Toastmaster's Advanced Speech 10 - "Sixty Years Young"

This is speech #5 from "The Entertaining Speaker" manual, called "Speaking After Dinner". The objectives are to prepare an entertaining after-dinner talk on a specific theme and to deliver the talk using the skills developed in the preceding projects. Time allotted is 8 to 10 minutes.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Hope you enjoyed the dinner. If any of you is still wondering what this party was all about and why we cut that huge cake, well, let me remind you it’s my father’s 60^th birthday.  I know you all know, but making sure doesn't hurt, right?

You all know him as a devoted brother, a friend in need, a professional par excellence, and a very strict uncle who is somewhat obsessive compulsive and wants things to be done a certain way…”Don’t eat on the bed..at least put the plate on a newspaper!” “Put your shoes at their proper place” etc. But no one but my brother and i here can know him as a father. So I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to him.

Everyone has seen a coconut, right? That green/brown thingy that has to be cracked open? Tough and hard from the outside but all watery inside? Let me explain. You know, my earliest childhood memory is when I was still crawling on fours…I learnt to walk a bit late, so I must be about an year old that time. Papa was sitting cross legged on the floor with an old newspaper and a plate in front of him, knife in hand, and ready to peel apples for all of us to eat. At this sight, I was suddenly very hungry and went up to him crying and asking for a piece even before he had started peeling it. He asked me to wait for two minutes but I kept on shouting and insisting now, now….papa lost his temper and shouted back at me. I was shocked for a moment and then started bawling...mummy ran up to me and took me away. After a while, when I was still hiccuping  papa came to me and offered a piece of apple. I distinctly remember having seen tears in his eyes then. That might have been the day when my sub conscious understood what a coconut he is...the day i fell in love with this man.

He relentlessly did what fathers are ideally supposed to do, slogging for hours to provide us a good life, a good education and secure our future. But what he also did was to inculcate this feeling of responsibility in us, well…by sometimes analyzing the phone bill with money doesn't grow on trees speeches! I remember I used to love counting currency notes, and he always made me do it, all the while sharing tidbits about the importance of savings and spending, that is now rooted deep inside me. Whenever a new gadget was introduced in the market, I know he would want to own it, but kept his own desires secondary to ours.

Perhaps the best thing about growing up with him, yes I said growing up with him – everyone grows up every day, do they not? He certainly does, and I don’t mean in age. Anyway, I was saying that he did not differentiate between my brother and me anytime – in the sense of my being a girl and his a boy. I was asked to learn to make tea as easily as to screw on a light bulb. So if there are some different set of activities that being a girl vs. a boy involves, I was not aware of them..till a long time…till I started realizing my friends in school who were girls, had not ever held a screwdriver in hand. Well..he made sure I played with dolls too…but that’s another thing.

Always open to debate, and willing to listen to a rational argument, we kids were never told not to talk about things we didn't understand, never reprimanded for speaking our minds. I have since understood that this is pretty rare. I cannot express in words what a world of difference this simple act makes and what strength of character it needs to let your children argue with you..even at times be at loggerheads with you. Then leave them to make their own decisions, acting only as a channel if they are not able to find a direction. That’s my coconut father for you.

Perhaps I have never told you before, but papa, I am proud of you. I hope you are as proud of me as well. Thank you for being the person you are, because that makes me the person I am. Happy birthday.

Ladies and gentlemen, hope I did not bore you with this somewhat emotional harangue. Enjoy the rest of the evening. Over and out.

This speech took 10:05 minutes to deliver and was appreciated for holding the audience's attention till the end.