Another failed attempt at public speaking

My brother got married on Jan. 19. As his best man I was supposed to deliver the last speech. I gave an eye-moistening speech in a calm and composed manner as I usually do. We'll at least that was how I envisioned things would turn out. To make the story short, I bombed yet again. Hopefully that was the last public speaking or rather public stuttering engagement I will ever do. When it's my turn to get married, I am taping whatever I have to say.

Here's the message I delivered (with some changes and a lot of additions), which by the way did not even elicit a reaction from the crowd. Yes, not even a boo. It's cliché-ridden but I had to bank on old reliables since I only made this up a few minutes before my forgettable moment at the mike:

"My shaking voice is a dead giveaway that I am not much of a public speaker. Given that I am bad at public speaking, I try to avoid this as much as possible. But today I'll have to make an exception.

"Marching down the aisle a while ago, there's this thought I couldn't seem to shake. For some reason the memory of our childhood years just kept on popping in my head.

"I can still remember our younger years when my brother, I, and some of our cousins played at the garden of our grandparents' house. Back then it never occurred to me that one of us, most of all my brother, would be eventually getting married. I always thought then that marriage is for old folks only. We'll guess what? We're old now.

"Just look at us now. Dressed in barongs and dresses, you probably would not have thought that we were once sweaty kids; kids whose most complicated problems were how Shaider was going to defeat KumaLeAhr or if we would be given enough time for play the next day. Those simpler days are gone now. We now have more weighty problems to deal with. But the good thing about life is it has a way of evening things out.

"In navigating the tough road ahead, we get to pick a partner. The problems will still be there and having a partner brings baggage of its own. But the beauty of this is you won’t be alone carrying the burden. You’ll have someone to share the load with.

Seeing how happy he is today, I think my brother chose the right partner. But I have to say how he was able to fool her into marrying him is still beyond me. For me to say that he is lucky to have you really is understatement.

"To Kuya Kary and, I guess now, Ate Rissa have a wonderful life."