Life is full of simple pleasures like a walk through the woods, a fresh cup of coffee, watching TV or just having complete silence when you get home from work. For me, the simplest of pleasures is sitting at my kitchen table and doing a word search. It's very relaxing, I'd like to think that it improves some sort of mental faculty and there's always a great feeling of accomplishment that comes with finding the last word, a feeling of completion.
Contrarily, I understand that our feelings about an activity or any other thing is strongly tied to our own personal experiences. As an example, some people may imagine a perfect day as waking up early on a winter morning and hitting the slopes to do some skiing. In my lifetime, I have had the misfortune of losing a ski halfway down a mountain, jumping off of a malfunctioning chairlift and possessing a genuine hatred for thermometer readings that are preceded by a minus sign. In my opinion, if Hell were ever to freeze over, the first thing the Hellites would do is open up a ski resort. I sincerely hope that this happens, because that way we would ensure that all of the inhabitants were genuinely bad people. As a New England native with a pasty complexion, it pains me to say this, but give me a beach chair and a beer and I'll give you a happy guy.
Again, this is just based off of my own personal experiences and because I have now made several trips around the sun and have had twenty-four years of experiencing this crazy thing called life, my likes and dislikes have changed as I've learned and been introduced to new things. Similar to the way most of us are at one point dependent on baby formula or we watch "That's So Raven" for longer than we are proud of, but then we grow out of it. I have noticed two instances which had brought me joy in the past, but now, for reasons I will delve in to, I can not stand them!
I love hockey. Hockey helped me learn to get up at 5 a.m. and be happy about it. Hockey taught me how to be a team player and work together with others to accomplish a common goal. Most importantly, the game of Canadian Anger Management taught me that if you throw enough padding on him, even a twiggy twelve year-old can turn into a merciless Michelin man on skates. Sadly, I had to stop playing once people started checking and I know, hockey without checking is like boxing without bunching. Just a bunch of dudes hugging, pretending that they are tough, but I really enjoyed the time I spent playing. The only downside of my career in two-hand touch twig and twine was that attending professional hockey games was no longer an exciting event, it was a study session. I watched the Left Winger on the home team to see how he responded to various situations when the puck went into his corner in the offensive zone, where he positioned himself when the puck was in the defensive zone and most importantly, whether or not he spit in his palm prior to the post-game handshake as many of the kindergarten competitors at my level did. This was how it went for years, I would pay hundreds of dollars and one vital organ to go see a professional hockey game that ended up turning into a study session. It served a great purpose while I was playing, but once I got to the age where people were allowed to hit each other, like any true nerd does, I quit hockey and started running track. Unfortunately, like anyone who drives the same path to work for years and years, this habit of on ice observation is ingrained in my unharmed and salvaged cerebrum and my eyes wonder and watch the movements of the Left Winger regardless of where the action is on the ice. I'm fine watching the games on television, but the moment I enter an arena to go to a game live, the Soviet Russian student in me, Markgei Markov takes over and as is the case with any activity adapted by the Russians, all of the fun is immediately sucked out of this event for me.
"Picture your audience in their underwear." Yes, because the quickest way to gain the respect of an audience which you are speaking to is definitely undressing them with your mind. This technique was not covered in the public speaking class that I took in college. We did, however, learn all about posture, the format for a good presentation and how to utilize different dramatic tools such as tone change and intentional pauses. As part of this class, we examined famous speeches such as the "tear down this wall!" speech made by Ronald Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate and his address to the nation following the Challenger disaster. The timing and the way in which President Reagan could sternly or solemnly address his audience in these speeches had a lot of interesting layers that we, as a class, dove into at length.
Aside from politicians, we also looked at speeches from actors in various films, the most memorable of these for me being Mel Gibson's portrayal of William Wallace in Braveheart. In a pivotal scene that could undoubtedly invigorate someone in a coma, Wallace addresses a band of worn out and wary soldiers as they prepare to fight the Goliath British garrison. Wallace asks the men if they would be willing to die on the battlefield for their freedom or if they would rather live out a life of regret if they chose not to take a stand against the evil King Longshanks. The question he poses creates a shift in the mindset of his men as they begin to see the reward as greater than the risk. The impassioned Wallace utilizes tone changes to express the importance of their decision and dramatic pauses to allow his audience to weigh the possibilities of its outcome. As any self-respecting man has, I've watched Braveheart in its entirety about a dozen times. However, I have watched the "Freedom" speech scene an additional 30 times in the school library with an excerpt from the script, highlighting dramatic pauses in blue, tone changes in green and words of emphasis in pink (highlighting words spoken by William Wallace in pink seemed like treason itself, but we will have to deal with that later). This assignment was awesome! An educational experience that called for me to watch a scene from Braveheart, are you kidding me?! I aced that assignment because I was educationally and excitedly invested in it. Each time I watched the speech, I picked up on new things and from delving into this diagnosis, I gained a fuller appreciation for the elements that roused a band of rowdy Scotsmen. Unfortunately, much like my continued on-ice analysis, to this day I enjoy 99% Braveheart until it comes time for William Wallace to step up to the mic and drop the word bombs that inspired the Chase credit card company to give people cash back on every purchase. My ears perk up at every pause, my inner-analytical is tapped in to at every tone change and any ounce of entertainment I could feel is vexed by the variations of volume this speech has to offer. The spectacle I once viewed as the "Freedom Speech" is now shrouded, strangled and sickened by the Studious Syndrome and I will forever hate my professor for that, because any arsehole with a PhD and a syllabus who can take one of the greatest pre-massacre monologues of all-time and cause me to mentally minimize it to a series of dialectal devices, needs to have their intestines and their head removed.
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