Impromptu

On Friday, I had my first Oral assignment for English.

I had to give an impromtu speech, meaning I had 5 minutes of prep before actually giving the speech.

To put it mildly, I bombed it.

Ok, ok....I didn't do that bad. I was passionate about my topic (more on that later), I was fairly confident I could do it, and I didn't stand in front of my mom for an hour going "I don't wanna do this!" which is something done very frequently in the past.

But I had no idea how to end it.

So I stood there for a full minute, floundering about like a dying fish, trying to semi-gracefully bring my thoughts full circle so I could just go cry in a corner already.

My mother was kind...she said for my first oral all year (and considering every other year I've completely copped out of it by doing some form of public speaking to appease Mom), it was pretty good.

I still wanted to melt into a puddle of shame and drip through the floor-boards and escape.

No such luck. The floors are carpeted.

But I lived.

Than, surprise, surprise! The next day, the lady who is in charge of our fundraising for the trip to Rome my youth group is making shows up at my house, informing me that tomorrow, I need to speak in church with another girl about our raffle ticket sales to help support the trip.

*heavy sigh*

I was distinctly reminded of the words 'impromptu speech'.

But I kicked myself in the butt and called Kelsey, my partner in this endeaver. It turned out she had even less notice of it than I did, which made me feel only slightly better.

The next day, just an hour before we had to speak, I showed her the outline for what we needed to say, and we decided who would do what. Because I had already seen it the night before, we agreed I should do all the parts that involved adlibbing, and she would just read off the sheet, which seemed more than fair.

Finally, the moment arrived.

I missed my que to get up there with time to spare, so there was this awkward moment of me walking rapidly up the aisle, my little white heels clicking on the tile floor.

I was praying, trust me.

It went fine. I was shaking for about fifteen minutes afterwards, even though I wasn't actually that nervous, but I guess my body figures public speaking is the equivalent of a near-death experience.

Oy.

Life is annoyingly impromtu.