Say Goodbye

Dinner, or a meeting?

It was the night before the National Day holiday, and many members had already left town. The day before, the officers talked it over: with so few people around, should the club book a restaurant and turn the evening into a holiday dinner, or keep the meeting room? A dinner sounded fun. The worry was the speakers, who had prepared, and a noisy dinner table is a hard place to give a speech.

By Tuesday morning the sign-up list was still short. The officers settled it: keep the meeting, drop the roles nobody had taken, and let whoever came cover the rest. Anyone who wanted to bring dinner to the meeting room was welcome.

A former member once said there is no meeting Shenzhen Toastmasters cannot run. That night proved it again: seven members and four guests, and the meeting ran from opening to awards.

Nobody voted

At noon Tao rebuilt the agenda with the fewest possible roles, and asked the obvious question: with this few people, do we still need a vote? The Meeting Manager’s answer was short. No vote. Everyone who comes gets one.

At the end of the night everyone held up a BEST card for the photo. Tao posted it with one line: everyone is at their best. Danny, who was away, saw it and wrote back: the whole room got BEST.

Two speeches

Mini spoke first, “Beauty in the Wrinkles”, about how she grew up as a teacher. She crumpled a sheet of paper on stage, and her slide put it plainly: scars become part of the canvas. Stella evaluated her. The next morning Tao said he was looking forward to the parts she had left out, in her next speeches. She promised they would come.

Camellia gave “Eat Well, Feel Well”, a speech meant to get the audience eating well and remembering meals that mattered. She had kept reworking the script all the way up to the day. Afterwards Tao suggested she try memorising by scenes next time, a method he has found works well. Nobody signed up to evaluate her, so the whole room did.

Table Topics: saying goodbye

Jason took Table Topics under the theme on the poster: what have you finally learned to let go? The poster borrowed the farewell at the Grey Havens from The Lord of the Rings, with figures on a pier waving at a ship sailing west.

The room did not stay at the Grey Havens. Anna had planned something like decluttering, saying goodbye to things. She ended up acting out a full breakup. Stella also meant to keep it light, but an old memory came back: her story was true, about quitting a boss who kept rewriting the sales commission every time her numbers went up, and starting her own trade business. By the end, as one member put it, nobody got a graceful breakup; they were all a mess. Anna’s observation the next day: when you have no time to prepare, your brain reaches for things that really happened.

Jason said he still had one scene he never got to use: your ex wants to return every gift you ever gave her, and you have to talk face to face. Tracy’s view was that a courier would do, and anything more is just an excuse to stay in touch.

The youngest guest

One of the four guests was Kaixin, Tao’s son, who is in third grade and has never dared to go on stage. So Tao found him a way: Tao asked the questions on stage, and all Kaixin had to do was say yes or no. Then he ran a survey of his own, going round the room asking everyone whether they preferred cats or dogs, and his father kept the tally on a crumpled sheet of paper: roughly a three-way split between cats, dogs and both. He meowed now and then, which Mini said reminded her of her niece. He spent the rest of the evening reading a children’s history book in the back row, then left it behind. It turned up in Tao’s bag the next morning.

Cecilia, who could not come, said her two-year-old daughter watched the video and asked what the boy was doing. Tao suggested she bring her next time. Stella’s view: children who come along grow up at SZTM together.

Who was there

Seven members and four guests: Kaixin, Zhouzhou, Smith and Eric. Mini kept chatting with Eric all the way to the metro station. Winston, last week’s photographer, could not make it and sent a note instead: farewell is a romantic and beautiful word for the night before National Day.

The next morning Susie said she regretted missing it, and guessed that a small room made it easier for people to open up. Tao agreed.