Pop 89: Let’s Pledge Our Heads to Clearer Thinking
By Madonna Hamel
madonnahamel@hotmail.com
Last Saturday, I was a judge at a 4-H public speaking event held in Val Marie. I enjoy this gig because I get a ringside view of the passions of the next generation preparing to rule the world. This year I learned 5 Reasons to Hate Roosters, how to stay on an inner tube while bouncing along a lake, and what really went down at the Trucker’s Rally in Regina.
I never knew what 4-H was until I moved to the country. As a kid growing up in small cities, I wasn’t much of a joiner. As a cradle Catholic, I acquired instant membership to an exclusive club that required more memorizing and acts of sacrifice than any child should be expected to perform. I can still recite The Apostle’s Creed, and while I find solace in the idea of “the communion of saints” - all our dead loved ones looking down on us - I have always felt hypocritical for proclaiming a belief in a world I couldn’t comprehend.
Which is why I only lasted a day in Brownies. No more pledges and promises and creeds please; you’re just asking me to add to my burden of hypocrisy. I played baseball for two seasons, but I never hung with the team after games. I was excruciatingly shy, and without a ball to toss or whack into left field, I had nothing in common with the other teenage girls. After the game, the focus shifted; all my teammates wanted to talk about was boys. And booze. Neither of which were part of my life. My life was about books and my bike.
From what I’ve observed, the youth who live in and around my village of Val Marie and who belong to 4-H focus on the pragmatics of the care and feeding of animals. Through demonstrating to themselves their ability to take on responsibilities, share duties, learn from each other, they develop a confidence and poise that is remarkably different from many of the city kids I know.
The 4-H pledge reads: “I pledge my HEAD to clearer thinking, my HEART to greater loyalty, my HANDS to larger service, my HEALTH to better living, for my club, my community, my country and my world.” Clarity, loyalty, service and healthy living - we could all benefit from a club with a focus like that; the idea of belonging to a larger community other than one’s own little world is not a concept easily grasped by the adults of today.
The Public Speaking event I judged both this year and last is my opportunity to contribute to the first H, “pledging our HEADS to clearer thinking.” Public Speaking is something I did enjoy as a kid. It was the one place where I could get up on stage and voice my thoughts and opinions and not be interrupted or ridiculed. We all need a place where we can develop our knowledge and understanding of aspects of life that intrigue, concern and even threaten us. Public Speaking is that place. One of America’s greatest humorists, Fran Lebowitz, said that as a kid, she was sent to her room for being smart-mouthed and now she gets paid thousands of dollars to speak to packed rooms. “What was once called talking back is now called public speaking,” she quips about a documentary about her life called Public Speaking.
Of course, Fran’s success is because she doesn’t just “talk back”; she talks us through a subject, “in an entertaining fashion” while looking underneath it to take apart its constituent parts. She parses language and polishes punch lines to enable us to see clearly, to encourage clear thinking.
I’ve had the privilege of listening to speakers as young as six, barely able to read yet bravely standing in front of a microphone and expressing themselves to a room full of strangers. I’ve been entertained by the older ones so poised and attentive to the younger ones I just assumed they were in their twenties, only to learn they were barely seventeen. But then, I realize after hearing their speeches, why shouldn’t they know how to calm a skittish child? They can gentle wiry colts bent on showing them who’s boss.
One summer, just after I graduated in performance, I was hired by an art gallery to teach street kids how to compose and perform monologues. Ha. Me teach them. The lives they’d lived and the things they’d seen were beyond what most folks experience in a lifetime. They survived by condensing their stories into quick pitches and tossed them at passersbys on busy city streets. I was giving them a night at a local gallery to present their pitches as stories and poems. “They are coming to see you,” I reminded them. “People are coming and paying and sitting in chairs to hear you.”
What those kids had in common with the 4-H public speakers is the rare opportunity to have a room full of people willing to give them the time and respect it takes to relax and focus on articulation and clarity. There’s no need to yell, point fingers, get defensive or pushy. And no need to rush. The most touching habit of most people new to speaking in public is the speed at which they move through the precious moment they are given. I always reiterate the rule of thumb I learned in broadcasting: When it starts to sound like you’re speaking tooooo slooooowly, that means it’s just right.”
4-H is on to something: maybe the rest of us should form public speaking groups. Why not create a space wherein we practice listening to each other, where, if you don’t share my worldview, you won’t get called wrong. Or stupid. Why are rabid politicians and tv anchors who fill our heads with toxic opinions passing as facts? It won’t kill us to see through each other’s eyes. In fact, it will kill us if we don’t realize that not every conversation has to be a battleground, but a place where we can actually learn a thing or two.