Monday, May 11, 2009

speech therapy

this morning, as i sent my congratulatory 'YAY!' to kristine, via our perpetual scrabble game, for finally being able to present her 50-page MASTERpiece, i began to reminisce about all the many times i've had to present some work of mine in front of a class. now, nothing i have done can even come close to her intense MASTER research, but is more along the lines of trying not to get beat up or thrown in detention in high school.

the scariest assignment was when i had to work with the girl who was goth ahead of her time, back when everyone else was still rocking the lumberjack flannels and kurt cobain was alive. not only did she wear a plastic barbie doll leg with red sharpie on it to look like blood around her neck as a decorative accessory, but she also hated me. i was too scared of her to talk shit about her then, she just hated me because she could, i guess.

after two awkward afternoons at the local library where i spent the time reading the collected works and countless biographies of william blake, while she spent the time drawing pictures of me hanging from a noose (i'm assuming it was me, she got the bangs just right), i pretty much wrote my presentation and figured she could say whatever she wanted to after i talked. well, as it turned out, what she ended up saying was that i stole her speech and that she had nothing left to say. consequently she failed, and spent the rest of our time in high school giving me death looks and kicking my shins from under her desk.

there was also the time that and i got drunk on my free period from the convenient stash of my mom's foster's keg cans and then 40 minutes later was swinging my legs from my history teacher's desk babbling something about jacksonian democracy. kristine sat there burning me up and laughing the whole time because she knew how wasted i was. she got yelled at and i got an A+.

considering that my oratory skills seem to have been somewhat successful in the past, i find myself now wondering if there's a way that i can exploit my natural talent to work for me.

well, maybe there's no need for me to go that far, but at the very least i can spend ten years making this fabulous picture in paint instead of showering like i should be doing.

ps. i had to look up how to spell 'speech' in my scrabble game, just to make sure.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hate group projects. People were always making fun of my barbie leg necklace and it made me sad, which I then masked with the white make-up and black lipstick. True story.

rachaelgking said...

Ugh. Working with people is the WORST- at least, when you can't choose them. One person (ME) always ends up doing everything (ME). I feel your pain...

Vic said...

That's why teachers assign group projects - it's better than 'Survivor'!

Brian said...

My main mission while I was in school was to get the hell out of school. I'd rather put snakes down my pants than have to do HOMEWORK, or group projects, ilk!