A Speech

The Rock of Norm Series : I

I was in Form 5 and I was the Head Prefect. The school's speech day came around and the principal called me to his office to tell me to deliver a speech to the parents at the gathering about the responsibilities of a student. I had about a week before the event so I spent the time ' doing a back and forth ' about what I'll say.

 

It occurred to me then that this was the first time the Head Prefect was asked to give a speech on that day. It may have had something to do with my latent communication style then. I figured that he wanted something that was landmark. On my side, I had never given a speech before.

 

I tuned in to all the great speeches … Mark Anthony's at Caesar's funeral, the Gettysburg address, JFK in Berlin and several others. It started to give me a feel for effectiveness and the general demeanor the speech ought to take. However like Anthony I denied ambition. I wanted the speech to be like any other speech … as effective … as common with the usual palliatives. People have normally heard it all before … it was the ceremony.

 

What I didn't want to do was to say something incisive … ground breaking even. For instance, I might have wanted to say that as young students we needed teachers who showed some enthusiasm in order to fuel our own initiatives for responsibility. People do that … when they see someone else take the trouble, they start to take the trouble themselves.

 

But that meant ' don't use the chicken exit, ' say the right thing. But who was I going to inspire? … was I kidding myself? … I was waking to the fact that it was an English school system … it was set up by missionaries with chapel services every Friday …  it was 1971, 14 years after the nation's independence from Britain. I labored over a plain and simple speech high on rhetoric.

 

I delivered the speech with a voice that was quaking on a bad conscience. Curiously that made the speech sound like I meant it. Before I left, the principal called me over to the buffet area and in a broad smile said, ' excellent speech. '  My mind was tuning in and out of issues … but I got home … the weekly top ten was on the radio … Credence Clearwater Revival was still on the charts … the words were crystal clear … ' Someone told me long ago, There's a calm before the storm ... It's been comin' for sometime.'  It got me thinking about starting to shave.