Speakers Compete at Area Contest

by Julia Mills -- juliakwilson@gmail.com

Two stories created laughter during the Toastmasters Area Humorous Speech Contest on Thursday, Aug. 23, 2007, at 6 p.m. at the Barnett Shoals Fire Station.
            Executive Director of Development at the Charity Distribution Center, Sally Rogers, was the first to speak in the competition which had 12 people in attendance.  The speech titled “Relatives” began: “My Uncle Chester loved his Miller and Pabst” which supported the idea if someone saw a Dodge pickup truck going down the road with a brown paper sack flying out the window, it was him. 
            A trip to the Georgia State Patrol to have his eyes checked confirmed that his eyes were too bad for him to drive anymore, but this did not stop him.  He turned in his Dodge for drinking and driving on a tractor.
Once those keys were taken from him, he called the local hardware store and had a riding lawn mower delivered.  He finally gave in to walking and drinking. 
Rogers ended her speech saying she “learned from her determined uncle” and “you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.”
            A mortgage consultant for SunTrust, Stevie King, began his speech titled “Indianapolis” by asking, “What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done?” He began to speak about his sophomore year of college.  With his wife and 4-year-old son present he seemed hesitant to embellish on too many details. 
            After taking a trip to Indianapolis with the Florida State University band and meeting girls, one of his friends decided he wanted to go back to see the girl he had met.  Driving into the night with $52 and “lots of adult beverages,” they got to a gas station at 3 a.m. with the plan to call the girls from a payphone. 
What they found was the girls had a disconnected phone, so they decided to spend the night at the gas station.  After they had enjoyed several of their adult beverages they saw 15 police cars surrounding them.  The cops yelled “put your hands out the window!”
            They were accused of being the two suspects in the armed robbery that had happened only 30 minutes before.  All of their alcohol was poured out and they realized that this had been “the stupidest thing they had ever done.”
            King won the competition after three judges met and discussed the speeches.  Though King won, Michael Ware, a member of Toastmasters who was in attendance said, “If I had been a judge, I probably would have scored the contest differently.” 
            The speeches are scored on different criteria, such as poise and organization.  Ware felt that if the criteria had been strictly followed then Rogers would have won, though King’s “speech was the more entertaining of the two and his personal charisma was stronger.”
            Toastmasters, an international organization that meets once a week and helps professionals learn better speech, presentation and leadership skills, had two local clubs competing in the contest: Classic City Toastmasters and Athens Toastmasters. The competition was not a regular Tuesday or Thursday meeting for either of the clubs.
King, the contest winner, who began Toastmasters in November 2006 and was voted into this competition, was eligible to compete in the Division Contest in Savannah, Ga., on Sept. 22.