Chapter 51: Enthusiastic Greetings

Thursday, November 3, 1983

We went home right after school to pack, and re-pack, and rethink what we were taking, then pack again. It was a constant battle for me to make sure of what I wanted to bring. For the girls, it was even more of a battle. I know that because they told me so. Often, and repeatedly, too.

For one thing, accurate weather information for Michigan was harder to come by than it would be in years to come. The newspapers had a fair bit of information, and phoning them confirmed that, but forecasts were notoriously iffy. It could be warm fall weather up in Michigan or it could be extremely cold.

For guys, a suit is a suit. I had long underwear if I needed it. On the other hand, the girls had to put up with skirts, which allowed for various levels of tights and hose and so forth. But, even wearing the right things, they might get a blast of freezing-cold air in places where they really didn’t want it!

Not for the first time, nor even the twentieth, I wished for some of the things that would be common on suitcases in a decade or two. We had wheeled models, but they were nowhere near as nice as the ones in the future. Of course, we probably could have ‘invented’ better ones, but that was probably deeply unethical.

Friday, November 4, 1983

Our flight out was at ten in the morning, so we headed directly to the airport after picking people up. We’d gotten nonstops both ways, but those were to Detroit, not to Ann Arbor. A charter bus would take us the rest of the way once we got there. It was the only reasonable way to move us around.

The flight itself was mercifully uneventful. We weren’t even particularly loud, which is saying something considering that we had around forty highly verbal teenagers packed together on a plane.

I sat in the middle seat. Jas had the window, while Cammie had the aisle. In some ways, it wasn’t the most practical arrangement, but Jas wanted the window and to sit next to me, so that was that. Angie and Paige were across the aisle, with Lexi next to them.

As I was flying, I thought about why we, this gaggle of teenagers, were flying. This was the first flight of the year for Memorial Debate — the first of three for at least several of us. In my two years in Debate before, there had been two flights total, and I’d only been on one of them. The other flight was to Nationals in 1983.

I wasn’t the only difference. Angie was a difference, too, at the least. Nevertheless, either me or the two of us or something had transformed us from a program which took perhaps twelve people to U Penn, just once, to a program that was taking forty people to Michigan, and would likely take around twenty to thirty to Lexington. We might well take over ten to Tournament of Champions, too.

This was the tip of the iceberg, too. Debate tournaments were a zero-sum game, in the end. For every tournament we attended that we hadn’t in my first life, some people were either not going to attend or were going to lose where they’d won before. For every tournament we didn’t attend that we had then, some people would win (and potentially qualify for State) who hadn’t before.

In the case of Dave Mayrink, while I couldn’t prove what had happened, my guess was that (either by example, by not supporting him through his numerous gripes about going to the High School for Engineering Professions, or both) I’d shifted the course of his life. I might have changed what college he would attend, in which case the odds were overwhelming that he would marry someone else.

Might some of these other nudges — a success where one wouldn’t have happened, or a failure replacing a success — change the course of others’ lives? It seemed entirely reasonable that they would. Was I responsible for those changes? Responsible to the people whose lives I’d altered? I really didn’t think so. It was their choice of how to handle success or failure.

I, of course, had the option to not even play the game at all, but that would have changed things from my first life. But, as I’d long noted, I didn’t have the option to do what I’d done in my first life. Angie made that impossible, but so did my own limited memory of what had happened. How in the world could I have recreated my first-life Debate rounds? I was literally not the same person. Well, not in any way that mattered.

My own ethics made it nearly impossible, too. Could I have partnered with Gene for a year (with Angie keeping her distance) and not have said anything to save Curtis? How? Even if I had, we’d have had to keep Gene out of Study Group to avoid things being completely different as debate partners.

On and on. So many variables, most of which were invisible, many of which would cause unpredictable results if changed.

The upshot — one that I’d mostly realized before, but that needed reiteration regularly, at least in my own mind — was that I had to treat this world as its own place, not as a place intended to match my first life until I (and Angie, and Laura) ‘messed with it.’ This, now, was my life, and I had to live it. Angie had to live hers, and Laura had to live hers.

Perhaps the Universe (or God, or whatever) had a plan and we were implementing that plan. Perhaps everything was predestined. I refused to believe so, but that meant that we had free will. Free will made us responsible for our own decisions, but not those of others. We might have made changes that greatly improved Cammie’s life, or Andy’s, or Cal’s, or Lizzie and Janet’s, for instance, but they were the ones who’d seized the new opportunities, not us.

Jas noticed that I was lost in thought and said, “What are you thinking about, boyfriend?”

“Life,” I said, then shrugged. “How little things add up into big things. Cammie can tell you that, two years ago, none of us envisioned flying off to nationally relevant tournaments, much less so many of us.”

Cammie grinned and nodded. “Definitely! Two years ago, qualifying for State and doing well was the ceiling. I barely even knew about Tournament of Champions! Nationals was a far-off dream, even with Ted having gone. And, aside from Nationals, why would we spend the money to fly halfway across the country just to debate people who don’t live anywhere near us?”

