Chapter 17: A Minor Repeat

Wednesday, July 20, 1983

Breakfast and class were fine, as was lunch. We were continuing to make progress in class. Carolyn and I had significantly tightened up the case and were also getting quite a bit of exposure to other cases, both more common (polygraphs, the exclusionary rule) and less (jury selection, jury nullification, gender issues in statutory rape, and many others).

This was going to be a fun year!

Just before two, I headed to an empty lecture hall near the room where we were practicing. Carolyn had gotten permission to go with me to watch, which I found amusing.

I had a surprise waiting. I’d thought we were using a small lecture hall, and that I’d have perhaps a dozen people interviewing me (which already seemed like a lot). That second part was right — there were a dozen — but we were in a big lecture hall because all of the Journalism kids were in the audience.

Good grief! My first time being interviewed in public and I had two hundred kids watching me! At least I’d given public speeches to larger groups.

The interviews themselves were a jumble. The dozen interviewers went round-robin and there was little consistency in topics or styles. ‘Have you met Reagan?’ came up, even though they should have known the answer. One of them thought ‘Have you talked with Reagan over the phone?’ might get a different answer.

Someone asked a fairly nuanced question over whether supporting gay people in Texas amounted to promoting crime, given the Sodomy Law. I answered that I wasn’t encouraging anyone to be gay, or to do any particular things, but that I thought the Sodomy Law was horrible and should be repealed. I’m not actually sure that answered the question, though — but it was the truth.

There were a few questions about whether the principal or school board might go after me. Apparently it surprised them, or most of them, that I was already on good terms with Principal Riggs and knew some of the Board members. Despite the whole spin on the story (‘Gay kids go to Prom and have a great time and everybody wins!’), people really wanted it to be a David vs Goliath story where Goliath was interested in striking back. I repeated more or less what I’d said to Principal Riggs: either this was a feel-good story where everyone wins and no one’s the bad guy, or it’s a big mess where at least half the people are bad guys and we have to figure out ‘blame’ and ‘punishment’ and think about whether there need to be more rules.

The more astute kids focused on Reagan’s use of my quote and what that meant. Everyone knew there were elements of the Republican Party that weren’t at all supportive of gay people. On the other hand, the Log Cabin Republicans were already all over the quote and using it to push for greater inclusion. The question was: would anything change? And, if so, how? Would the big tent get bigger, or would the camel get whacked in the nose for daring to stick its head under the tent flap?

Mind you, I had no insight at all into what Reagan would do, but was willing to express opinions on what he should do. That was enough for all of them.

I also got a number of human-interest questions. How had I met Lizzie and Janet? Had I known they would go to Prom? Had I met Marvin Zindler before? What had happened with the School Board last year?

One girl had studied things enough to know to ask about my learning to follow Lizzie’s lead. I said I was no Ginger Rogers, but still had fun. That drew a laugh from nearly everyone.

Overall, it was fun, and it was probably good practice for future interviews. It wasn’t a bad idea to assume there would be future interviews.

I met up with the gang (now including Carolyn and, perhaps more surprisingly, Peter) for dinner, and then we headed off to the library.

The library was full of debaters. We were everywhere and stayed until they kicked us out. Most of us headed over to the student center once the library closed. The once-quiet sitting area where Laura and I had talked was packed with kids going over cases, looking at evidence, and so forth.

There were other places to work, but not all that many other places. It was crazy, and things were likely to get crazier before this was all over.

I had a ‘call home’ note on the message board when I got back to the dorm. Nothing about it indicated any urgency, so I made a mental note to call tomorrow around lunchtime.

David and I chatted briefly when I got back to my room. I still couldn’t remember all that much about first-life David, but this one was better, I was pretty certain. At the very least, he’d made it this long without losing his room key. That counted for something.

Thursday, July 21, 1983

As usual, Cammie and I (and thus Peter and Carolyn, who seemed to defer to us) sat in the front row. One of the usual front-row group, a girl whose name I was pretty sure was Beth, came in, wobbled a bit, then sat down. I perked up a bit, paying attention to her.

