people to answer each question. Those people do not know what the questions will be ahead of time and they do not know they will be called on to answer a question either. Tabletopics are designed to helps train members to quickly organize and express their thoughts in an impromptu setting.
Y'all. It's HARD. Sometimes, there are fun questions that don't require much thought, but then there are weeks where the theme of the day is Global Warming and I want to crawl under the table and die.

So far, the role of Jokemaster has been my favorite. For obvious reasons. I called my niece Alabama to give me some of her best jokes, because she LOVES to tell jokes, and they did not disappoint. These are the ones I used.


Q: What's the difference between a guitar and a fish?
A: You can't tuna fish


Q:Why can't you give Elsa a balloon?
A: She'll let it go


Q: What do you call an old banana?
A: A Nana


Surprisingly, the tuna fish joke was everyone's favorite and received the most laughs.


I've only given one speech so far and that was the Ice Breaker speech. For the Ice Breaker, you speak for 4-6 minutes and tell something about yourself. It can be anything, but something to let your audience get to know you better. I was nervous, and I lost my train of thought during the closing paragraph so it wasn't as good as it could have been. Everyone told me I did a great job, especially for my first speech, but I was still upset with myself. I should have practiced more!
Overall, I have to say that giving a speech was not as uncomfortable as I imagine it being. This time at least! I'm scheduled for my second speech in June and I'm having the hardest time coming up with a topic for it since it can literally be about anything. I'm too indecisive for this!!

I originally wanted to create a new blog to post all of my toastmaster speeches, but I decided since I can't keep up with any of the blogs I already have, I shouldn't start a new one. Since I'm reviving Heapin' Helpin' of Sass, I thought that I would start sharing them here. However, since this post has become rather lengthy, I'll post my first speech in a new post over the next couple of days, so be on the look out for that!

Happy Wednesday, friends!


Sassy as always,
AK