Thank you Madam/Mister Toastmaster
Ladies and gentlemen, I have a secret that I would like to share with you. Something that I have been meaning to share for a long time. I can turn into a chair. I am going to share with you tonight what type of chair I am, and how I managed to turn myself into a chair through sheer sweat-inducing determination.
When I say chair I’m not talking about your ordinary run of the mill chair. Full of plastic and a thousand visits to the chiropractor. Bound to break your body as well as your spirit. Designed to destroy your dreams and shatter your soul. A chair that would be so disgustingly ordinary, so vexingly vomit-inducing, so reprehensibly reductive in both quality and use that you would weep tears of shame if you ever saw it with your own two eyes. Stamping your feet and crying out: ‘AWAY WITH YOU, CHAIR! BEGONE!’ No, when I turn into a chair I become a solid wooden chair with a fancy red leather seat and back. Solid, dependable, and comfortable. I become a chair that even the most ardent sceptical critic could appreciate. A chair that you could photograph and share on Facebook to the three people who bother to look at your “funny” cat pictures. A chair in which you could sit on and feel like you were floating through space. However, I am getting ahead of myself here. Before I tell you more about my special ability, let me first talk about how I discovered my chair turning abilities.
It all started a few years ago. I was browsing in the library. Trying to find something to feed my mind. A book, any book to feast upon my starving self. Glancing into worlds and dodging footsteps I came across this strange new book in the non-fiction section. The musty smell of the well-worn pages danced upon my nostrils as I picked it up with my hungry hands. It was titled: How to turn into a chair. With furrowed brows and hardened eyes I proceeded to have a look through the book. What I found was astonishing. I had never realised before that moment how much I wanted to be a chair. Over the next few days I read How to turn into a chair so many times I was seeing the words in my sleep. Printed on my eyeballs. Slowly but surely I started to understand what I had to do to become a chair. The hours of practice that I had to put in to even START turning into a chair. I knew I could do it. All I had to do, from what I read and understood from the book, was to think myself as a chair, as well as completing five straight minutes of humming and knee slapping. I’ll give you a quick example of what I mean: (Do demonstration of humming and knee slapping for a few seconds). Clearly this was going to take a lot of time to prefect.
I continued to practice turning into a chair during the next few months. Any opportunity for me to begin my humming and knee slapping I took. At home in the privacy of my bedroom; out at my local park where the magpies and crows flew across the sun drenched sky; and in the middle of shopping centre carparks. At first I was getting nowhere. Not even a splinter. Hope was draining from me. I wondered to myself, during the moon-less nights and empty days, if I was wasting my time. If I should just pack it in and start playing the piano. Pounding the keyboards to cobwebbed aisles and random coughs. A ghost drifting in the wind. I knew that I could not do that. I could not torture my heart. For I knew that it was my destiny for me to become a chair. With renewed strength I continued my practice. Many more months came and went like flimsy New Year’s resolutions. Slowly I was starting to see some improvements. One balmy Sunday afternoon I managed to turn my legs into a couple of wooden legs for a split second. However it was on a cloudy Tuesday morning that it finally happened. I was humming and knee slapping away. Trying very hard to think of chairs. Then without warning I found myself becoming a chair! A proper wooden chair! It was only for ten seconds, however it was long enough for me. Finally I had achieved my goal. Nothing was going to stop me.
That is how, through a musty book and unlimited practice, I managed to become a chair. I hope this inspires you to one day turn into a chair….or a turnip if you wish.
Thank you Madam/Mister Toastmaster