Humor, ticks, and Lyme diease... can they mix?

The biggest challenge for me in Toastmasters is staying within the time limits on my speeches. The second biggest challenge - use of humor. I decided to make it really hard on myself and try to incorporate humor into my talk about ticks and Lyme disease.

A small sample:

"...Send the kids outside with pants tucked into socks ...I call this SAFER SOCKS."

Yes, its hard to find jokes about ticks. So my next talk I did on trains, and a certain train-obsessed little boy:

Benefits to having a train instead of a little boy:

I can spot my son in any crowd – he’s the one with the blue and white striped engineers cap.

Its so easy to dress a train in the morning …

Mommy: “come here, look I have a train shirt for you.”

R: “Thomas!”

When I need help with laundry – “come here R___, take this cargo to the sock depot.”

When I need help cleaning up: “come here R___, park your toys in their sheds.”

Tips for successful humorous speaking:

• after making the joke, wait for the laughs
• be sure to have the person introducing you signal that humor will be involved
• put your best 2 jokes in the intro and conclusion