Marching Band Injury Anthology: Part IV

This story has nothing about me being injured, but it does have to do with other people/animals being injured. Every year our school hosts it's own marching band competition known as PCI. We catch a certain amount of flack for it too, because our field isn't in the greatest of shape. It gets a little muddy and sticky. Well, this year our field was particularly mucky. Very very bad, because it had been raining for a long time and it was a veritable sink hole. Well, this is unsafe. After preliminary competition the injury count was up to three, and we're not talking small injury. Two people actually blew out their knees and had to be taken away in an ambulance and another shattered his ankle. Nice? No, not nice! Whoever said that marching band wasn't dangerous? Next story. . . the moth. Yes, the moth.

::::::THE MOTH:::::
Last year marching band, late Monday night rehearsal. The general attitude during late rehearsals is either irritated/tired or laughing/delirious. The clarinet section was the latter of the two during this particular rehearsal. So, we're stopped and the director is working with another section. I'm just standing there and all of a sudden *THWACK* I get hit in the shoulder with something, and I hear hilarity ensue behind me. I turn around to see who threw something at me and everybody was pointing to the ground. I looked and sure enough, a moth. We had been watching him all night, fly around in circles above us like he was drunk, and he finally came down to field-level and flew straight into my shoulder. What a stupid moth! So, we all just kinda gathered around and looked at it on the ground, it looked dead. Then. . . it moved! We jumped, and it flopped around a bit. Then we had to march really quickly, but we ended up back in the same spot, so we checked on the moth. It was still there, flopping around. Fast forward 3 hours until the end of rehearsal. Everybody was off the field and we went back to see if it was still there. It was. Flopping. Injured, hence it's membership in this anthology. It was quite funny, but it's beginning to seem like a had-to-be-there thing. Oh well, you know now anyways. Bye.

AIME

The AIME is a math test for uber math geeks. In order to qualify for it you need to get at least 100 points on another math test called the AMC 12. Well, guess what? Oh yeah, 100.5 baby! LOL, yay for barely qualifying! So, I took the AIME. 15 questions, 3 hours, and one hurtin' brain afterwards. The national average score is 2.4 correct (obviously it's a mean, because you can't get half credit). The highest score ever at my school is 3. Needless to say, these are some hard math problems. So, I got to miss CAD, Humanities, and a bunch of Pre-Calc to sit in a board room with 7 other geeks to take the math test. Luckily one of my best friends qualified so we sat across from each other and got to laugh at each other's various "*sigh*. . . *groan*. . .*oh my god!*"s. Oh, and for those of you who read my blog, you will understand the gravity of this next statement. No Calculators Allowed. Yep, that's the killer. So, I'm going to write down 6 questions of the 15. Included in these 6 are the ones I got right, but I'm not going to tell you which and how many. It's your job to guess which ones I got right. Good luck!

1)




2)




3)





4)





5)






6)






So, which ones did I get right??????

Hopefully you can figure out this pretty basic answer to that question:
1 --> 084
2 --> 901
3 --> 725
4 --> 124
5 --> 936
6 --> 360

So, I scored 3/15. I'm proud of myself! Tie the top score of my school! It was so brain-draining! The questions get harder as they progress so towards the end it was just impossible. The last question made no sense to me at all, it seemed impossible to me, as in I understood how to solve it but couldn't get an answer of less than 4 digits. Give it a shot, show it to people that are good at math, and help me find an answer! Here it is:

15)





Thanks for trying to solve that, good luck! Bye!

STARS

Students Today Aren't Ready For Sex

STARS is a federally funded program in Oregon started by the first lady of Oregon several years ago to teach middle school students safe practices in dealing with sex and sexual pressure. Teen leaders from High School do the teaching. I am one of those teachers.

Yes, that tagline sounds a bit like the opening to a really boring and morally acceptable action movie, but it's not. It's just a segway into several funny stories that have occured during my STARS career. I figured I'd share some of those stories.

