Thursday, September 16, 2010

Sour Lemons


"When Life hands you lemons. . . make lemonade."
Oh how I hate that cliche'. No, I'm not a pessimist. In fact, I'm just the opposite. But still, it's just something about that saying that's just so--- over used? Hence cliche.
But what if life hands you bad lemons that are not good for making lemonades? What if they are old and stinky and to say the least--- useless? What do you do then?
In my Public Speaking class, we have these thirty second exercises that each student must present. Our first week we had to give a toast to the new year and then last week we had to give a thirt second speech on a mystery topic.
Some kids had topics like penguins, ducktape and even hocket. Maybe I'm just bitter, but I felt like my topic was a little bit off the wall; Driftwood. Quite the sour lemon of a topic don't you think???
According to Wikipedia, Driftwood is wood that has been washed onto a shore or beach of a sea or river by the action of winds, tides, waves or man.
How in the world was I suppose to write a thirty second speech on Driftwood that was, creative, and somewhat entertaining for my fellow classmates.
Let's be honest, there is nothing very exciting about Driftwood. Yes, I know there are tons of interesting crafts that can be made with Driftwood. But that wasn't exactly the route I was thinking about.
So, I decided to simply Google the word Driftwood and see what happened. Low and behold a horror film entitled Driftwood came out in 2006! It was perfect. I would spend the first 25 seconds of my speech talking about sadistic Captain Doug and his henchman Yates being haunted by spirits and then the last five seconds, throw the bunch line!
Looks like I will be learning more than simply Public Speaking skills this year. I will be learning how to turn life's stinky, sour lemons into lemonade. Or in this case, a creative thirty second speech that earned me 10 points!

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