By Alan Suderman
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

If you come to the Toastmasters club at Eagle’s Trace, you’d better be on your toes. You never know when you’ll be asked to give an impromptu speech.

For many, that can be intimidating.

But overcoming this fear is precisely the appeal of Toastmasters, according to group member Janet Shoholm, who lives at Eagle’s Trace. “It’s invigorating,” Shoholm says. “As a very young child I was told to be quiet all the time, so this is the other side of the story. I don’t have to be quiet anymore—in fact, quite the opposite. It’s a refreshing change.” It’s also a lot of fun.

The fun and the serious
Evelyn Kohlbrecher, a member of the Eagle’s Trace community and the  Toastmasters group there, started off a recent meeting by chanting “enthusiasm, enthusiasm, enthusiasm.” Applause followed.

Then came serious speeches about the need to rehabilitate prisoners rather than just punish them. There were lighter moments too. “We want people to have fun, as well as have serious discussions,” Kohlbrecher says.

When it was her turn to talk, Kohlbrecher showed what she meant. In a speech lamenting the loss of her native tongue—Brooklynese, the language of the working-class residents of Brooklyn—she told the story of a young Brooklyn boy and his teacher.

The boy saw a bird flying by and pointed it out: “Look, teacher, there’s a boid.” The teacher tried to correct him: “No, that’s a bird.”

The boy shrugged and said, “Oh, I thought it was a boid.”

‘On your toes’
The theme of the November Toastmasters meeting was “on your toes,” and the word of the day was acuity, which means “sharpness or keenness of thought, vision, or hearing.”

The whole reason behind Toastmasters, says Jill Moffitt (a volunteer who helps run the club at Eagle’s Trace), is to keep the mind sharp. “I believe that  Toastmasters has a lot of benefits for older adults,” says Eagle’s Trace resident Jim Haring.