Overcome in Just Call Me Your Lunatic Friend. Welcome To The Madness.

When I graduated from high school, I was very shy and terrified of speaking to crowds. For me it seemed different. I was terrified of speaking in front of small groups. This is how I overcame my fear and now I can speak to groups of any size easily.

My “cure” was going back to school.

I went to school in Sacramento for Radio And Television Announcing. My plans were to become an famous tadio personality and get rich. Think Casey Kasum and you will understand my vision for myself better. I never achieved that vision a and now I will never achieve it due to the stroke. There are times when my voice is slurred. I have been told I have a great voice, by people who read this journal, but those day of enjoying having a terrific voice are over for me. My voice resembles a town drunk too often these days.

But I meant to write obout overcoming my fear of speaking in front of small groups.

I did overcome. In the school, part of the training was my fellow classmates and I writing and performing radio ads in front of the entire class weekly. So each week, I would create safe and boring ad copy and would read it nervously. Until near the end of the course when we each had to write an ad about a fellow student..

Of course I ended up with the one lady in the class that had the model looks and physique. She was a complete knock-out but she had a great sense of humor. So my ad was targeted at her specifically. Her name was Paula. My ad, I called “Paula’s Petting Zoo”. And believe me, I emphasized the double entendre to the max all the way through the ad.

In case you’re still not getting it, take a beautiful lady, and associate her with a petting zoo but approach the petting zoo facet like the meaning of teens making out or heavy petting and you have a rough mental image of my ad.

The whole class and my instucter were bent over howling in laughter. Some even had tears from laughing!

I succeeded with not only an entertaining ad but my class liked It! Even Paula loved It! The instructer made copies of my tape for the class as an example of “great writing and production”. I was a hit!

I really was good at speaking in front of small crowds or groups!

Be good humans!