Two minutes into Dr. Danforth’s morning comments, her eyes closed, reopened, then closed again. At that point, she started shaking — convulsing, really — and slid out of her chair.

I hopped up and was able to guide her, preventing her from bumping her head. Assuming this was the same incident, she’d been fine that time, but it didn’t hurt to be careful.

Dr. Danforth stopped and said, “What happened?!”

I looked up and said, “She’s shaking uncontrollably, and...”

I touched a couple of fingers to her neck. “Her pulse is very elevated.”

Dr. Danforth turned and waved to one of the grad students. “Go call for help!”

I stayed in place, crouched, holding her a bit, making sure nothing seemed to be getting worse. Cammie, then Peter, came over to help. Beth (if that was her name) occasionally babbled something, but all of it sounded like nonsense.

A few minutes later two paramedics appeared, bringing in a backboard. It didn’t surprise me at all that one of them was familiar. They took over, of course, placing her on the backboard and muttering about her heart rate. The one I recognized looked over at me after a bit.

I said, “Hi, Barry. I told you I was fine.”

He smiled. “Yeah, and I still can’t believe it, but you were right.”

Dr. Danforth leaned forward from the stage. “How is she?”

“Moderate convulsions, possibly hallucinating, and her heart is too fast. I’d hesitate to put a name on it, but I think she took too much of some sort of stimulant.”

“Caffeine?” I said. “A lot of Debaters are addicted to NoDoz.”

The paramedic nodded. “Not a bad guess. We’ll be pumping her stomach.”

They finished getting her secured, then carried her out. All of us clapped as they left.

Dr. Danforth shook his head. “Please, everyone, try to stay healthy. We normally don’t even have one hospitalization in a summer, much less three!”

I shrugged. “I was fine.”

Laura called from up high, “Me, too!”

He smiled a bit. “Thank goodness!”

With that, we got back on track.

Everyone was buzzing about Beth (that was indeed her name) as we left. People were generally hopeful that she’d be fine, though there were some pessimists. Several kids said they’d seen similar things and it’d been caffeine overdose in those cases. I had to wonder what the Debate culture was like at those schools. Meg would’ve had a fit if anyone had a caffeine overdose, and they might well be kicked off the team, or at least suspended for a while.

On the other hand, teenagers are teenagers, and they do idiotic things. This was just one example of that.

Class went fine. One more day left and we’d be done. Then we had a weekend (with a field trip!), after which we’d have a tournament. Then one last week of winding down and we’d head home.

Home was sounding good in some ways, lousy in others. I’d miss being able to talk to Laura in person. The phone wouldn’t be the same, and who knew when we’d be in the same place again? We were bound together by experiencing a profound event (albeit separately), but we were only close because of that event. We’d both been close to other versions of ourselves, but we also carried scars from that.

I couldn’t see us dropping out of contact, but I also didn’t see her joining us for college. That would be the only way it could happen. If I went to where she was going, how could that not look like I was chasing her?

I called home just after lunch, getting Mom. She just wanted to let me know that both mail and phone calls were coming in. After a bit of wheedling, I found that two of Dad’s customers had requested a different salesperson. I apologized, but she said that he’d never liked either of them. If this had been decades later, I might have called the whole thing ‘cancel culture,’ but really, it was just stupid people doing stupid things for stupid reasons.

On the plus side, quite a few of his customers had said positive things, and it looked like he might have leads on a few new customers. He said that it had certainly gotten him a lot of questions and comments.

She was storing the mail for when I returned. I expected to simply discard most of the hate mail, though I’d look for anything that sounded dangerous before discarding it. On the other hand, I wanted to reply to everything nice, even if it might have to be some sort of form letter. Another case of ‘you can never have too many friends.’ Houston was going to be tested by anti-gay politicians before long. Perhaps I’d sped that up. If so, the one big factor in overcoming push-back was simply for everyone to know that they weren’t alone, but rather had more supporters than they might have guessed.