• TRAINING -- The teen leaders/teachers need to attend a training session during school one day. Ok, no problem, leave school early and go to training. That would be easy, if I had any sense of direction at all. What? A training session at noon? No problem, I'll leave school at 11:30 and get there 15 minutes early. WRONG! I left school and promptly got lost. I couldn't seem to find the right street to turn on. Well, after driving back and forth about 4 times I finally discovered that I wasn't travelling far enough to find the road. Ok, I found the road, but then I couldn't find the building. Back and forth again, several times, except now It's on a really busy street with traffic lights, lanes, and other speed-prohibitors. Did I mention that by this time it was noon and a) I was late and b) lunch hour traffic? I'm getting really frustrated by this point, I CAN NOT find the building. Eventually I pull into a parking lot with a map and just sit and stare. Eventually I find out that the building I thought I was trying to find didn't actually exist. The building I needed was farther down the street. Lovely. I finally found the place at 12:30. All the other people that left school at 11:30 were already there. They all laughed at me for getting lost. I felt bad, on to the second part of this story.
• TRAINING -- The second day of training was a little out of the ordinary. The standard second day of training conflicted with a marching band tournament so I had to go to a make-up training session. Well, there were only 7 people at the make-up and I was the only guy. That made the role-playing portion of the training quite exciting. Seeing as there were an odd number of people to pair up with for role-playing, I was in a group of three. Did I mention that my partners were twins? The role playing was originally designed for just a guy and a girl, with the guy pressuring the girl to have sex. We had to modify that. Now, the two girls were pressuring me to come over to their house to have sex. That made for some funny dialogue.

"Hey Michael, wanna come over to our house after school? Our parents won't be home, we could do whatever we wanted!"

"No thanks"

"Come on! We may never get another chance like this!"

"No, really"

"We know you want to have sex with us, just come over. We would do it if we were you."

Isn't that nice? We were laughing hysterically by the end of it, so funny.

• TEACHING -- Two funny teaching experiences come immediately to mind. Both involve role-playing, here's the first: After demonstrating role-playing with my co-teacher, we told the kids to practice. We gave them scripts and let the loose, but they quickly discovered a problem. Whereas I had role-played with a female, they were mostly paired up with people of the same sex. They were confused. I quickly gave them the answer to all their problems. . . "Just say 'Hey, do you and your girlfriend wanna come over with me and my girlfriend? We can do whatever we want!'" A kid raises his hand and says "So, just invite more people?" and I say "Yeah" but here is where I VERY nearly made a very crucial mistake. I almost said "Yeah, make it a group thing". Needless to say, that would definetly not be a good idea! So, I skirted it, but phew! That was too close.
• TEACHING -- While demonstrating the role-playing I was pressuring my co-teacher to have sex with me. We were going back and forth and at the end she was supposed to offer an alternative and I was supposed to say "That sounds great!". Here's what actually occured. Having discovered my affinity towards impromptu, I decided to deviate from the script. She says "I have a better idea. My parents are home, why don't we go to my house and make nachos and we can watch a movie?" I, instead of offering an alternative, say "Um, no. That sounds freakishly boring, I just want to go to my house right now and have sex with you right now." The look on my partner's face was priceless. She was completely caught off-guard. She just stood there, kinda stuttered and said "Um, no." and then she turned around and walked away. Cue uprorus laughter from 6th graders. Yeah, it was great. Good times.

So, that is STARS. I advise everybody to be a teen leader because not only is it a great experience, but you actually get to teach kids to do something good. And you can do fun stuff like I talked about up there ^^^. STARS.....Do it, not sex.

Marching Band Injury Anthology: PART III

The third part of the injury anthology occured my freshman year of marching. It was the evening of the homecoming football game and we were having a rehearsal before the game. THis is Halloween so it is getting to be pretty cold. . . try A BAJILLION DEGREES BELOW ZERO! We were losing feeling in many of our limbs. Anyway, at 5 0'clock our director called us all to the podium. He orated "Great work you guys. I know it's cold, but you've done good. I have good news! (no, no geico joke here) Inside the band room is a bunch of really hot spaghetti, but. . . " Nope, no but, we weren't there long enough to hear it. Before the director knew what had happened we had all started sprinting for our gear and up the steps of the stadium. We were running, yelling, biting, screaming, shoving, rolling, and generally acting like a pack of wild animals toting trombones and clarinets. Finally we made it to the entrance/exit but alas, the protective fence that keeps intruders out had locked us in. We frantically ran back and forth along the fence trying to find a way out, not unlike a large group of hungry and cold hamsters. Finally, having given up the search for an unlocked exit, several of us began scaling the chain-linked fence to get out. I lept to the fence and began scaling it. At the top I was just about to get over when somebody else jumped onto the fence and shook it. I fell. Well, all of my but my right hand, it decided to vacation on the sharp spike at the top of the fence for a short while before joining me on the ground.

