POST #151: PRESERVING PORSCHES

I know very few people who are comfortable speaking in public. They might be articulate in private conversation, but freeze up when faced with an audience. It’s usually from lack of experience but over the years, I have known dozens of people who speak in public all the time and yet are terrible at it.  Without bragging, just being honest, speaking in public is one of the few things in life I’m really good at. Even when I don’t know what I am talking about, I manage to give a convincing performance and people are always telling me “how much they learned.”

7'x7' Vision Created by the Overhead Projector

I honed my craft in the gulag of the South Bronx when I was in my early twenties, teaching art to fidgety, inner-city twelve year olds at Junior High School #98.  I never quite recovered from the experience. They were worse than any Comedy Club audience; you held their attention or you died (figuratively speaking). Out of necessity, I became a performer, a mesmerizer of the highest order. The quality of the artwork produced by my thirty classes per week (yes, I taught thirty classes with thirty five or more students every week) was awesome.  Once you unleashed the creative potential of my semi-literate subjects, there was no telling what would emerge. The main problem was that I had to first establish “order” in the class, not so easy since I was not much older than my students and far less worldly. I accomplished this by bluffing them into thinking I actually had some power. In the end, I loved them; they loved me and the work they turned out was remarkably good. I taught them they could succeed at something and they taught me how to hold the attention of an audience, no matter how rowdy or disinterested. When I returned to teaching a couple of decades later, it was on the college level and I couldn’t get over how the class sat quietly and wrote down my every word. But the techniques I had learned teaching Junior High School served me well; I was, as they often put it, “the most interesting teacher they had.” Little did they know what had gone into acquiring that skill.

7'x7' Vision Created by the Overhead Projector

About fifteen years ago, my daughter who lives in New York City found herself on a city-wide preservation council that put together an annual forum at the New York Historical Society. The council had decided that the theme of that year’s meeting would be  “Preservation in the Suburbs” and they were looking for speakers. “How about my mom?” my daughter asked. All heads turned in disbelief. “Your MOM???” Eve proceeded to explain my role in preservation in Fairfield County and, based on her assurances, I was invited to participate. It turned out that there were about 300 in the audience, not a familiar face (except for my anxious daughter), but having once faced down students from Junior High School 98 in the South Bronx, I was confident I could handle the situation. I knew my subject well and threw in lots of laughs. My opening line was: “Preservation in the suburbs is an oxymoron.” The speaker who came after me muttered in my ear something about my being a tough act to follow.

The subject of public speaking came up recently when a friend’s husband parked his Porsche convertible in my garage for the winter. “I have a great Porsche story for you,” I offered, and it went as follows:

One year I was asked to give a talk to the Greenwich Garden Club about a book I had written entitled “Preserving Porches.” I had given the same slide talk to clubs all along the east coast. This was their annual dinner meeting, held at a posh country club. Husbands were invited. At the pre dinner cocktail party, I got into conversation with a stray husband and told him I was the guest speaker. “What’s your topic?” he asked. “Preserving Porches” I replied. He looked puzzled. ”Why is the Garden Club interested in cars?” he asked, assuming the topic was “Preserving Porsches.” I thanked him for giving me my opening line; it broke the ice, made everybody laugh and I have used it ever since.