Over the 15 years I spent in the college classroom, most of the classes involved some sort of speech, group presentation or, more accurately, an attempt. In the beginning of every class section, I tell my students that there’s a bar below which so few people go that they’re likely to be able to exceed that minor requirement with ease.
However, some students have managed it. Every couple terms I had the joy of adding to the list. I’ve had ridiculous topics, ridiculous visual aids and even more ridiculous delivery. I think some of the students are actually trying to go below the bar.
It’s started at Emerson College. Body modification had just started being “cool” among the outcast set. The little goth poets would pierce each other with reckless abandon. A student started by saying “I’m going to talk about the history of piercing, how to maintain your piercing and finally, show you a video of one of my personal piercings being done. I have my tongue, my nipples and my labia pierced.” Oh crap. 2 out of 3 chances for an erogenous zone. The class held its collective breath until she announced that her video was on her tongue piercing. The relief was palpable.
Of course, the suffering Goth poets also wanted to talk about – you guessed it – their poetry. They talked about poetry slams, poetry books and if we were particularly unfortunate , their own poetry. I hated that. I had to pretend to find their poetry relevant and moving. It rarely was. But one poem sticks out in my head for its sheer horror.
Blood/Dripping down the wall/So red/Splat goes the spider.
I didn’t know whether to call the exterminator or an asylum. I figured if Douglas Adams had heard about this poet, he would’ve added another one to the list above Vogons.
It didn’t stop when I changed institutions, though. When I was at Wayne State University in Detroit the occasional speech slipped below the bar.
“The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” was one of the first contestants in the “Worst Speech I’ve Ever Heard” hall of fame. She pulled a tattered People magazine out of her back pocket, said she was going to talk about the 50 most gorgeous men in the and the most beautiful girl in the world. She then proceeded to talk about 7 of the men in the tattered, dated magazine. When she talked about the men, she gave graphic images of what she wanted to do to each of the men. The prostitutes in Detroit blushed collectively at her descriptions. I remained unmoved. She really wasn't all that creative. Then she announced “And the most beautiful girl in the world is me! I’m the most beautiful girl in the world!” I actually said "Thank you for stealing seven minutes of my life," as a comment.
She worked hard to stay under the bar with her next speech, where she argued that a house was better than an apartment because you could ride your bicycle. The incredible logic underlying this pronouncement was not lost on the audience.
The trend continued with a wonderful speech about nutrition and exercise. Still working on her visual aid when I walked into the room, she presented us a crayon-drawn board with three bicycle wheels that we should interpret as pie charts. The fact that they were merely lists of information pretending to be a graph we should politely ignore. We also were careful to avoid noticing she spell weight loss “weigt los.” The most profound statement was that fried chicken was an excellent weight loss choice. Had I been in the South at the time, I might have even considered the argument. We weren’t.
“Boxers vs. Briefs” started my list of things not to do in working with visual aids. I discovered that there were students willing to strip naked to demonstrate their points. Live weapons were added shortly after to a newly created forbidden list.
When I moved to my first “real” academic position, I joyfully listened to more “speeches that should never have been made.” I heard about pagans, pronounced ever-so-carefully as “pajans” with particularly attention paid to the Wiccan attachment to “secret bloody rituals.” The joy of cooking was often replaced by the joy of burning in demonstration speeches. I had maps that strangely misplaced the entire Middle East. Another speech that mentioned “offing” the president was quickly stopped when I informed the student that free speech really didn’t cover treason.
Eventually, I started a list of speeches that really shouldn’t be done. The students hated it because they had to be imaginative. However, I decided that if I had seen one more condom-covered banana I was going to commit fruiticide. I put sex on the list when I realized that 99% of students can’t get through the speech without giggling , blushing or fainting. I knew if I heard one more biography speech on Madame C.J. Walker, Abraham Lincoln, MLK, JFK or Magic Johnson I was going to build a time machine and break the grandfather paradox.
In my second “real” academic position, I thought maybe I had broken the curse. No, I hadn’t. “Street guns and their black market prices,” came with a felonious picture of the orator shirtless, underage and holding a pistol. Truly, it was a treat, delivered in a faux-street patois that would’ve been convincing had the Caucasian student not been from a suburb of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (the gang capital of the world, I was assured.)
I moved on again and got ready to add to the cursed speech list. The one that comes most clearly to mind is the wonder that was the “Pirates vs. Ninja” speech. Arguing one side and then the other, the debate was which group could beat the other and the conditions under which this possible. Some of the motivational speeches managed to leave us all equally cold and bored.
There were many speeches over the years. Honestly, many of them were interesting, informative, well-delivered and well-structured. And yet the ones that fell beneath the bar always seem to be the most fascinating.
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