House of Swank

Bookends

When I transport myself to debate meets on a Saturday morning in my own car part of my routine has always been to listen to Weekend Edition on NPR.  Part of that is because I have a huge fan-girl crush on Scott Simon, so anytime I'm in the car early enough on a Saturday morning to catch his show I will.  But part of it is that I find Weekend edition a nice way to ease myself into thinking about current events as I prepare myself for a day of listening to students discuss and debate such things.

Now, I've found the bookend to that program to accompany me on my trip home.

Well, rather, it found me.  Since the car radio is tuned to Scott Simon - er, NPR - from the morning commute, it is only natural I listen to it on the way home. 

So I spend my commutes home listening to Live Wire! on OPB.  It's a witty, seat-of-your pants escapade that also provides a nice segue way from debate meet to the real world.  The yin to Weekend Edition's yang.

It's an nice routine, indeed.

Job Description

I love the debate team, I really do, but if I could teach them all one lesson effective immediately it would be thus:

My job as a coach (albeit an assistant one, but this would hold true for a coach of any variety) is to help you do your best in competition. 

If, in practice, your speech is a piece of crap, I am doing no one any favors by telling you that it is the best speech ever and providing you with empty praise.  If I do that you are going to take the speech, as is, into competition and get your ass handed to you on a silver platter. 

If, however, I give you an honest assessment of your speech, then you should be well prepared for whatever competition may hand you.  I can't promise you success, but I can at least promise you that as things stand now you've got a fighting chance.  If you do, indeed, stand a fighting chance.

So when I say nice things about your speech, say that you are doing a good job, say that things are looking good - I MEAN IT.  There's a time and a place for ego-stroking, and practice is not it.

Thankfully, once I have this "talk" with the students a fair number of them (unfortunately not 100%) believe me.  And listen to the suggestions I make and make them.  And their speeches are the better for it.

Now if only I could figure out a way to permanently remove "uh" from everyone's vocabularies.

Resolved: Debate Kicks Ass

First debate meet of the season was this weekend.  We had a small, but solid, team.

It's my third year in (disregarding the years of being Sweetie's "judge friend), and I think this team has grabbed my heart in a way the last couple of years have not. 

I see a lot of myself in this year's team.  The kid who is really shy when it comes to talking to other people, but has no problems getting in front of a room and speaking.  The kid who strives for perfection and needs to be told that sometimes "good enough" is plenty.  The kid who thinks they're just going to dip their toe in the water, and next thing you know they're swimming in the deep end.  The kid who talks too fast, and does not realize that the appropriate speed to speak such that others can understand is actually painfully slow.

One kid showed an eloquence I didn't know they were capable of.  Several kids are already pushing themselves at a level beyond where I expected them to be.  Most of the new kids are hooked, and I can already tell we've got some lifers on the team.

The Hedgehog was a superstar.  He held court in the judges' lounge most of the day.  Did a lot of exploring of the floors.  You would be amazed at how many half-broken paper clips live on the floor of a high school computer lab.

All training for him to become Debate Champion 2025.

System of Equations

• Debate meets are exhausting
• Life with an infant is exhausting
• Debate meets with an infant are exzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Tripping Down Memory Lane

For those of you knew to the story there is one important thing you need to know.  I did not enjoy pregnancy.  Regularly referred to it as the ultimate Machiavellian experience (the ends justify the means).  Didn't even have a particularly eventful pregnancy.  But being pregnant just is not fun. 

Yet, as the debate season gets underway tonight I find myself oddly nostalgic for it, and suspect that this may be an annual occurrence for me.

My pregnancy with Hedgehog was deeply connected to the debate calendar.  The season started right as I was firmly entrenching myself in the second trimester, and his due date was the day of the last state qualifying meet of the season.  As the team grew and developed so did my belly.

So this morning I was shopping for Sweetie's debate rations.  Debate meet food and food sensitivities don't always get along very well, so I always pack Sweetie a big bag of friendly food to help get him through the tournaments.  Last year the bag got packed at the beginning of the season and would be restocked the instant a tournament was over, as it was not only served as debate meet rations, but it was part of our luggage when we left for the hospital as well, so it had to be ready on a moment's notice.  (Ironically, I had Sweetie's food for the hospital packed starting 4-1/2 months before Hedgehog's birth, but did not start actually packing my own bag until about 15 minutes after my water broke). 

In about a month we'll be competing at Ridgefield High School's annual tournament.  The Spudder.  (The school's mascot is the potato.  They will celebrate this by serving us baked potatoes for lunch).  That was the meet where the belly had officially grown large enough that I could no longer fit into a student desk for judging purposes.  So I would have to spin desks around and use teacher's desk chairs to arrange a suitable desk for myself.  

Come January we'll be making our way to a big, University tournament.  It was at another big tournament where I had to make the request (that was ignored) to not be given any rooms too far away.  It's not that I wasn't capable of walking those distances, but the speed at which I was walking at seven months pregnant I could have single-handedly killed the schedule for the tournament.

