My 15 seconds. The only thing I had to fear was dendrophobia itself. That and a slight case of glossophobia and it was for 101 seconds.

Tonight, I joined Ben, Douglas, Linzi and about 25 others at the Bedfordview Toastmaster’s monthly club meeting. The one and only other time I went to visit was in late August for the humorous speech competition. I had planned to go on the day when I was battling to regain control of my accounts but chose not to as I was worried the would be hacker might try and withdraw more money and thus went last night as my second and last time. I went due to the fact that I am leaving in a little over a month to travel in Mozambique and Kenya and then head home and also because Ben was giving a speech and Linzi was “Toastmaster of the evening”. You might be wondering what I would want to go to a meeting of “toastmasters” for as toasts usually involve alcohol and I don’t drink. The answer is simple, Toastmasters, is not about drinking but rather speaking, evaluating and performing various duties.

As a guest attending my second meeting at Bedfordview I didn’t expect to be given a task to do but I was asked at the last minute to be the sergeant at arms (SAA). This name might also sound strange for me as I have never served in the military or had the interest and to be quite honest would sooner relocate myself to Canada than be forced to fight for any country/cause. My duty as SAA (not to be confused with South African Airways) was to set up the room, make sure everything was in order, open the meeting and start it after breaks by banging the gavel on the lectern and passing it over to the chairperson. This task was just a warm-up for the chance to be one of the “table topic” speakers, the 7^th out of 8 to be exact in the impromptu speaking session that followed the prepared speakers.

Before I get to the impromptu I just want to say that Ben did an excellent job with his speech which was open, revealing, brave and moving. He told a heartbreaking story about how his was treated as a boy by his uncle’s wife (as he chose to say it) in which he was treated very poorly more like a servant than family and eventually beaten for a crime he didn’t commit. Ben’s speech along with many other throughout the evening were very personal, moving and disturbing.

After the prepared speech came the “table topics” segment of the evening. As Doug likes to put it when he is training we are all impromptu speakers. We get chances each day of our lives at the store, at work, answering the phone, etc. to begin talking or responding to people and having to “think on our feet”. The way the impromptu session works is that the person whose duty it is to choose the topics that will be spoken on gives envelopes to each of the people who will speak. The speakers don’t know before part way through the meeting that they will be speaking. Then when the speaker before each of us was to go we were allowed to open our envelopes and in the 2 minutes or so they took to give their impromptu we could look at the topic and prepare for ours. As I said before I was the 7^th of 8 speakers and so when the 6^th speaker began I opened my envelope and found that I was supposed to speak about dendrophobia. But before I could speak about this phobia which I was not sure what it meant I had to get over my glossophobia. In our trainings we tell people that glossophobia is the biggest fear in the world. I am not sure if this is scientifically proven but we are really just trying to make a point when teaching a module to our trainees on public speaking. Glossophobia* simply means the “fear of public speaking” and it seems to be a fear that is shared by many. I didn’t really have to get over my glossophobia as it really isn’t a problem for me these days but I did have to think of a creative way in just a few minutes to come up with an interesting, humorous and credible explanation for the meaning of dendrophobia. I had no idea what the definition of this word was and tried to think of another similar word I knew and what I came up with was rhododendrons. As it was my time to start I knew I would talk about Rhodies, my “fear” of them, how they are sticky when you are pruning them and how I can no longer go into gardens. I spoke for 1:41 seconds on rhododendrons and dendrophobia, got a few laughs (not as many as Nate and 5DaysShy) and at the end of the night was chosen winner for the impromptu speeches. Not bad considering I went up against some very accomplished Toastmasters. It was fun to do and be recognized but unfortunately they decided not to pay for my plane ticket back home which would have been a nice gesture.

If you have read this far, which means I should really consider buying you a plane ticket, then you deserve to know what dendrophobia means. According to overcome-fears-and-phobias.com “victims of dendrophobia believe that trees can turn into flesh-craving monsters when they are not looking at them.” It goes on to say “They can also imagine elfin creatures taking residence in every tree.” I am a bit surprised by this phobia being assigned to me because if Treebeard showed up at my door and began talking to me as I was backing through a forest I would be very excited and maybe consider creating a whole new blog dedicated to him

*For the record I chose to site Wikipedia not because they pay me for this but because out of the first page worth of hits in Google, Wiki was the only one with an actual definition. All of the others were trying to sell various remedies for overcoming this phobia.