The things you learn

So I was going to pick up Megan at the airport, but there was a message on the answering machine at home from John at toastmasters, asking me to please come to the installation (the same night), because I was being honored and it would be really great if I was there. I did not want to go to the Installation, I wanted to pick Megan up at the airport, but Adrienne heard the message and said she would pick up Megan--I should go to toastmasters. The Installation was at China Inn, so I'm not eating there. I won the best speaker award six months ago. They tally up all the wins that people have during the meetings and the person with the most awards wins the six month award. I'm not exactly keeping tract, but I think I've won best speaker for every speech I've given in the last six months, so "being honored" was kind of no big secret--I probably won best speaker again. It's a volume thing. I speak a lot.

So the food wasn't as stinky as I thought it would be, but the table topics were a little weird. The first question was how have the skills you learn at toastmasters improved your love life. What's a love life? My question was have I ever gone over my time limit and said something I wish I hadn't said. As if. I love every word out of my mouth. Oh well. The evening was not starting off too well.

Then stinkier food arrived and I had to pass the platters of it around--yuck. During the break to eat, I figured I better carry the conversation at the table, since I wasn't eating, but my table mates had some pretty good topics. Beth had just been to Hawaii for the district conference--I'm jealous. Joan is a teacher and she was talking about the physiological mechanic of reading--large numbers of we humans have only been reading for a couple hundred years--our brains really don't have an efficient way of learning it yet. Very interesting. Then Lori was our key note speaker. Lori has been in toastmasters for 13 years, but her voice kept breaking while she was talking. It made it seem like she was nervous, but I don't think she was. Her speech was ok--the secret of happiness, but the ending was very cool. A chinese proverb. If you want to be happy for an hour, take a nap (I thought of you Mom). If you want to be happy for a day, go fishing (Jackson). If you want to be happy for a month, get married (everyone laughed). If you want to be happy for a year, inherit money. If you want to be happy for a lifetime, help someone else. Isn't that cool.

I won best speaker. My box is getting full. After the meeting, Janet took me aside to tell me how impressed she was with my class. She had been there for jury duty and heard some of the interviews afterwards. So I shared my horror story of my class's field trip. We went on a field trip to the courthouse downtown. They asked what did I want to see and I said I would love a tour of the file room. I think that their system is really inovative and neat. They told me I was the only person, ever, to ask for a tour of the file room. The kids were not nearly as impressed as I was. Next we went to a civil courtroom. They had an motion on an property question. It just went on and on and for me it was pretty boring. Afterwards the Judge offered to call the criminal court to get us into an interesting criminal case, but we were out of time. The kids had loved being in the court and listening to what to me was a boring motion. Our guide informed the judge (to my mortification) that we had used up all our time touring the file room. Live and learn.