I attended a speech competition at a local school in our community.  Children from the fourth grade to grade twelve were competing through both their presentation and their creative writing skills.

Now, most of these speeches were about common day things: their dog, video games, computers, and different diseases.  But there was one speech that stood out, mainly because of its’ originality.

I can remember this boy’s name was Billy and he was in grade ten.  He started off with the title of his speech: "How to Write a Eulogy…"

What?

I thought I might have heard him wrong, but that was not the case.  He proceeded to tell us about the history of eulogies and their origins.  Then he began talking about ways to write a eulogy, and how funeral poems can often add the right beauty to a sad moment.

When he ended his speech, the room was quiet.  I stood up and started clapping - and the rest of the room followed.  He ended up winning first place in his age category and best of show.  All I can say, even though it was weird, it was perhaps the best effort I had ever seen.