Competition

One speech, two Table Topics sessions

Only one member signed up to speak, which prompted a practical question in the group the day before: “if there’s only one speech, can we make Table Topics longer, or add something more interesting?” The answer was to run two Table Topics sessions. The first took the meeting theme, Competition. The second asked a question the club had never formally put to itself: what brings you here?

Brownie’s speech was “Won’t be too late to start over again.” Her explanation, a week earlier, of why she signs up before she knows what to say is the best argument for the club’s whole method: “I read somewhere that without a warm-up period, it’s hard to come up with ideas at all. Once you’ve signed up, you start thinking about what to say, your mind starts warming up, and the idea gets clearer and clearer.”

The theme had an outside echo: the area speech contest results had come in two days earlier, with a club member taking second place in English speaking.

Afterwards

“Tonight’s meeting was exceptionally great, beyond what I imagined.” The evening ended with a decision made on the spot: next Tuesday would not be a meeting at all, but the club’s annual dinner. By the weekend a restaurant was booked and members were promising to bring wine.