Today at Toastmasters, our Table Topics session [impromptu speaking] theme was Favourites. The Table Topics Master, Patrick, passed around an envelope with different topics. Each person, in turn, would pick out one piece of paper with a topic and talk about it for one minute, and each of us had a different topic.  We couldn’t plan since we didn’t know which topic we’d get. There were favourite vacations, department stores,  hobbies, vacations, book,  pet,  songs, and favourite singers.

Sometimes it’s hard to choose favourites when we like a lot of things; some had a difficult time picking one, like Oaiz and a favourite song. Doug had no difficulty when it came to favourite singer. He chose Michael Buble, since he listens to Buble’s music as he bikes each morning. I like Buble too, but I also like Josh Groban and Peter McCutcheon’s voices.

The favourite I picked was a department store. We once had a certain store in our city. It was a little like  a general store, but bigger. One could start down a grocery aisle and end up in clothing, move from the pharmacy to the tank with live lobsters, and shoes and boots at the far end of the store. The  floor was wooden and once probably quite polished, but at the time I was thinking of, it was getting worn and the floor squeaked in certain places. Up the escalator to the second floor to the toy section, a place our parents might take us near Christmas to see Santa, though we didn’t live in the city, but on a farm. Upstairs there was also a fabric counter and knitting supplies for those who like to knit or crochet, also a housewares section where we once bought a big mixing bowl for our mother for Christmas. That store is long gone now, levelled to make a new shopping centre with a grocery store and others in a strip mall. The memory was a good one though.

Tomorrow evening is our area Toastmasters contest and one of those contests in the Table Topics contest. Winners from our own club go on to compete against winners from the five or six other clubs in our area . What topic will the contestants get tomorrow is anyone’s guess. They’ll know as they enter the room to speak. It should be exciting to see that the speakers come up with in less than a minute.