You know you’re getting old when a speech and debate tournament looks like this to you.
When I was a teenager, my cousins did speech and debate, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. They might as well have been James Bond. Now, with my own teenager doing speech and debate, it looks like somebody released a 354 member cast of Spy Kids. I thought the last three days were going to be relaxing…maybe get some writing done, read a book, get some coffee. Nope. It was non stop judging, filling out judging sheets, walking to the next place to judge, freezing, eating, more walking, more judging, more freezing (clearly I didn’t pack well for the yo-yo freeze/heat cycle that is a CA spring). I don’t really enjoy judging, because a) I don’t really know what I’m doing, b) there are some “technically correct” speaking tips/tricks that are super distracting to me, but apparently everyone else thinks they’re the bees knees, c) I really hate giving extremely subjective criticism to sweet kids who have clearly worked super hard. When you judge a round you get to put a little sticker on a giant board as a way to publicly shame you into doing your allotted work. But no judgment, it helps make the tournament work. I of course totally forgot to put my stickers up.
Jim held down the fort while I was gone. I got home to Will very worriedly jabbering about giant killer watermelons. Jim explained later: Will saw him eat watermelon with seeds still in it and was so worried his daddy was going to grow a watermelon inside him, he had been watching for warning signs with a wary sense of impending doom. The only way Jim could assuage his fears was to tell him that because he didn’t eat any dirt there was no way for the watermelon to grow. Crisis averted. Parenting win.