Like this blogs’ title says, my goal during this speech was to let others-11 on this night- know a little about me, to open up some, so I spoke about being the youngest of 10 kids, of how we were(and still are a close group. I went on to talk about my love of sports and of how I played baseball and basketball as a kid, was a decent pitcher and was part of a state-champion All-Star team when I was 14.

I also mentioned some of the bigger challenges in my life, like going on disability because the frequency of my seizures was making it difficult for me to hold a job.

Now, I didn’t exactly have the same level of fear that I had back in grade or high school when I had to give a speech, because, other than Ann, I don’t know the other people in this group like I knew people back in school and I am much older. I’m just assuming that’s why I couldn’t give speeches back then. More nerves!

This past Monday night, I finally gave my first speech to other members of the TOASTMASTERS group Ann and I belong to. It only had to last five or six minutes but to me, it felt like fifteen to eighteen minutes. Even so, I came through and got it done.

Yeah, I was a little bit nervous, but I finally got up there because I admire Ann and others who can get up there and talk about what they want in a calm, steady voice. Hopefully, I got near that range last night because once I got going, I felt better and a bit more comfortable.I give a lot of the credit for my success to Ann, because I looked at her the most throughout this speech. She had been telling me leading up to this night that she knew that I was capable of doing a decent speech and, by God, she was right!

Oh, one other thing: I also made sure that I mentioned my age(54), the fact that Ann and I have a beautiful and talented son and added that we’ll have been married 22 years this coming June. Overall, I thought that I did better than I thought that I would. Of course, it helped that I made some notes that I could refer to if I needed to and I did just that, quite often. Otherwise, I may have appeared more like a deer in the headlight all throughout my speech.