I just finished my seventh presentation in front of an audience this month. Tomorrow, I do one more, and then I don’t speak in public again for a blessed week.

Eight speeches in a month. Since I took a few days’ vacation in March, that’s eight speeches in 20 days. That means not only delivering a speech every 2.5 days, but also writing a speech every 2.5 days.

I feel like I should be wearing a sign declaring, “Will Bloviate for Food.” I am just so tired of the sound of my own voice, and tired of the effort required to be ready to speak every second or third day for weeks on end.

Have you seen the recent episode of “The Office” where Dwight has to give a speech? (It’s called, unaccountably, “Dwight’s Speech.”) He’s completely unprepared, so Jim gives him a doctored-up version of one of Mussolini’s speeches, which Dwight delivers to great effect.

Right now, I feel just two steps away from seizing the podium and crying, “We must never cede control of the motherland!”

I hated public speaking until I got to college. The professor in my freshman seminar forced us to memorize poems and recite them in front of the class. I thought I would hate this, and I chose a rather long poem — “To an Athlete Dying Young” — hoping I would make up in feats of memory what I was sure to lack in oratory skill. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed the experience and took the initiative to memorize a few other poems on my own. (”Margaret, are you grieving/Over Goldengrove unleaving…” Go on, test me!) I didn’t spontaneously recite them in public, of course, but after that I didn’t mind standing up in front of a class. Good thing, too, because eventually I went on to teach for six years.

When I was in college, I also read a book of essays, How I Got to be Perfect by Jean Kerr, who wrote the memoir Please Don’t Eat the Daisies that was adapted into the movie and TV show of the same name. Now, the Kerrs had four sons when she wrote Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, but their family had grown to include seven children (six boys!) by the time she wrote How I Got to be Perfect. The book details how the Kerrs held weekly “culture nights,” where they and the children memorized and recited poetry for one another. She admits that this innovation did not go over well at first, but eventually the boys gained an understanding and appreciation of form, rhyme, and meter.

Do you think Aitch and his brother would hate me forever if I instituted a poetry night? I think it would be fantastic. Husband is totally on board, as he has fond memories of his mother reciting “Gunga Din” when he was little.

Can’t you just see Aitch in a few years’ time, delivering the St. Crispin’s Day speech: “We must never cede control of the motherland!”

Uh…I mean, “Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more!”