When it looked like he was starting, Jenny jumped in, “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.” She’s gentle like that. “Walter,” he said. Walter never really told us who he was, what he did or why we should listen to him. But, hey, if you’re teaching charisma and you have charisma, it should only take a moment to see why you’re teaching it—or shouldn’t be teaching it, as the case may be.

In the first two minutes, he defined the word charisma using the word charisma, as in, “Charisma is…um, it’s this energy…comes from within.…It’s charisma."

Right then, I felt the room closing in. It was a small white rectangle of a room with no windows. The only adornments on the walls were a hanging beaded door and an electrical box. Heat thickened the air and meditative music lulled out of a bright red boom box sporting a NASCAR sticker. The door was shut. Escape was impossible.

The three other prisoners were two young men and a middle-aged woman. The good-looking boys were barely old enough to get into a bar. Though polite and pleasant, they were obviously there to figure out how to get even more girls to go home with them. The woman wore purple velvet shoes and looked like she told people what to do. I got the impression that she thought she should be giving the lecture.

Now, I’m a physics junkie so I perked up when he said, “Everything is energy. You, me, everything in the world, we’re all just little bits of energy.” Fabulous, we were going to launch into string theory, I could feel it. Then he totally shot out of orbit with, “Next time, before you call someone you’re mad at, sit there and think good thoughts about them because they will feel the energy. Tell them you want to love them. Give them a hug. Then call them. It will work. Every time.” If only we could just get President Bush to think good thoughts about Saddam, Al Qaeda or whomever he wants to get this week, before he calls them.

I guess that could fall into personal influence, but where was the charisma?

I didn’t find any. We covered everything else though. Here are some fortunes he cracked out of the cookie for us:

--“Be non-judgmental.”

--“Focus.”

--“Life is a lesson.”

--“We create our own world.”

--“Go within yourself.”

--“Be open.”

--“Be positive.”

--“Smile more."

--“Each human being is different.”

You might have noticed those clichés cover quite a gamut. How does one guy manage that in an hour? It helps if one never finishes a thought, never fully fleshes out a thought and always flits from thought to thought.

At some point, the lady with purple shoes said what we were all thinking, “You’re saying truisms. I can’t argue with any of it…well, I’m just going to say it. You keep talking about focus, but I’m seeing a lot of non focus going on here.”

Whoa! Everybody leaned back in their chairs.

Except Walter. He said, “Absolutely. There’s a lot of unfocused people out there.”

And in here, apparently. He totally missed it. How did we all get what she was saying and he miss it so completely?

Now, don’t get me wrong. Walter seemed like a really nice guy. He had a positive outlook and he just wanted to help people. But if he’s going to lecture on charisma, he should, you know, at least actually talk about charisma.

The best part of the evening happened before “purple shoes” called out Walter, when we were all quietly begging to scream. Walter was discussing nervous tension. “You feel it in your solar plexus.” He fisted his hand and put it in the center of his chest (for those of you who don’t know where your solar plexus is) and said, “Do you know when you feel that tightness there? What that is?”

“Gas,” one of the cute young men offered.

I swear I think he was really trying to help ol’ Walter out.

Suggested Vyuz reading...

A serial networker walks among us | By April Labine-Katko