Page 8 - November 2017 Voices

stands for Read the Flipping Instructions –
something she herself never bothers with.
“I am a bull in a china shop, and I don’t read
directions,” she admits. Her speech made fun of
her tendency to rush ahead and three resulting
mishaps. In the end she claimed top honors
against some very funny competitors.
“It’s very surreal to me,” she said a few days
after receiving the trophy. “I’m still blown away
by it. The feeling was fabulous.” When she
hadn’t heard her name called for second place,
she assumed she hadn’t even broken into the
top three. That was in part because she was still
revising her speech until 45 minutes before the
contest. Those last tweaks must have done the
trick: “It flowed when I was onstage.”
The audience agreed, rewarding her with
sustained laughter. That laughter was another
key, she says. “Once I got the first laugh, there Eric Winger, Table Topics Champion
was a connection. It lowered my anxiety to a
manageable level.”
She admires experienced speakers who use
self-deprecating stories to make their audience
relate to them and put everyone on an equal
footing. “Anyone can relate to the stories I
shared,” she says. “They can relate to my skip-
ping the steps and my disastrous outcomes. It
can be uncomfortable listening to someone who
makes fun of others.”
Dobberstein, a senior account manager at
KPAM and Sunny 155 radio, joined Toastmasters
in 2011. Her win came in her first contest at the
District level. She has progressed a long way since
her speaking debut at a women’s networking
event, where as soon as she finished, she burst Lorna Dobberstein, Humorous Speech
into tears. People tell her she is a natural speaker, Champion
but she dispels that notion: “I wasn’t born for it. I
never had a natural talent for getting up in front
of people. I just said ‘yes’ and took little steps
to make it happen. It didn’t happen overnight.”
She suggests that all speakers keep a folder
where they save funny stories, ideas and experi-
ences so they have rich, real-life material to draw
on when writing their next speech. She also urges
more members to test themselves at contests.
“There are some phenomenal speakers who
never compete,” she says. “They have so much
to offer. It would be great for them to step up.”

8 VOLUME 4 ISSUE 5 NOVEMBER, 2017