Published in On Our Selection News November 14, 2013

I have a speech to write.

But it’s not just about writing a speech, it’s about winning. That’s right, there is a lot that I need to achieve with this speech. Sure, I’ve written speeches before, I’ve even done them off the cuff. I had two really close friends’ speeches to do in the month of October. One of those speeches had to be repeated twice because my friend had a second “family” 21st party, which meant more people to embarrass her in front of, and more cake for me.

I usually love speeches. I did one at my cousin’s wedding a few years back. It was quick, witty and ended with my giving the bride and groom personalised underwear with my face on it (it’s a family thing I started, don’t read too much into it, expect that it’s not weird. Promise). I even had the honour of doing the “funny speech” at the end of Year 12 (my emphasis on our past love of raa-raa skirts earned me a standing ovation). But none of that matters now. My speech giving past isn’t worth a damn – not unless I can out-speech this girl.

You see, she gave a speech at my 21st. It was awesome – it was funny and it was damn well researched – did you know that on the exact day I was born, President Bush vomited into the lap of a Japanese Prime Minister? Well this girl did. And she made it excruciatingly funny and even a little bit touching. That’s what my speech has to go up against. I need to pulverise her. However, this is going to be a task because not only is this girl an amazing public speaker – she won a mooting competition, those things are HUGE – but she also has really expressive eyebrows. The kind of brows which would have made her an outstanding candidate to place Hermione Granger had she been in England at the time – I’ve always harboured a violent jealousy over that trait. My eyebrows are barely visible. In fact, I’ve been told that it looks like someone had glue on their thumb, smeared it on my brow and threw little pieces of hair at it. Yeah. My brows do not compare.

It’s not like I don’t have material on her. I was with her on the first night she was ever drunk. I can go into cahoots with her sister to snag the audio file of her talking about wanting to, “hang with the boys on the fence because that’s where cool people go” to play and refer to. I remember her hair-do on the first day of high school. I know about her love of Tweety Bird and stupid animal pillows. I have endless supplies of ammo.

But it’s not good enough. I want to make her cry, not only from being touched emotionally, but also because I showed up her speech – big time.

I don’t know what this says about our friendship. Going over what I’ve written, it reads a little aggressively to the untrained eye, but I think there’s something beautiful about friends wanting to metaphorically beat the other to a pulp with the clever stringing together of anecdotes. Friendship is supposed to improve the lives of both parties, so if she gets a heart-warming, hilarious speech and I get the satisfaction of knowing I beat her, than surely that’s a win-win. Isn’t that what this whole “friendship” thing is supposed to be about?