Furious Writing
In a high school speech class I discovered what I could do when I forgot to do anything.
I fished around in the bowl, letting my fingers rake the little squares of folded paper, willing my fingers to seek out and find the one with the biggest number possible. I had read about osmosis—the transfer of information through contact—and I prayed, in that moment.
Osmosis, don’t fail me now.
I did not draw number one.
That was a relief.
But I did draw number two.
Curse you, Osmosis. Curse you.
I would be the second one up.
This was a problem.
Stop.
Rewind.
Weeks earlier—maybe three weeks, if I remember right—Mrs. Dalton stood in front of our high school speech class and laid out the assignment.
“The Veterans of Foreign Wars are hosting a competition,” she said. She may have been smiling, but for some reason I can never remember her as smiling.
Nice lady, though.
“The topic is ‘The Voice of Democracy.’ Everyone here will write a speech, three to five minutes, and read it into a tape recorder. We’ll be competing against every high school in the county, and the winner will get a college scholarship!”
I’m making this up—I have no idea what she really said or how she really framed this. But those are the particulars, I promise. Veterans of Foreign Wars. Competition. Voice of Democracy. Tape recorder. Scholarship. Three weeks.
Stop.
Fast forward.
We return to young Kevin, fishing around in a bowl, begging his fingers to pick the highest number possible. Because in three weeks, young Kevin had done anything but that assignment.
It wasn’t rebellion, if that’s what you’re thinking. It wasn’t even apathy. It was, as near as I can tell, just me being dumb. Irresponsible. Teen aged.
And now I was the second person up.
Blissfully, miraculously, graciously, Mrs. Dalton told us that while each presenter was recording their speech, we could use the time to make any tweaks or adjustments to our own. So... I had three to five minutes.
I took out my beaten and ragged Mead spiral and my leaky Bic pen. And I wrote.
Three minutes. I just had to fill three minutes. On the Voice of Democracy.
I was screwed.
But, give young Kevin credit, he was determined to go down fighting.
The kid who drew the first slot read his speech into the tape recorder. And, by the grace of God, his went closer to five minutes. Extra time. More breathing room. Furious writing.
When he was done, the class clapped, Mrs. Dalton smiled, and the stop button was pushed. She played back some of the audio, just checking. More time for furious writing. And then she popped the cassette out and put a new one in, and called me to the podium.
I stood. My heart was pounding. My throat felt dry. I clutched the Mead spiral in my ink-stained fingers, and stood at the little podium. The tape recorder was there, staring, waiting. Mrs. Dalton punched record.
And I read.
Words. Words that, only minutes earlier, had not existed. Or... well... yes, they did exist. Just not in that particular order. I always cheat, when writing. I use the same words, and just rearrange the order. Pro writing tip.
I read my Voice of Democracy speech. It was titled (hurriedly, only moments earlier,) Democracy: The Vanguard of Freedom. And nearly five minutes after I started reading aloud, Mrs. Dalton punched stop, played back a few seconds, and then took the cassette out. She handed it to me to label, and to my credit I did not unspool the tape, throw it in her face, and run screaming into the hall.
Stop.
Fast forward.
A month has gone by. I have once again completely forgotten about the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Voice of Democracy. I have forgotten that I ever wrote the phrase Democracy: The Vanguard of Freedom.
I have done passively well in Speech class, as I have in all of my other classes. I have been fruitless in my search for a girlfriend. I have spent hours playing video games. I have eaten many times my body weight in cafeteria pizza. I have sat through pep rallies and football games. Life, on a Texas high school campus.
And now I’m sitting in Mrs. Dalton’s room, one of dozens of kids enrolled in Speech. And I have just been congratulated.
Because I won.
My speech was picked. As the winner. The winner.
Just under five minutes of me reading into a tape recorder. Just under five minutes of my writing furiously, staining my fingers with black ink, dumping every syllable I could think of onto two pages of notebook paper—anything that had to do with democracy.
And I won.
There would be a scholarship. There would be an award ceremony. There would be a certificate, and a nice meal, and the congratulations of everyone. My Granny would be proud of me. My church would celebrate me.
And I would have to read the speech again, in front of everyone.
I cannot catch a break.
Stop.
Fast foward.
Here we are, today. The year 2024. We’re 35 years out from that morning when I walked in to Mrs. Dalton’s classroom and was suddenly reminded that I had to give a speech that I absolutely had not written. We’re more than three decades out from me writing furiously, staining my fingers, reading into a tape recorder. Three decades, and so many things have changed. So many moments have happened. I’ve fallen in love, fallen out of love, gone to college and graduated from college, gotten jobs and lost jobs, I’ve gotten married, I’ve traveled. Three decades, and lots of changes. But not that. Not that one thing.
That moment—panicked, praying for a miracle, writing furiously—was a defining moment in my life and, eventually, my career. That was among the first of the moments. The moments that hinted at something I didn’t quite click to until years later. The moments that told the world who I was before I caught on myself.
I saw, in that moment, what I could do. I discovered a talent. Yeah... I was a slacker who acted irresponsibly. Yes, I pulled one right out of my back end. Yes, I improvised and got lucky. But I also sat down and wrote, and what I wrote moved the souls of those who read it, and they rewarded me for it.
And that set the tone for everything that would come after.
I’ve been doing my assignments last minute ever since.
A Note at the End
If you want to read the original speech, I’ve typed it up as a separate post.
It took me forever to find it, digging through a crate filled with all of my old short stories, newspaper and magazine articles, starts to novels I never finished. Totally worth it.
Coming back to that stuff now, at 51 years old, it’s ignited something in me. I think there’s treasure in that box. I’m about to do some excavating, and I’m going to find it.
Pause.
I LOVE this! I participated in the same competition in my little town in Ohio, and I won, too. We got a Series EE savings bond ($50 or $100 - that I've since lost :( ). Moments like what you experienced are such a sign of intuitive creativity, extemporaneous and synergistic.
Great job! Appropriate sentiments for this day and age as well. Your story reminded me of AP English classes when we had 20 minutes to write a paper on whatever topic suggested by the teacher, usually some critique of a poem or essay or a comparison of two different stories. What that exercise taught me was to organize quickly and coherently, which carried me through all my years of university education. But it also taught me to prune out extraneous arguments and keep to the essence. Sometimes the less time the better. 😊