My brain thinks "Ouch, I just fell about 8 feet onto the ground. My hand hurts. . . wow! That's deep!" I looked at my hand and then up at the top of the fence. The glove that I HAD been wearing was now spiked securely to the top of the fence (that means the spike went through the glove while my hand was in it). My hand had a large hole in it, about an inch and a half long, and was bleeding quite a bit. I could see the muscle and fat inside of it, pretty graphic. I quickly clamped my other hand over it and left through the gate (which was now unlocked). People walking around me had seen me fall and were gathering around me on the way to the band room, asking if I was ok. I showed them my hand. They stopped asking.

In the band room I found my director and said "Mac, I don't think I'll be marching tonight." "Why?" "Well, look." I show him hand. He freaks. "WHAT DID YOU DO!?!?" "Well, it was an accident". After some back and forth conversation we decided that I probably would need medical attention because the current status of a paper towel/duct tape bandaid that we had devised wouldn't last forever. My dad is a fireman and was on duty so I gave him a call and he came on over in the fire truck. Meanwhile everybody seems to be fascinated with the hole in my hand and the fact that a fire truck was on its way.

The fire truck showed up and they checked out my hand and put some gauze and real medical stuff on it. They also gave me the delightful news that it would need stitches. Mmmm, goody. So I said goodbye, hopped into the fire truck, and off we went to stitch me up. We went to the urgent care building. Now, I'm not sure if you've ever been to the urgent care building, but the word "Urgent" is massively underplayed. You get there, needing urgent attention, and sit there for 4 hours until they can fix you. I have discovered a way around that inconvinience. All you have to do is show up in a firetruck, triple park in front of the building, partially blocking traffic, and walk into the building flanked by three firemen with their radios and badges on. Yep, no waiting there. I was into the stitches room in about 2 minutes. Keep in mind, this is halloween so
all the nurses were dressed as witches and stuff. That's not really an important part of the story, but it helps set the scene I guess.

So, the stitches room. The doctor took the gauze off of my hand and poked around a bit, deducing that I needed stitches. He had to numb the wound first, and that involved a WAY TOO SMALL drop of topical pain-killer and TEN pain-killing shots INTO the hand-hole. OMG, that hurt more than the actual injury (which didn't hurt at all because it was soooooo cold out). Ten shots later I was ready to just stand up and walk out, but no, now I needed the stitches. Luckily I didn't feel it because he had given me so many shots that my entire right arm was numb. He wrapped my hand in about a mile of gauze and topped it off with a spider man sticker. My hand looked like the tip of a giant q-tip. All stitched up and ready to go, we left the urgent care building and headed back to the football game. We got there just as the band was getting ready for half-time, so I figured "Hey! Why not be incredibly hard-core and march the show?" I wouldn't be able to play or wear the BLACK GLOVE on my right hand, but oh well! So, I marched the show with a giant right gauze hand only 3 hours after slicing my hand wide open, getting a ride from a fire truck, getting stitches, and coming back. Not bad! And, the marching show went really well, so all in all I'd say it was an exciting night. This is the worst of all three injuries sustained during marching band, and to make it even more horrific. . . I never got spaghetti.

Marching Band Injury Anthology: PART II

This particular experience occurred during the 2005 season of marching band this last year, so it is fairly fresh in my mind. Here's the setting: The 25 woodwind players are in a giant arc at a baseball diamond. The director is working with the flutes and the rest of us are quietly keeping ourselves occupied. [Action!]

Well, it's been 10 minutes since we've played and we're starting to get bored. The clarinet players and I have already done the wave with our shoulders and clarinets, so now we're just kidna standing there trying not to fall asleep. I discover that my reed is broken, opening up another opportunity to keep myself entertained. I take it off my mouthpiece and start to chew on it. At first I'm just trying to break the thin tip, but once that was accomplished I decided to tackle the thick cane part at the end. Bad. I was chewing as hard as I could to try to break it and during one fairly intense chew (with my section eyeing me intently to see what I was doing) the reed snapped in half. That's the good news, the bad news is that when it snapped in half it shot out the side of my mouth. . . with my mouth closed. That means that in order for the reed to leave my mouth it had to pass through my face.

