Chapter 77: Debating in the Dark

Thursday, January 12, 1984

Things seemed fine at school. There were still conversations about Bev, of course, but Bev was out of sight and becoming out of mind. Jess seemed like herself, but I knew how well she could play any role she needed to. Still, I thought she was okay with things for now.

Meanwhile, we had a tournament to prepare for. By this point, it’d become obvious that we had something of a tale of two squads, which I didn’t like. I blamed the UIL, of course, and not Meg and Steffie, but it was still annoying.

This spring, we had the new University of Houston tournament (a ToC qualifier), Bellaire, Humble, Lexington (another ToC qualifier), Aldine, UT’s Invitational (the fourth and final ToC qualifier of the year), and then Northbrook’s Last Chance.

The ‘top half’ of the squads would be at UH, Lexington, and UT (assuming they were invited, but they would be). The ‘bottom half’ would be at Humble, Aldine, and potentially Northbrook. Bellaire was a toss-up. Some of us might skip, because three tough tournaments might be enough prep for State. If so, that would open up more slots.

Still, that meant that there were many people at Memorial who I might never see at a tournament in Texas until perhaps State. That sucked. We could mentor them in class, and we did, but some things only work if you’re at the same tournament.

Personally, I was unsure about Bellaire. We could potentially use the off weekend, but Dave Mayrink would be hosting. Maybe I’d simply drop by and not compete. I wasn’t sure, and I had time to decide.

The upshot of all of this was that, for UH, we’d be taking Cammie and me, Amit and Sue, Gene and Angie, Anne and Megan, and Natasha and Penny in CX. Crystal and Bree couldn’t attend, so Darla and Linda were the odd ones out. That didn’t really matter so much, because the only ones not yet qualified in CX were Gene and Angie. They were the priority.

For Extemp, we had Sue, Gene, Cammie, Janice, Eric, Anne, Megan, Bree, and Jaya. None of them had qualified in Extemp yet, and we had to get serious about pursuing qualifications.

LD, though, was back to quality: Janice, Eric, Danny, Jaya, and Lori, with Lori the only one not qualified.

It was slightly sobering to review the lists and realize that Angie and Gene, and Lori, were the only Memorial CX or LDers to not be qualified. Extemp would be a lot tougher.

Drama was similar. We had five Duo teams (Jas and Carole, Sheila and Lexi, Ben and Penny, Bob and Danny, and Kelly and Breanna). All five would be there; only the last two weren’t qualified already.

In Humorous, we had Angie, Sara, Darren, Jess, Sandra, Carla, Marsha, and James not yet qualified. Brad and Sierra were joining in. They needed the practice the most. The amusing one was Angie, who had a ToC point (and an invitation, too) but not a State qualification.

Finally, in Dramatic, we were bringing Paige, Jas, Jess, Sandy, Leslie, and Gordon as the non-qualified people, and James and Sierra for practice. The others opted out. Jas and Jess each had a ToC point with no State qualification.

This was, of course, pretty much all our fault (except for Jess, who had obvious prior commitments). We’d skipped tournaments to have time to see football games and do other things. That was bound to bite some people.

Still, most of those without a qualification had one in other events. We’d be fine, and we’d still bring a horde to State.

I called Laura in the early evening, letting her know what’d happened and what was going to happen. She wasn’t completely surprised that Jess was likely to join those in the know, but surprised by how it’d happened.

Of course, we all were.

She said that she’d be ready to talk to Jess if and when that turned out to be a good thing. Whatever had been between her and the other Jess (and I could only guess at that), she seemed fine with this Jess.

Friday, January 13, 1984

A tournament on Friday the 13th? Who thought this was a good idea? At least it wasn’t a full moon.

At least it was just at UH. Most of us knew the way from many trips there before. Angie, for her part, swore that she was almost over her angst about the place. That reminded me that not only had I not had my Austin déjà vu this time, but that I’d not even thought about it. That was a good sign. We were moving on, and the past was in the past (even if that was in the future).

The tournament started out well. The headquarters was in UH’s Hilton hotel, which was a teaching facility for their School of Hotel and Restaurant Management. It was a nice hotel, and I’d been here for Model UN once (during my first life). It was very likely that I would turn that down this time. Sorry, Tom! Too busy! The downside of recruiting a class full of high achievers is that you have a class full of people who are too busy to take on much more.

We got checked in, then hung out in the auditorium. I saw — and said ‘hi’ to — a number of frenemies, including Natalie and Brenda along with Emmy and Sue from Duschene, Dave and Adam, and Marshall. I recognized some people as out-of-staters I’d met at Northwestern, but none that I saw were particularly noteworthy.

Nick Bell and Ryan Mason were here as well. They were definitely in the ‘enemies’ camp now. I got a scowl from Nick when he saw me. I was pretty sure they were mostly trying to get back at Dave and Adam, though. Good luck with that!

