Mikel Kelly: There's probably a reason they don't ask me to make speeches

They let me out of the office this week to go talk to a group. That doesn’t happen too much, not only because I’m a lousy public speaker (which I am), but also because nobody with any sense really wants to sit and listen to some old newspaper guy talk about his job.

It’s kind of like if they asked one of those emaciated guys down in the belly of a ship to put down his oar, go out in the bright sunlight and give a speech to people who are more or less used to being out there all the time.

First, there’s the matter of the tattered rags one wears down the in hole (and in your typical newspaper office). You have to spiff up a bit, flick the dried gruel off your sleeves, put on some decent duds — and then, of course, one needs to give some thought to what you’re gonna talk about to these jokers.

The jokers in this case were a group of folks in Lake Oswego who meet regularly at the Adult Community Center to discuss “learning and technology,” according to the gentleman who invited me.

Now, technically, I can’t say for sure how it went when I appeared before that group on Monday morning (because, due to the magic of technology, this is being written several days before my talk) but, based on previous occasions (in which I’ve dreaded going before a bunch of strangers only to find out later nobody attacked me or made fun of me), I’m going to go out on a limb and say it went pretty well.

If it turns out I’m wrong, you can bet I’ll follow up with a pithy piece on how shabbily I was treated at the Lake Oswego Adult Community Center, but for now, let’s just say it was peachy.

In fact, it always turns out that way.

A while back, I was asked to come and speak to the Gresham Lions Club. That was really scary because I don’t go to Gresham that much. Why would I? The place is known as “The Birthplace of the Winds,” after all, so I’m always worried that the gorge wind is going to mess up my hair or tip over my little SUV as I’m taking a corner too fast.

Oh, wait. That’s not right. I think Adak, Alaska, is the official “Birthplace of the Winds,” so forget what I said about Gresham.

Anyway, they treated me very nicely in Gresham, fed me breakfast (for free!) and even laughed at my jokes. What more could you want, right?

But the time I got the most outrageous amount of laughs was a few years back when I spoke to the Lake Oswego noon Rotary group. That was really scary for me because who knew members of the Lake Oswego Rotary even a had a sense of humor?

Personally, I suspected the whole thing was a setup because the man who invited me even specified he’d like me to talk about writing a column. That was very suspicious because nobody ever asked me to talk about that before.

I’ve talked about how to get your group’s news in the paper, how to make the most of your community newspaper, how to write a good press release, how to get a letter to the editor printed — even given tours of the office (hundreds of them, actually) to Cub Scouts who didn’t actually know there WAS such a thing as a newspaper before arriving at our office.

What I found at the LO Rotary talk was that it pays to steal from the best. I recalled a couple of appearances I’d attended by writer David Sedaris. All he did was read some stuff he’d written. Talk about easy. Of course, it helps that the things he read were brilliant. And hilarious.

So that’s what I did.

No, I didn’t read excerpts from David Sedaris books (although I have indeed resorted to after-dinner readings at home from “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” and it killed!). No, I shared some bits and pieces from my own columns. And when I closed with what I consider one of my best (“Real men can drive until they pass out”), one guy who’d shared a table with longtime LO mover and shaker Dee Denton rushed up to me and said, “I thought for a minute there you’d killed Dee! She was gasping and choking so bad we thought we were gonna have to call 911.”

Turns out, though, she was just laughing.

Just guessing here, but I’m pretty sure there weren’t lots of laughs at Monday’s Learning and Technology Meeting. But you can rest assured that if there was any way to wring a giggle out of that group, I will have done it. It is, after all, what I do.

Former managing editor of several community newspapers, including the Woodburn Independent, Lake Oswego Review and the Times papers, Kelly is chief of the central design desk for Community Newspapers and the Portland Tribune, and he contributes a regular column.