I’ve never considered myself a good joke teller. In the middle of, what is supposed to be, a humorous story, I’ll hear hear myself floundering and even worse, hear my own delivery of the punch line fall flat. Today my job at Toastmasters was Humor Master. Determined to do well, I Googled “humorous story” and came up with, what I’ll call, the ‘driving pope story’ from a humor site. I read it several times, told it to myself out loud several times. I spent extra time on the punch line. I imagined myself telling the group of 20 people. I said it out loud some more.

This morning at Toastmasters I was ready. We went through the speeches, then the evaluations, then the Table Topics, then the Grammarian’s report, then the announcements, then we voted on next term’s officers. All the while my arm pits are singing quite loudly, ‘anticipation!’ Finally the president calls on me, “you’re up!”

“Start and finish strong,” words I’ve been advised are flashing through my head. Deep breath, open mouth, project voice, here we go! “Did you know the pope made an unpublicized visit to the east coast this weekend?” heads shake no in surprise. good start.

Voice a little erratic at times, hand gestures a little out of sync at times, was I turning my head too fast to acknowledge both sides of the room? Delivery moving along, no blank spots, keeping focused, working up to the punch line, ack! a little rushed! slow down… Kaboom! There she is! The elusive, the foreign (to me) Punch Line! People laughed! They clapped! They said, “good job!”

Whew, adrenaline still coursing, half an hour later, a bit faster than normal. Armpits still a bit warm and wet (too much information?) Celebrate! And acknowledge that Yes! with practice, we can do anything we set our minds to.