Impromptu

Standing in the musty hallway, a small bundle of nerves collecting in my stomach, I reach for the door know, steady my shoulders and stroll into the room. Taking confidence from the click of my heals on the linoleum, I greeted the judge, accepted the topic, found the center of the room, bowed my head and prayed that I could find the start of the speech in thirty seconds. I loved doing impromptu, the whole idea of throwing yourself into a room where you might have absolutely nothing to say provided the adrenaline rush that helped me to survive high school. I nearly begged to be allowed to compete in impromptu as a freshman, but once I found my slot, I never gave it up. The size of the team prevented me from doing two events as a senior, and I chose to forgo the ‘olympic’ events for the little ‘x-game’ bit of terror. What I loved doing scared the bee-gee-bees out of my teammates, but to me the idea of walking into a room and forgetting my speech was far scarier than knowingly walking in cold. The other great benefit of impromptu involved the preparation for the event, just practice giving improvisational speeches, watch the news, and keep your imagination active.

The rules were as follows: You received a word/phrase/current event and then had thirty seconds to think on it. You were then tasked with completing a three to five minute speech. You, and your competitors were then ranked and you received scores based on your placement within that ranking.

I competed with the same people most of the time; many of them not getting the same rush out of the event. Most carried several sets predetermined points/methods of getting through their speech, others had coaches who required that they spent their thirty seconds fully outline their speech, but me, I usually few by the seat of my pants - spending my thirty seconds coming up with the introduction and winging the rest from there. Not PVRing (preview-view-review) within my speech usually cost me a place or two in the ranking but the idea of having something prepared ahead of time rubbed me as contrary to the fun of the format and limited where you could go.

So, why this bit of memory lane you might ask? I’m going to try to create the impromptu experience in the written form, modifying the rules slightly. There will be no current events. The think time will be 60 whole seconds with a writing time of five to seven minutes because I cannot write as fast as I talk. My goal is to do this once a week, with the first one coming tonight or tomorrow.