Read This And You'll See

Chapter 3: Winning

Before I get into all this, I gotta rant real quick. *Inhale* OH BOY! Makeup is way harder to remove than I thought. I thought you just kinda put it on and then take it off and stuff like that. Now, I've never worn makeup up until now, and this was an..interesting first experience. Basically, I was doing a theater thing. Oh yeah that's right, I haven't mentioned it, but I do high skool theater, which is fun. Don't worry we'll talk about all the events that have transpired in regards to theater. Anyway, back to my story.

For one of the shows, well technically it's more of just one scene, my character was this ultra edgy 300 year old undead vampire rich son of a bitch dude. Basically, a literal legend. Therefore, in order to essentially make me the god of all things sexual, I need a bunch of makeup, aka just some foundation and eye liner shit so I look like I haven't slept in a year. Putting it on is fine and all, but damn taking it off is annoying as shit. You gotta get those makeup remover wipes and then get like 12 different ointments so your skin doesn't fucking die from breakout or stinging bullshit. I mean my eyes were loaded with makeup, thank God for no mascara tho, that would've sucked. Anyway, to those who wear makeup on a daily basis, I'm sorry, I feel genuine remorse for you, ANYWAY, my rant is over, back to the show or book or whatever this is at this point.

So, in the previous chapter, I discussed how I acquired my rage and passion through people who piss me off. Now, the question that remains is what exactly did I do with these newly obtained weapons? I won. That's what I did. I fucking won. But, it wasn't just because I was filled with determination or anything like that, but it's rather because I discovered a bigger meaning to this whole activity. Shall we set the scene? *Deep breath*

I finished freshman year with a pretty shit record in my opinion. I mean, most freshmen aren't outstanding, though there are some who defy that statement and seem to possess limitless talent. Anyway, because of this, I knew I needed to come back stronger in sophomore year. Much much stronger. So essentially for a majority of the summer, I spent time honing my craft in order to acquire this strength. I realized that instead of just trying to generically improve myself, like altering the way I talk and gesture and whatnot, I needed to just focus on making the best possible speech I could. I needed to take this speech and make it virtually perfect.

First, I needed to pick a good speech. As I've previously mentioned, in some speech events, you write your own speech, and in others you pick someone else's speech to present. This time I was going with the latter because I was pretty terrible at writing. I mean, I still am, but I'm insane enough to write a whole ass book for some reason. I always try to pick pieces that I can relate to, so after careful consideration for about 5 minutes, I chose The Wisdom Of A Third Grade Dropout by Rick Rigsby. Now, there is an actual book called Lessons From A Third Grade Dropout which goes in depth about the topic, but the speech I was going to give was a commencement speech given at California State Maritime Academy. And it's one hell of a speech. I suggest you listen to it yourself. Actually, I'll just put the URL right here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg_Q7KYWG1g ...even though this is a book.

However, this speech is rather ironic in my opinion. I remember I wanted to pick something that I could relate to, so I decided to pick a speech given by a middle aged black man from Texas talking about the death of his wife. To put this into perspective, I'm a skinny ass white high schooler from California. Despite that, when I thought of giving this speech, I instinctively knew it was the one. It just had this message of perseverance in the face of danger and despair, which basically was my whole life narrative. Because I was so determined, I wanted to give a speech about determination and how fucking powerful it is.

So, through weeks and weeks of practicing and perfecting my skills, I finally had created a speech that was actually competitively viable. Our first competition was at the end of September and I had roughly been practicing since the beginning of July, so that's like 2 and a half-ish months of practice. Eventually, my first competition came around and....I failed. Miserably. I actually performed so terribly it's not even funny. Now, I don't think I did that bad, but my scores say otherwise. But, what I do remember was that I was so focused on winning and I was so zoned in on the end zone that I forgot to live in the present. I couldn't just assume victory was assured if I hadn't given all of my effort during the process. This is when things started to click for me, but it still took me some time.