How Many of Me Do You See?

What have I been doing lately, you ask? Ta da! What follows is a Tall Tale speech I gave that took first place at my ToastMasters Club in February, and placed third at the Rochester Area level competition last Saturday.

I tell a tale, a tail, you’ll see,
a tale of adventure and woe
A tale of we three, my friends and me,
of me and Bill and Joe
We three we went away one day,
away from the pub we know
We went to see what else could be,
where else the liquor flow

And just next door, never seen it before,
there was a pub called Suds
We looked around at this new place we’d found,
Seemed all right for me and my buds

This place was very warm, and true to form
The patrons looked a little rough
They didn’t dance in the aisle or give us a smile
They did manage to look quite tough
There were no sports pictures or TVs or transistors
The walls were the color of tar
We could hold our own, and people like us at home
So we walked ourselves up to the bar

They may not care who is winning the inning
But if the beer is cheap we approve
We sidled on up to get us a cup
At last we would get in the groove

We got five mugs each--
we had to try the place at least—
and that’s when things got strange
the barkeep Old Charon said life was just barren,
would we like to expand our drinking range?
He took out a bottle of something called grottle,
the bottle it just seemed to glow
With a wild look in his eye and the grottle held high,
he was not a man, we did know

He said call me friend
and drank the elixir
We watched as he poured what was left
in the mixer
He gave out Howl that sounded like a growl
And his frenzy chilled our blood
But when he grew a tail and horns and eyed us with scorn
That’s when we ran from the place they call Suds

And so in the end we did not call him friend
We ran back to our old happy haunt
We told of our plight and no one laughed at our fright
They’d all had their own grottle jaunt
They said we had luck that we didn’t get stuck
in the place that was right next door
For they all knew our story was true
That’s why they don’t venture for more

Since then we’ve been able to remain quite stable
drinking mug after mug at our pub
We don’t go too far, we love our great bar,
We’re glad to avoid Beezlebub

Cheers!~

Upside Down Kingdom is available on Amazon.