I recently became a member of a junior toastmaster (ages 13-18)... The first meeting was the Friday before last. We mostly just talked about what we'd be doing the rest of the time.
Anyways, we were told to write up an "Icebreaker"... a speech to tell people about yourself. When I got home I wrote it in 14 minutes, then spent the rest of the week trying to memorize it. I worked really hard and performed it for my family a couple times.
Here's how it went (with a bit of editing so I could post it):
I've always thought life was wonderful. And I hated it when people didn't. I hated it when people thought life was terrible, and were sad because of it. So I tried to make them happy, I tried to make them enjoy life, and seeing these people enjoying life means that life is
wonderful... In other words, I love to see people smile.Even better is making
people smile... To know that I
, if even only for a shadow of a moment, made that person happy, can make me beam.So my whole life I've tried to make people smile... First I did ballet. Who doesn't love the graceful movements of a dancer? And when I performed, I knew there were people, there in the audience, watching
me, and I knew they were smiling... and I smiled my grandest just to make sure. Smiles, I've found, are contagious.Then I turned to acting. I've always loved acting, especially in musicals, because I can dance, and sing, and act all in one, and make people laugh, cry, and most importantly, smile
. I was in a play every summer--and more--for three years. I went to ballet four days a week and ran wild with my friends, my little sister and my new little brothers. Times were good... happy, smiley--more than a little busy, but oh so happy...Well, all good things must come to an end! And it was the one summer I chose not
to do a play--so I could spend more time with family--that I caught rheumatoid arthritis. Arthritis is always something I've associated with 230-year-olds (they laughed at that point), not dancing 13-year-olds... but now I have to associate it with myself.I have a hard time moving now, and even worse I can't dance. I can't even jump, let alone stand on my toes like I used to... but I have to keep smiling. I have to keep making others smile.I can't stress enough how much my family means to me... I don't know how I could... how I can
get through this if I didn't have my mom, my dad, my sister and my little brothers... and it was these people, the people I care about most, who helped me find other
ways to make people smile.I write now. I write stories that will one day sail out into the world like little ships. The book I'm currently working on is called Kings of Darkness: The
Riening Night
and hopefully one day people will read it, and laugh, and cry... and smile.I also play Piano. I've always needed music--that was one of the reasons I loved to dance... I used to be one with it, but now, I create
it. I hope to be a master pianist, and make others smile that
way.Dear Sister and I also do duets together for my family... it always brings a smile to their face, and sometimes even to others too.So through ballet to acting to writing to singing to piano, I've tried my best to make others smile, because seeing people happy can make me beam.My name is Galaxy, and my life is strange and wonderful. I hope this speech has made you smile. Thank you.I got a little nervous on the day I actually had to do it. I didn't think it'd be that bad, though, because I've performed in bunches of plays and loved it, so I thought this would be easy.
Wrong.
When it was finally my turn (I was last, by the way), and I got up there, I couldn't speak. I saw them all staring at me, and I didn't know what to do. The guy that held the timer nodded at me to show that he was ready, so I just smiled as big as I possibly could, and tried to make eye contact with every single person in the room to buy time. Finally, I started.
Normally, when I perform on stage, I'm a
little nervous before I go on, but the moment I get on stage it all melts away. It was different with this. The more I talked, the more nervous I got. By the time I sat down in my chair (after a loud applause, thankfully) my heart felt like it was pounding out of my chest and I could hardly breathe.
I've done a lot of thinking about that, and I think I've pinpointed why that was so much harder than acting for me... When I act, it's not me. It's the character saying those things. I might be nervous at first, but when I get on stage it isn't me anymore, it's my character, and she does it all, so if I mess up, no one knows, and if people judge my character harshly, it's not me they're judging.
If I'm giving a speech, it's actually
me they're watching. It's
me they're judging, and by the end of the speech they'll have formed an opinion of me. If I mess up, something I say might come out wrong, and how they see me might change.
I still had fun, though. Even though it was different than acting or dancing it was nice to spill out my life to people, to give them a piece of me... It was also nice to perform for someone... it's been too long.
Anyways, that was my first speech! Thank you for reading, and I hope you're smiling!
Galaxy