And as the student's excitement built to the state qualifying meets, so did my excitement build to Hedgehog's birth.  Last year I was judging at one of the tournaments about 36 hours before Hedgehog was born.  The students knew his arrival was imminent, and seemed surprised that I was there. 

And now Hedgehog, Debate champion of 2025, is here.  He attended a bit of the meet this evening.  He seemed to love the atmosphere.  Which is a good thing, since he'll probably be spending a fair amount of his time in the coming years hanging out at debate meets.

And I'll probably spend a fair amount of my time at debate meets thinking back to when he was still on his way here.

State Memories: Georgia

I am resurrecting the State Memory Project for NaBloPoMo as a good way to fill space on those days when I can't think of anything else to say.  When you account for states I haven't been to before, so have no memory of, I left off at Georgia.

I have been to Georgia once - in 2003.  Sweetie had a female student qualify for the National Forensics Tournament that year, so I got a free trip to Atlanta to serve as female chaperon.

Our first night in town we met up with some other teams from Washington at Underground Atlanta for dinner.  We converged in a courtyard outside of a Hooters and laid out the plan.  Everyone was going to scatter to their restaurant of choice, eat, and return to the courtyard at the appointed time.  Hooters was off limits.  And we're off.

As Sweetie and I went into the mall with a couple of other coaches we soon realized a problem with the plan -  we had arrived at the mall about 5-10 minutes before closing time, so all of the restaurants were shutting down.  We headed back to the courtyard, confident that all of the kids were intelligent enough that they would do the same thing when they had nowhere to eat and nowhere to shop available to them.

When we arrived back at the courtyard a few students were missing - including ours.  We ventured into Hooters to see if the students had broken the rules and lo and behold, they were there and waiting for their food to arrive.  There was a moment between the three coaches (each of whom had a student at the table) where there was a tension in the air as they tried to figure out the next step to take. 

As my official role on the trip was to have breasts and a vagina, I just stood there waiting to follow Sweetie's lead.  His student was 18, he knew her parents wouldn't care, and we knew she was already being tortured as a vegetarian forced to eat at Hooters, so he decided to just let things slide at the time.

Somehow, perhaps just due to inertia, it was decided that everyone would now be having dinner at Hooters.  It was open, it was convenient, we were hungry.  The coaches had a chuckle over the fact that this is one meal they'd be paying for themselves, as there is no way in heck they'd be expensing a receipt from Hooters at the end of the trip.  Coaches were forbidding students from even looking at the gift shop, much less purchasing anything.  One coach had big concerns about the reaction that her young, conservative student's parents would have if they learned their son had been to a Hooters while on a school trip and we tried to work through a best plan of action for her to follow.  It was going to just be a funny little footnote to the trip.

Except we had horrible service at our table.  Sweetie and I were sitting with two other coaches, and I believe we had a different waitress than the rest of our group, even though we were all sitting at contiguous tables.  Our waitress was very slow to take our orders and our food was taking forever to come out.  The other tables - big tables - that sat down at the same time as we did got their food before we did.  We pointed this out.  They were finishing their food.  They were getting their bill.  They were paying their bill.  We still had no food, and kept pointing out to our waitress that we needed to get our food so that we could be more-or-less on the same schedule as everyone else.  Still, no food arrived.  Everyone else had eaten, paid, an if we stuck around much longer people WOULD be venturing into the gift shop, so we had no other choice than to cut our losses.

We threw some cash on the table to cover all of our drinks (plus appropriate tip on those drinks) and left with everyone else.

While we were gathering everyone back up in the courtyard to get ready to head back to the hotel, Sweetie stopped at an ATM to get some cash.  I was loitering nearby him, and saw a cop come out of Hooters with the manager, ask one of the coaches we had been sitting with to remove his hands from his pockets, and asked him and our other coach-friend to step into the restaurant.  Sweetie and I followed them in, because obviously something was afoot.

The manager and cop were accusing us of dining and dashing.  Apparently, it is a common crime at this particular Hooters.  The female coach of our group quickly took control of the situation, pointing out that in order to dine and dash one must first dine, and it was impossible for us to have dined as we had never received any food.  We pointed out that we had left money for our drinks - it was still sitting on the table.  At about this time our waitress (proving that Hooters does not hire women for their brains) indicated that our food was finally ready!  You could see all of the gears connecting in the manager's brain as he offered to box up our meals to go.  We declined the offer and got the heck out of there.

A few lectures to the students on appropriate behavior later and we ended up eating at the Rock Bottom Brewery next to the hotel.  Much better food.  With a good story to tell about how we almost got arrested at Hooters while on a high school trip.  And I can still say I've never eaten at Hooters.

.... and yes, this is the same memory my Sweetie shared, but if you had something like this happen to you wouldn't it be high on your list of memories as well? 

Procrastination

Throughout this pregnancy and the drama of the due date I've been saying, and believing, that this kid will be born sometime in February.  Because regardless of what the due date was, it always fell within the month of February.

But now, thanks in part to February and it's measly 28 days I am officially hoping for this child to be born in March.  Which likely means labor will kick start once I hit "publish" on this post, but let's not get into how frustrating this end part of the pregnancy can be in regards to all of that stuff right now.