Okay, not really. Not at all.

The night pretty much went well. There were some hiccups, and it was clear that UH didn’t have the depth of experience with hosting that many programs do, but they fixed things as quickly as they could.

The exception was late in our second debate round. Cammie had said the first two words of her Second Affirmative Rebuttal (the last speech of the debate) when the lights went out. It looked like the hall lights must have gone out, too, judging from the lack of any lights from where I thought the door must be.

“This is awkward,” Cammie said. “I hope it’s not counting against my time!”

The judge chuckled. “I can’t see the stopwatch, so it’s not.”

One of the other debaters had a handy flashlight, so we had a bit of light, but we couldn’t proceed with one flashlight. It did let Cammie sit down safely, though.

Five minutes later the lights came on. We gave them a minute to make sure they were back, and then Cammie got up and started speaking.

She made it through most of her speech, and was just starting to wind up when the door opened and a guy said, “Sorry, they were on a timer. Hope we didn’t inconvenience you!”

Then he closed the door.

The judge sighed, then said, “Adding thirty seconds to the timer. And ... go!”

Cammie smiled, thanked him, then wrapped up. It was a good conclusion, and I was sure we’d won, but I’d never had a round quite like that one. It’d stick out in my mind long after others were forgotten.

We discussed it after the round and the other debaters (two guys from Louisiana) agreed. It was one for the record books for them, too.

We shook hands and headed back.

Cammie shook her head. “Friday the Thirteenth.”

“What can you do?” I said, shrugging.

“Laugh. That’s all you can do.”

“Laughing is good.”

“It is!”

Many people had similar stories. Apparently, the UH tournament people had failed to tell the building staff they’d be using the buildings extra late on a Friday, or something.

Or it was Friday the Thirteenth. I was good with that explanation. As long as everyone came back alive and intact, it was a victory.

We took off around midnight (just a bit late) and headed right home. Tomorrow was, as they say, another day.

Saturday, January 14, 1984

I decided to make a Kolache Shop run again. It was a good opportunity for it, and one of the last few I’d ever have. We picked up plenty for everyone and my carload of people helped carry them in when we arrived. That led to plenty of happy faces.

The morning rounds were fine. Tough, but fine. The first match (probably power-matched high-high) was against a guy and a girl from Los Angeles. It was their first time in Houston, and it was clear they hadn’t expected Houston to look anything like it actually did.

In my experience, that was a common reaction. People either expected it to look like Dallas (because they’d seen ‘Dallas’ on TV), or be a desert with cacti and rolling hills (because that was Hollywood’s representation of Texas). A big flat sprawling city with pine trees everywhere wasn’t what people expected.

It was amusing, but we commiserated rather than made fun. People expect LA to look a certain way, too, and much of it doesn’t quite match that, either.

They were tough. I was pretty sure we had them, but it was a good round and knocked any rust we had right off.

While we were eating lunch (hotel banquet rubber chicken and vegetables — actually a step up from many tournament lunches), Megan came by. She’d just talked to the LA team. Megan hadn’t caught that we were debating them before. They’d been the third-place team at the Redlands Institute tournament. I’d been right to think they were good.

Megan said they were highly complimentary of us. That was a relief, though I figured they wouldn’t tell a teammate they hated us.

Well, I’d told Dave what I thought of Mason and Bell, but that was an exception.

UH was just big enough to break to octofinals. That meant we would almost certainly be here very late tonight (unless we were unlucky enough to leave early!), but it was fine.

Cammie and Paige reported the breaks. We’d only lost Amit and Sue in CX. Amit seemed just fine with it, and so did Sue. Maybe they’d known they’d had a bad round.

In Extemp, Sue, Gene, Cammie, Eric, Megan, Bree, and Jaya broke. Not too bad!

And, in LD, we’d lost Danny, but that was it.

Over in Drama, Bob and Danny were out in Duo. They were always a big question mark, and I wasn’t sure either was all that serious about anything at this point. Not even about each other.

In Humorous, Angie, Sara, Jess, Sandra, and Marsha broke. And, in Dramatic, Paige, Jas, Jess, and Leslie broke.

Four rounds to go. The amusing part would be that several people could qualify for ToC and State at the same time.

Well, and qualifying for ToC would be much easier. Top two to State, while just making semifinals might give one a ToC point.

Our CX octofinals opponents were none other than Mason and Bell. They didn’t like us; we didn’t like them. There was pretty much no point pretending otherwise.

Still, we were civil to each other. We shook hands, and were polite while demolishing their case (yet another Exclusionary Rule case, with a few twists they thought were more significant than I did). I had no doubt that we’d won, and there was no point rubbing it in.

They didn’t shake hands at the end, but many teams don’t (either before or after rounds). We made a point to, but that was us.