there are manuals. Multiple. Smh.
The first speech everyone does is called an Ice Breaker speech. It's a 4-6 minute speech introducing yourself. There's not many specifics since it's the first speech and the intent is basically to get you up and talking in front of the crowd. Of course, I wanted my speech to be humorous because I feel like that helps when public speaking. I just make people laugh and it takes the focus off of me specifically. Win win. After a little debate, I finally decided that I should talk about being accident prone. Oh, the stories I have to share! I picked the best ones and got to work on drafting the perfect speech. On paper, it was a well written speech but in person it didn't go over as well. I'm much more eloquent when writing versus speaking. Because of that, I got a little lost towards the end and stumbled over the ending a bit. Overall, it went okay for my first speech and the club voted me as best speaker of the day!
Below is my first speech. In written form. Because no one wants to see the video of me actually speaking. ha! Enjoy!
When I was thinking about what to talk about for my ice
breaker speech, a million things filled my mind. Maybe I should talk about my family.
Or maybe I should talk about where I’m from. Or even all the things I like or enjoy doing. Then, it hit me. The one
thing that really defines me the most, and paints a true picture of who I am is
a small little fact about me that could sum up my entire life.
I am accident prone.
Or an accident waiting to happen. However you’d like to say it, that
statement perfectly describes me. I’ll give you some examples that start back
when I was 4 years old.
I am the youngest of three girls and it seems that the
accident prone gene skipped right over both of my sisters and I got a heaping
helping of it! Because I’m the youngest, I always wanted to do everything my sisters
did, which they both hated! I would wear their clothes, steal their toys, and
play with their friends!
One day my middle
sister and her friends were pushing each other down a giant hill, and they
would roll to the bottom of it over and over again. They seemed to be having so
much fun and I decided since my sister was doing it, I had to have a turn! I
got to the top of the hill, my sister’s friend pushed me and I began to roll to
the bottom. But, I guess at the age of 4 years old I hadn’t learned how to
properly roll down a hill because by the time I reached the bottom, my
collarbone was broken. My sister says it
was not her fault and I should have just left her and her friends alone.
A few years later, my oldest sister, my cousin, and I were
all jumping on the trampoline and playing wrestlers with my cousin’s Ultimate
Warrior Pillow Pet. Small town life, y’all. We had to entertain ourselves! My
sister said “I’m going to win. You lay on the trampoline and I’ll fall on top
of you with the Ultimate Warrior.” Since she’s the oldest, I of course did what
she said. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have let her win, because when she
and the Ultimate Warrior fell on top of me to win the match, they broke my arm.
I say “they” because to this day my sister blames my broken arm on the Ultimate
Warrior and says she had nothing to do with it!
After that, the broken bones and major injuries subsided for
the most part. That is until about three years ago, and it seems that it has
all gone downhill since.
It was Christmas Eve and I had just left church with my
family. It was raining that evening, but I needed a couple of last minute gifts
because I am also the world’s biggest procrastinator. The only place open at
that time was Walgreen’s so I found the closest one and headed inside. As soon as I walked in the door, I ended up
on the floor. I was wearing heels, the floor was wet, my shoes were slick and
there was no wet floor signs in sight! I tried to get up quickly in hopes that
no one saw my terrible tumble, but I couldn’t move. I was stuck in the middle
of the floor in Walgreens with a torn ACL. How in the world I can manage to
simply fall down and tear my ACL, I will never know. It’s still torn, by the
way and I definitely should not be wearing these heels right now.
I moved to Athens from Augusta shortly after this incident.
I had barely been here a month when I noticed that I couldn’t put my earrings
in one morning. I was having my headshots for our work website taken so naturally
I was trying to go above and beyond that day. As I was putting in my earrings,
I noticed that my left earring just continuously fell to the floor as I tried
to put it in. Finally I grabbed my earring and ran to the bathroom to look in
the mirror as I put in my earring and realized that my earlobe was split! After
years of wearing heavy earrings, my poor ear had enough and the piercing split
open completely. I will spare you the visual because it’s not a pretty site,
but my earlobe is still split and sort of resembles Ms. PacMan. If you ever see
me wearing earrings, please note that it involved tape and lots of dedication!
Of course, these few incidents that I have described for you
are the worst of the worst and there are plenty of other incidents that have
only hurt my pride. I’ve been known to slip over a patch of spilled soap in
Target. Or break my sister’s dining room chair and end up on the floor. Or you
know, just fall over my own two feet! At this point, I think my family and
friends have even looked into bubble wrapping me on more than one occasion.
Maybe one day I’ll be less clumsy but for now, I think I’ll just keep adding to
my accident prone injury list!
Sassy as always,
AK
No comments:
Post a Comment