Sample speech from my Toastmasters Humorous Speech Contest winning speech titled “A Chicken and his Friends”
I am a chicken! Yes – I am a chicken when it comes to horror movies, spooky stories, and haunted places. I shiver even if I watch 20 seconds of a horror movie trailer, and yes, I am even scared of the Shyam and Tulsi Ramsay’s comic horror genre. The last horror movie I saw was the “Dak Bangla” back in 1987, and I have never gathered the guts together to watch anything after that.
Contest Chair, ladies, and gentlemen; today I would like to tell you a “real” story in which how a chicken like me landed up in the homeland of ghosts and spirits.
A little while back, I was studying for my twelfth standard exams. Three of my closest school friends were also at my home and we were studying together. But my good for nothing friends had an ominous idea – they wanted to do a “planchette” – which is a way to call any spirits passing around that area at that time to come visit you. My friends setup their coin and other apparatus, and started chanting – “Are there any evil spirits passing by… are there any evil spirits passing by…” again and again. After some time, the coin started moving, and according to my friends a spirit had arrived in the room. I started getting nervous – my palms started sweating and the pressure in my stomach started building. I kept begging them to stop, but, they didn’t listen.
This goofiness carried on for an hour after which they asked me if I wanted to join them to eat ice cream at 12:00 AM. I thought this was a better plan than hanging out with ghosts and spirits so I gladly consented. We sneaked out of the house quietly; my friend started his car and I jumped to sit in the front passenger seat. As we drove, I noticed an ice cream vendor pass by but my friend didn’t stop. Then I saw another one, and he didn’t stop. Three vendors passed by, and when I asked, “Dude, where are we going?”, he said – “trust me – we are going to a really special ice cream place called Babaji Sundae shop which is very famous for their fruit sundae”. I got very excited and could literally taste the delicious fruit ice cream sundae in my mouth – the delightful cocktail of flambéed bananas, strawberries, vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce.
We kept driving for thirty minutes and the main roads started turning into slip roads, and slip roads started turning into unpaved roads. After driving for about 30 minutes in the middle of nowhere, my friend stopped the car and told me that we had arrived. The night was pitch dark, the temperature was biting cold, and there was fog everywhere. I couldn’t see anything beyond a few meters and after getting off from the car and walking a few steps, I saw a sign which said – “Ancient Graveyard”.
As soon as I saw it, I got goosebumps and started cursing my friends in the worst possible vocabulary. They said that they were going inside and I could wait outside if I didn’t want to come. To go inside meant the chances of getting possessed by a ghost, and to wait outside meant that I had nowhere to run in case something happened. A strong wind was blowing, and the swaying trees were and creating an eerie noise. I could also hear some wild dogs howling in the vicinity.
Caught between the devil and the deep sea, I decided to stay outside. My legs were shivering and my heart was beating so hard that I could literally hear it. I started chanting the Hanuman Chalisa… “Jai Hanuman Gyan Gun Sagar… Jai Kapees tihu lok Ujaagar… ram doot atulit bal dhama… anjani putra pavan suta naama…” That was one day I hoped God did exist.
After around thirty minutes of waiting outside in the cold, dark, foggy night, I saw a distant human figure with white long hair coming out of the dense fog slowly towards me. As soon as I saw the figure, I screamed at the top of my lungs but the figure kept coming towards me. With nothing else I could do, I mustered some courage and ran towards the hazy figure and kicked it in the butt as hard as I could. The figure started screaming and abusing me and then I realized that it was one of my friends who was playing a prank on me. As soon as my friends heard the sound of us yelling, they came out of hiding and started laughing hysterically. I was so mad at them for playing this prank on me, but I was also very relieved that the human figure was my best friend and not a real ghost.
After this wild prank, we sat in our car again and my friend started the ignition. The car didn’t start. He cranked the engine again, and the car just wouldn’t start. We started freaking out and I started chanting the Hanuman Chalisa in my mind again, and when he cranked the engine for the third time, the car started and we drove away as fast as we could.
In the end, we didn’t get the flambéed banana sundae that night, but it indeed was one of the most adventurous nights in the life of this chicken.