Open your mouth, right now, do it. Now with your finger, feel that web on the corner of your mouth that connects your upper lip and lower lip? Imagine a sharp reed travelling VERY quickly, slicing right through that. Webbing gone. I felt the warm blood in my mouth so I spit on the ground to see how bad it was. That was a lot of blood. Cue section laughter.

I quickly lef the arc and said "Dylan (drum major)! A little help please?" I went over to a hill near the arc and knelt down, spitting blood so as not to swallow it. Dylan came up and said "Yes?" (sees blood) "Oh My Gosh! What did you do?" I say "Can you go get me *spit* a paper towel please? *spit*" He runs off as fast as he can. We're talkin' back in 45 seconds after running a REALLY long ways fast. He was scared for me I guess, i was just perplexed. There was blood all over my shirt and all over the ground but I couldn't actually feel my face because of the endorphines. I knew I was cut but didn't know where. He brought me paper towels and then I put them on my face and walked to the bathroom. That was when I saw the lack of web. Bad.

I realized quickly that it was gonna just keep bleeding forever because it was soft tissue, and that I would have to hold a paper towel to my face until it clotted. I went back to the field where everybody was trying to figure out what had happened to me. I couldn't tell them without re-opening the wound, so I just had my section-ites tell the story and then everybody laughed at me. Long story shorter, I marched the rest of the practice with a paper towel shoved to my face and a bloody white shirt on, and I have pictures of it too, but they're not digital and I'd need to scan them in. I'll get to that eventually. Until then, just heed reeds and them breaking in your mouth. I couldn't talk for about a week until it healed, and now there's a scar there and it feels really weird. Lovely. The end!

Marching Band Injury Anthology: PART I

Throughout the years I have injured myself in various ways in Marching Band. This series of three events are not in chronological order, but are simply in the order of whenever I felt like typing each one. The following story was written for Honors English last year so I will just copy and paste it in its original form into this blog. Enjoy my failure please.

---

A 7 Second Breakdown

In a figurative and literal fashion

Every year the Sprague Olympian Marching Band spends hours rehearsing, marching,playing, and fund-raising. Months of preparation, practice, competitions, and dedication culminate in the annual Oregon Festival of Bands Championship. The routine was flawless, the steps and music committed to memory, and the band had taken first place in preliminary competition. The time had come for finals competition. The band marched out of the tunnel into Autzen Stadium to thunderous applause. The drums started a groove and the show began. Feet flew, players blew, and everybody knew this was going to be the best show ever played by our band. Just as our work was about to pay off, seven seconds of utter chaos jeopardized our chances of a flawless show. This is the story of my thoughts, thought by thought and second by second, as a series of unfortunate events unfolded before my very eyes. The running timer is recording the time up to and starting at the beginning of the incident. -

04:00 minutes into the show

It is two minutes before the end of the show. The clarinet section is stopped at a halt and has just finished playing a phrase of music. We are mentally preparing to make our next move. In one half a second we will be moving to the right twenty yards, in only 12 steps. Right in front of us is a judge, so we need to march perfectly, no mistakes. Unfortunately I wont make it. -

00:50 seconds

The clarinet line is almost to their spot, where we will have to do a quick turn backwards and march to our next set. When marching along the length of the field, it is proper technique to face forward with the upper body and march sideways with the lower body. Unfortunately, this technique enabled me to see a flash of silver just one half-second before it would be too late. It is at this exact moment my peripheral vision catches one player who has jerked backwards from his spot, and that I, the next clarinet player in line, witness a glint of silver just out of the corner of my eye. I have no time to react. My mind thinks, Weird!

01:00 second

My upper body has stopped moving in the direction I want it to go. Instead, my head hascome into contact with what at first appears to be a big pole. My mind thinks, This is not part of the routine I have practiced, nor did it happen 5 hours ago in preliminary competition, so what is going on?

