Like Mena, I was an atrocious public speaker. (Who would have guessed?) In fact, I think I was worse, and I have what I would consider proof.
But unlike Mena, I was prone to self-torture for the betterment of my high school transcripts. So I was on the speech team freshman through senior years of high school, and I went to most of the tournaments. I never won, of course.
At the first tournament I went to, when I was a freshman, I think I was in some sort of junior division--and after rambling through my thoughts on nuclear waste advocacy, I actually managed to make it to finals. And I even got a small trophy.
It was to be my first and last triumph in speech.
Because, you see, after you get to finals once on the "junior" speech team, you "get" to participate in the "senior" competitions. Note that this was not a major triumph--I'm sure that, if I got to the "senior" level, *everyone* must. So it's not like that should've been an indication that I should continue on the speech team--but I did.
Anyway, in senior year I had my typical sorry speech, this time on Nature vs. Nurture. We went to a speech tournament in Crescent City, CA, and I, silk shirt, gelled hair and all, did my best, as usual. Which wasn't good.
A couple of weeks later we received our scores back from the parents judging each round of the tournament. In a speech round, there are generally 4-5 people in a room, and they are scored 1-5, with 1 being best; if there are more than 5 people in the room, anyone over a score of 4 just gets a 5. That's the highest.
The key point is that I always thought that 5 was the worst score I could possibly receive.
Until I was so bad that I got a 6.
