Next Time, I Check My Watch

Today I gave a talk in church. Here is the tale...

A couple of days ago, when I began my preparation, I realized that I'm way more used to giving lessons than talks. When you give a lesson, you prepare thirty minutes worth of material and work in time for comments. Also, you aren't standing at a podium, speaking into a microphone, with the bishopric sitting behind you and everyone staring at you. Anyway, my talk was only supposed to be ten minutes, so I had to cut down a lot of the things that I wanted to say.

I successfully wrote a ten minute talk. I actually did a timed read-through that went a little longer than ten minutes, but I figured that I would be talking faster when I actually gave it (which happens when I get nervous), so it would work out just about right.

Sunday came. I walked up and sat on the stand, trying all the while to calm myself down and not make it obvious to the entire congregation that I was incredibly nervous. I willed my hands to stop shaking and made a conscious effort not to fidget. My friend and roommate, Michelle Bergsjo, went first. After about five minutes, she told the congregation that I had mentioned a concern for going over time, so she was cutting down her time. What a pal :) I got up and began to deliver my talk, glancing over at the clock so I could properly gauge my time. 11:20. I made a couple of dumb jokes and introduced myself, then got into my actual talk. I started to calm down at this point, and had almost gotten to the end my prepared material when I happened to glance up at the clock. 11:25. I panicked. How could it be that I had only spoken for five minutes? Had I really been speaking that fast? I rifled my brain for ideas to lengthen my talk, but there were none. Flustered, I wrapped up my talk, sitting down and feeling like a fool. I was both shocked and embarrassed. I asked Michelle if I had really only spoken for five minutes. She replied that we both had. We had left almost half an hour for the third speaker.

Or so we thought. After the intermediate hymn and a few minutes into the final talk, Michelle leaned over and whispered that the clock has stopped. I looked at the clock. Still 11:25. I looked at my watch: 11:40. Relief swept over me as I realized that I had indeed, spoken for a full ten minutes. I still felt slightly foolish about getting thrown off and ending my talk somewhat awkwardly (though my sister later insisted that she couldn't tell anything was amiss), but I could deal with that.

The good news is that it's over, and it will be a long time before I'm asked to speak in church again :)

The end.