01:20 seconds

My movement is now redirected toward where my upper body was facing, toward thesideline. I am falling down, off the field, but can see a large metal pole falling right in front of me. My mind thinks, All right, I ran into a pole. That explains the silver flash, and the person to my right jerking back. He must have been avoiding the pole. Why is there a pole here? Will it get hurt falling? What is it? Im falling.

02:10 seconds

It is at this point my mouth and ability to speak catch up with my minds thought process.As the case may be, my voice sounded the first thing it could under the circumstances, while my mind was busy thinking things through. Oh Shit! My mind thinks, This is a microphone stand, I can see the little black microphone on the end. I really hope it doesnt break. Its falling awfully close to our percussionist, I hope it doesnt hit him. The ground is getting closer, I should try not to fall.

02:75 seconds

My mind thinks, Uh oh, I just swore very loudly as I was falling onto a giantmicrophone. I never swear! Why did I swear into a giant microphone? Im falling.

03:03 seconds

My attempt at avoiding falling has failed. I cant stop myself from falling and am a merefoot away from contacting the soft green turf. The microphone pole has just hit the turf. It missed our percussionist. My mind thinks, I hope my uniform doesnt rip when I hit the ground. Im going to fall on this pole, I hope I dont hurt it. I hate this stupid pole! Oops, Im losing my grip on my clarinet. Im going to drop it. I hope it doesnt get hurt.

03:50 seconds

I hit the ground. My mind thinks, My clarinet is gone, I need to pick it up. I cant see! My shako is covering my eyes! This ground is squishy. I hope I can get back into my spot. This is going to really screw up our score!

04:60 seconds

I have fixed my shako and grabbed my clarinet. I am now on my knees. My mind thinks,Where are we in the show? Where are we in the music? Where do I need to get to? I need to get about 10 steps behind where I am, and I have about half of the normal time to get there.

05:60 seconds

I am now standing and have lifted my clarinet to my mouth. My left foot has movedback twice as far as it normally has to, in order make my next set. My mind thinks, Will I get there in time? How bad was the fall? There is the microphone laying on the ground. I cant believe I ran into it so hard! Holy crap, the judge is standing right in front of me. He saw the whole thing!

07:00 seconds

I have made it to my spot. I am ready to march to my next spot, and have recovered. The entire incident, from start to finish took 7 seconds. My mind did more thinking thanit ever has at one time, my mouth did more swearing than it has ever done at one time, and I fell more than I have ever fallen in 2 years of marching. Unfortunately, I was thinking during a period of time that should be completely committed to memory, swore for the first time in public while 2 feet away from a microphone and in front of several thousand people, and fell during finals of the Oregon Festival of Bands Championship. Later, I found out the pole had hit another player and sliced his lip open. That is one of only two things preserving the memory of this 7-second moment of chaos. Sean Managhans blood has been spilt on the 40 yard line in Autzen Stadium and on every DVD sold of the performance a subtle but distinct Oh Shit can be heard over the crashing of a microphone stand, during Sprague High Schools first place finals performance.

Impromptu Speaking

If you are a reader of my blog you will know that I am doing speech team this year. Well, another tournament has come and gone, and although sock monkeys did not fair as well as I would have hoped (4th place) I have some interesting and entertaining stories from another event that I participated in. My coach signed me up for impromptu speaking, senior division (the most experienced division). I have given a total of 1 impromptu speech in my entire life, and that was on the first day of speech class. So, needless to say, I was a little nervous/concerned.

HOW IMPROMPTU WORKS:
You enter a room in which you are alone with a judge (unless there is somebody there that wants to listen to you, which is rare). The judge gives you a piece of paper with three topics on it. At this particular tournament all the topics were quotes. You have 30 seconds to read the topics, pick a topic, and think of a speech to give. You then proceed to give the paper back to the judge and deliver a 5 minute speech to the judge.

WHY MY EXPERIENCE WAS MEMORABLE AND BLOG-WORTHY
Strangely enough, there was somebody present to watch each of my impromptu speeches.

