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Easlea nods affirmatively as he trains his lens on a yellow flag draped over a podium about 15 feet ahead. Emblazoned on the top third of the flag in primary blue is the symbol for Toastmasters International: a bold roman T superimposed over a watermarked globe.
Murray thumbs through some papers before glancing over at Easlea again.
"If I don't mess up too bad," Murray says, "I'll put mine up on You Tube."
Easlea nods again. This time he's more attentive. He has just learned that Murray is the featured speaker at tonight's meeting of the Libertarian Toastmasters of Conshohocken and he, Easlea, will be the evaluator.
Heidi Schulze was supposed to speak for at least 15 minutes, but it's time to start and the overhead projector she needs for her presentation hasn't arrived.
The pressure is on Bruce Murray, but he doesn't flinch. For the next 20 minutes, he flashes colored paddles at his peers-green, yellow or red-as time winds down on brief presentations of the quote, joke and word of the day.
Now it's Murray's turn to take the stage. He approaches the podium with a slight limp, then bows his head for a second and begins.
"We change every day of our lives, and most days it's nearly impossible to tell what if anything has changed," he says. "And then there are other days."
For 6 minutes and 39 seconds, Murray takes his audience back to March 14, 1982, to the "cold, chilly, rainy Sunday morning" when he sustained an injury to his left leg and ankle that shot intense pain through his body for more than 15 years and took five surgeries to fix. He drags them through the perilous past, stopping occasionally to lighten the load with a joke.
He wasn't supposed to work that morning. He had planned to swaddle himself in blankets and stay in bed for a while.
Murray was disappointed yet optimistic. At least he would have the chance to help someone at work-and quietly celebrate. He had lost enough weight to fit into size 31 pants again, and he was eager to put on his new jeans and underwear-"for the trimmer body." He got dressed and headed for Hahnemann University Hospital.
"I parked my car, and it is raining like crazy. And I'm cheap so we're parked three blocks from the hospital so I don't have to pay anything."
Murray sprinted three blocks to a coffee shop. He bought a cup and turned back into the rain.
"I'm standing at the side of a street that is 12 lanes across. People have trouble making this street on a good day. And at the moment, if there weren't ruts and high spots and curbing, I'd have to walk on water to get across this road.
"I back up and I'm hopping from one high spot to the next until I arrive at a high spot where I no longer have my footing. And I twist my leg, and I hear it crack, and I go down on my face, into the river."
Drivers honked at Murray as he lay writhing pain. Somehow he summoned the strength to crawl up the median and hobble to the hospital.
When he arrived, Murray was clutching a flattened half-umbrella in one fist, a soggy, empty briefcase in the other. His co-workers cackled at the sight of him. But they soon realized he was injured and rushed him to the emergency room.
"I'm glad to tell you that the jeans survived the fall just fine-not a mark on them. Unfortunately, when they laid me down on the X-ray table, they needed to cut them off. And as the scissors are cutting up my leg, coming higher-and a little too high-they cut through the waistband to reveal that not only did I buy new jeans and new underwear, but I bought the skimpiest pair of underwear that I had ever bought in my life-with a Playboy logo."
Murray lets the audience chuckle appreciatively, then he circles back to his thesis.
"On most days change is nearly impossible to notice," he says. "On other days, the change can be so dramatic that it's impossible to know what it means."
His face flushes a little under the applause.
During an impromptu speaking exercise later in the program, Murray's story seems like an ironic parody. He leaps in the air and shuffles his feet with ease. His face betrays no pain.
As the exercise concludes, Murray explains that successful foot and leg surgeries have enabled him to move comfortably.
"My disability's actually kind of hard to see," he says. "I haven't been able to walk normally since I was 28. Since I've met all of you I'm doing much better. I had a major surgery last year. They fixed three different things in my foot."
Murray's audience seems deeply moved. He dreams of having that effect on larger groups, of telling his story to crowds of people with disabilities. But Murray must first sit through David Easlea's critique.
Easlea gives what general evaluator Ken Krawchuk later calls a "model evaluation." With a bold British accent, he weaves positive and negative feedback into a seamless tapestry.
"The speech purpose was clear," he says. "The topic was wonderfully in focus. Through the gestures, you told the speech.
"Your eye contact was fine-just a little inconsistent. Many strong gestures, but occasionally your hand was out there not doing anything specific. If you had found ways to use your hands at those times, the speech could've been even better."
Easlea says that Murray could have used the room space more effectively-perhaps by moving the podium out of the way-but overall he was pleased.
"I want to congratulate you again on a speech well given," he says, "a moving speech, a funny speech."
Bruce Murray swells with relief.