“Same for us across the wall, of course,” Jas said, grinning. “Heck, we barely even knew you stuffy, formal people!”

“And we barely even knew you flaky, artsy-fartsy thespians,” Cammie said, sticking out her tongue.

“I resemble that remark!” Angie called from across the aisle, giggling.

“Me, too!” Paige said.

“Yet, here we are,” Jas said.

“Here we are indeed,” Cammie said.

Both of them hugged me at the same time. I fully suspected they both attributed the change to me, but for very different reasons. Jas knew what I’d done, while Cammie ... well ... Cammie suspected a lot of things, but the truth would likely still come as a shock. Still, I’d as much as confirmed that I was fundamentally different, and it’s a tiny step from different to being the cause of it, particularly because she’d already attributed so many things to me before finding out that I really was different.

Once we arrived in Detroit, we descended upon baggage claim, some of us grabbing carts while others retrieved suitcases, garment bags, catalog cases, evidence boxes, and the other paraphernalia we needed. Meg and Steffie checked inventories of items against what we’d retrieved, then checked them again. Yes, we were all highly responsible and quite intelligent, but it would fall on them if someone got to Ann Arbor and didn’t have clothes or evidence or whatever it was that they needed. At the absolute minimum, it would mean another hour or more running back to the airport to get the missing article.

After the checking and rechecking, we went out to meet the charter bus. Once everything was stowed (with yet more checking), we climbed on, Meg and Steffie counted noses, and we were off.

This time, free of silly airplane rules, Jas wound up in my lap and Paige wound up in Angie’s lap. The two of them were close enough in size that either combination worked, pretty much, and they sometimes switched around.

We weren’t the only ones. Sue wound up in Gene’s lap and, as had happened before, Amit was in Sheila’s lap.

Meg and Steffie both pretended to chide us for it — it was technically a violation of school rules, after all — but that was it. They were on record as having told us no, and we were on record as having broken the rules. I was still most likely going for the record for most ‘Public Display of Affection’ warnings in school history, so what’s one more silly rule violation?

We were staying in a motel just off campus. Michigan was playing a home game this weekend, which made hosting their tournament this weekend a bit nuts, but their Debate program had contracted with several motels to provide space. I believe the intent was for us to see how ‘alive’ the campus was on a football weekend.

If so, mission accomplished. There was plenty of traffic and people were everywhere, even on the Friday before the game. Our bus driver was good, though, and got us through it to our motel with minimal delay.

We piled off the bus. Meg and Steffie got us checked in, and we moved everything that wasn’t going to the tournament into our rooms. Then we changed and called home. Within half an hour we were all ready to go.

From here on until we left we’d be lugging and dragging things, but that was what the luggage carts were for. We unloaded everything else from the bus and set out onto campus.

Michigan was more like the usual tournament than some of the out-of-state tournaments we’d been to. No big welcome dinner, nothing like that. Show up, check in, hang out until it was time, then start competing.

Check-in itself was smooth, thankfully. They had us waiting in a meeting room in the student center. The room was fairly packed, and loud, but not bad. We found several tables together and made ourselves a space.

Once that was done, I looked around in search of Laura. I spotted her about a second before she crashed into me with a hug.

“I missed you!” she said, giggling. “Who knew? Also, it feels good to be able to run over instead of hobble slowly!”

“We missed you, too,” Cammie said, not missing a beat, though I could tell the wheels were turning just a bit.

Cammie got a hug, which got the wheels spinning even more, most likely.

“I’m sorry,” Laura said. “I know what I did really scared you, and you, and you,” she said, nodding to Cammie, then Angie, and then Paige. Then she nodded to Jas, and said, “And you most of all.”

“Forgiven,” Jas said, hugging Laura, who hugged right back. Angie, then Paige, and finally Cammie echoed the sentiment.

“We’ve gotta catch up,” Laura said. “Not a lot of time now, though. How’ve you been doing?”

“We’re qualified for state,” I said. “That’s ... maybe the only benchmark I have? The last tournament was weird and iffy, but I think it was just one of those things.”

“It felt like it,” Cammie said. “We had a super-tough high-high round and things went sideways, pretty much. That maybe should have been finals, or at least semis.”

Laura nodded. “That was us two tournaments back. We’re qualified, too, otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”

“A bunch of people on our team came even though they’re not qualified,” I said.

Laura looked around. “You brought a lot of people!”

“We did,” I said.

“More than we did! And it’s just a drive for us!”

Angie chuckled. “See, that’s the thing. A bunch of people wanted to get to fly up here.”

“Can’t blame them,” she said. “I’ve got to introduce you to Steve. I mean, my Steve.” She blushed, then said, “I mean my Debate partner, Steve. That Steve! Except for Cammie, I mean. You’ve met, at least.”

“Couldn’t forget,” Cammie said, almost chuckling.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw people putting up postings for the first round.