Here are how the logistics work out:

• There's some last minute buying of stuff and cleaning of house I'd like to get done before the Hedgehog arrives.  Will life continue on if it doesn't?  Yes.  But will my life feel a hell of a lot better if it does get done?  OH YEAH!  I should be able to get most of that accomplished between now and Monday.  So, no kiddo this weekend please.  (So much for my hoped for Friday the 13th baby).
• Next week are the state qualifying meets for the debate team.  While plans are in place for a qualified replacement to take the reins while Sweetie and I are off birthing this baby, the kids who are most on the cusp of qualifying who are also the kids I'd most like to see qualify also happen to be the kids who are least likely to adjust to that last-second replacement with ease.  And I don't want to be the reason they don't make it to state.  So this coming week is no good, either.
• The following week is my official due date, so you'd think that I'd be hoping for the kid to be born that week since that's what we've sort of been planning for all along.  Except my doctor happens to be out of the office that week.  And while I'm sure her colleagues are all perfectly well-qualified lovely people, I want her at my birth, dammit. 

So, the plan now, if I get a say in things (which I know I don't, but let a crazy pregnant lady pretend, OK?) is that labor starts on Sunday, March 1 - which will make coordinating with Sweetie and his work schedule very easy - and then the kiddo is born on Monday, March 2 - when Doctor is back in the office and fresh from her week away.

It means I lose the idea of grandmother with birthday 2-22, father with birthday of 2-23 and child with birthday of 2-24, but in exchange I'd get a child with a birthday of 3-2 while my birthday is 4-3, and there's poetry to be found there as well.

Milestone

This doesn't often show up in the pregnancy books, but I have reached the point in my pregnancy where I no longer fit in your standard student desk/chair combo and must, rather, improvise if that is the seating made available to me.

The good news is at the judge at a debate meet this gives me full validation to use the teacher's chair, which is much more comfortable than the alternative.

Best Debate Logic Ever

Sometimes you have to love the logic that comes from the give-and-take of a debate format.  Especially when you've got high schoolers in the mix.  I got to hear this basic exchange yesterday in a round debating whether or not we ought to bail out the auto industry:

Neg:  If we don't bail out the auto industry we will lose millions of jobs and unemployment will rise to 10% and that will throw us into a depression.

Aff:  Sorry, but 10% does not a depression make.  During the Great Depression unemployment was at 25%.

Neg:  The Great Depression was one of the biggest depressions we've ever had.  We're not talking about a depression of that size.  10% unemployment would put us into a simple depression.

Aff:  There is no such thing as a simple depression.  Economics is very complex, there is nothing simple about it.

Neg won that round.  This wasn't the sole argument that did it for them, but most of aff's arguments fell into the same sort of trap at the end.

Grace

grace n.  

1. Seemingly effortless beauty or charm of movement, form, or proportion.
2. A characteristic or quality pleasing for its charm or refinement.
3. A sense of fitness or propriety.
4. 1. A disposition to be generous or helpful; goodwill.
   2. Mercy; clemency.
   3. Divine love and protection bestowed freely on people.
   4. The state of being protected or sanctified by the favor of God.
   5. An excellence or power granted by God.
5. A favor rendered by one who need not do so; indulgence.

Among the things I would like Hedgehog to learn in their lifetime, I think grace may be near the top of the list.

The second debate meet of the season was this weekend.  Mostly novices in attendance, although a wide spread in what defined "novice."  For some of them it was their second meet after a couple of months of intense preparation.  Others seemed to not know the rules of the game and quickly knew they were in over their heads.

Because of the way it all works, their were several rounds in which the more qualified kids faced those who did not know what was going on, and watching the kids approach the situation was a real lesson in moral character and how one should compose themselves in an awkward situation.

In one round the "experienced" debater was beside themselves with frustration.  "My opponent didn't say anything, so I have nothing to respond to, what am I supposed to do?"  I wished that the neophyte would say something, ANYTHING that would allow me to give them a win on a technicality, but it was not to be.  The best I could do was to give the "winner" of the round some STRONG feedback that, hopefully, will help them to gain some perspective.

But another round I watched was a thing of horror and beauty all rolled into one.  It was literally the first round of debate for the neophyte, and they had to be heavily coached on who spoke when and what was to happen in each speech.  Their first speech was a valiant effort with some good ideas, but not written in the format called for in the event.  When the "veteran" in the round was given a chance to rebut their opponents arguments they briefly pointed out the missing pieces of the previous speech and then continued to speak, prefacing their comments with "while the previous speech was missing these things, there were some main ideas, so I'm going to talk about those." 

We were 1/4 of the way through the round, everyone in the room knew who would win and who would lose, but the winner had the grace to try and work with their opponent on their opponent's own terms.  That student won the tournament, and based on what I saw I cannot say it was a wrong result (even though it meant that my students were not winners).

I want the Hedgehog to be that debater, that person.  The one who recognizes that they are in a bad situation, but let's make the most out of it; not only for ourselves, but for the others involved as well.  A person who approaches those in a disadvantaged person with respect and indulgence rather than entitlement and superiority. 

A gracious human being.