Between Two Legs: A Parable

This week, I got to spend a bit of time with speechwriters who gathered at Georgetown University for the Professional Speechwriters Association’s World Conference. As I listened to tales from their crypts, I recalled a horror I witnessed many years ago. I’ve changed a few details, but the story is true.

The retiring executive was cut from a familiar cloth: white, starched, not an errant stitch from collar to cuff. He stood at the podium, preparing to address the 3,000 members of his trade association who had gathered for the speech that would mark the end of the annual conference and his decades-long tenure as CEO.
            A hush settled over the ballroom as he regarded the faces of the faithful, most of whom rested their utensils quietly on their plates and finished chewing as discreetly as they could. The CEO began to speak. He’d glance at the page in front of him, then lift his chin and speak the words. But after five minutes, maybe slightly fewer, he did that thing speakers sometimes do when they want their audience to know they can’t be confined by something so flimsy as a few pieces of paper, even if those pages contained words he’d fussed and worried over and deviled his speechwriter into revising a million times until finally he’d pronounced himself satisfied.
        Now he balled up a page and chucked it playfully into the first row at the mini-me who had long served as his senior vice president.
        “You all know that this is my last meeting as the leader of this extraordinary organization,” said He Who Would Not Be Scripted, “and I want to speak from the heart.”
         There was a stirring in the audience. People could be seen leaning forward. They could be excused for wondering from which body parts he’d addressed them on previous occasions.      The CEO’s heart must have been full indeed because there issued from it a great outpouring of words that no one remembered by the time the gravy congealed on their plates. What they did remember was the tribute he delivered to his second in command.
         “This guy…” said the CEO, apparently so moved by the words trying to elbow their way out of his left ventricle that he had to pause for breath, almost as if he was actually experiencing a tender cardiac moment.
         “What can I say about this guy?” he mused, while the rest of us waited for what he would say about that guy.
          “This guy…he’s been my right leg, my left leg, and everything in between.”

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           So, speak off the cuff if you must, but be prepared to delight your audience in ways you did not intend.