• SPEECH 1 was my worst because I had never done impromptu before. My topic was "dying on your feet is better than living on your knees". Now, avoiding the obviously sexual approach I could have taken with this quote, and not wanting to be philosophical, I went for a strict interpretation. My judge was fresh out of high school so I knew he'd appreciate it the humor. I spoke for five minutes about how shoes were more cost-effective, efficient, and stylish than knee-pads. The random guy in the room and the judge both thought it was hysterical, but the organization was terrible because I ran out of ideas really quickly. Whenever I thought of something I said it, whether or not it was organizationally correct. At one point I even got on my knees and held a mock-debate. Yeah, it wasn't pretty, the word "floundering" comes to mind. Anywho, I finished the speech and left. I didn't get my score or rank until later, but I'll show it to you now just so that you don't have to wait:
  
  
  
  Yep, that would be first place in that round. Terrible organization and frantic speaking earned me 1st place and 25 speaker points. Speaker points tell you how well you spoke, kinda obvious, but I felt like telling you anyways. Either the college guy just liked me, or everybody else was REALLY terrible at impromptu speaking. But yeah, I guess it didn't go as terribly as I thought it had.

SPEECH 2 was an actual attempt at a good impromptu speech. No trying to be funny, nothing weird, just trying to give an impromptu speech. There were three people watching this time, all friends of another of the speakers. My topic, another quote, was something like "I began just by writing poetry. I didn't know I'd grow up to be a poet". Terrible quote, not a lot to work off of, but I did my best. This speech was boring and not really part of why I wrote this blog entry, so I'll be brief. I spoke about how young children are influenced without their knowledge, and often grow up to hold professions that had something to do with what they acted like as a child. My 3 examples were athletes, firefighters, and social workers. I felt like I did well, my organization was sound and my examples all made sense, and my speaking was fluid. All in all, a boring speech but a well done speech. Here's my ballot:

• SPEECH 3 is the reason for this blog. By the time this speech rolled around I was feeling more comfortable with the whole impromptu thing. A friend of mine watched me this time. My friend was sitting on one side of the room, the judge on the other. Of the three quotes I picked a quote by Yoda: Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I figured I could make this fairly fun. I started with a standard intro, about 20 seconds long, that talked about how emotions dictate peoples' lives and actions. Now it was time for my main points. Here's what I said (not word for word because I didn't actually record it, but here's a very accurate script):

Fear is an emotion that everybody has experienced and an emotion that I am experiencing right now. I've never given an impromptu speech before, this is my first tournament with impromptu, and I'm in freaking Senior Division?!?!? (yes, I said freaking) This fear, this overwhelming fear is leading me to anger. Anger, not only that I'm here, but towards my coach, because I mean COME ON! What was he thinking?! I've never done this before! It makes me want to go up to him and yell [I raise my fist to the sky and scream as loud as I can] "Mr. Curry! What is wrong with you?!?! I HATE YOU!" This hate towards my coach is derived from the anger I began with. Hate also manifests in other ways. For instance, not only do I hate my coach, but I hate you, the judge, for just sitting there and staring at me. You think you're so special, being able to rank me, but you know that you'd rather be at home eating ice cream! This hate leads me to suffering, suffering in the realization that I just told you that I hated you, and that I stereotyped you as a fat lazy judge who is bad at his job and would rather be at home eating ice cream!

This ranting and raving continued for quite a while. It was a nice release of any tension or nerves I had built up. I'd have to say though, the greatest part of all of it was that no matter what I did it always supported one of my points. Here's a list of things that I said that I used to support my main points of my speech.

1. [after I slur my speech and mess up a bunch of words] I am angry that I messed up my words, leading to the suffering knowing that I will be marked down for it!
2. [after realizing that I skipped straight from anger to suffering, forgetting hate] And now I am afraid of what you will do to me because I have forgotten what the quote actually was. That fear leads me through this vicious cycle again!

I'm doing pretty well at this point, my friend is about to wet himself he's laughing so hard and the judge just keeps shaking his head laughing. I was about ready to roll into my conclusion when, to my horror, the judge held up two fingers. I had two minutes left to speak! I'd already said everything, and I was just rambling going back through all my points again and again. So, what did I do? "It is absolutely impossible to describe the suffering I am going through right now, because you just had to hold two fingers up and make me realize that I have nothing else to say, so I'm just going to rehash everything over again! Just so that YOU can share in on the suffering!" Cue gasp of air taken by my friend amid fits of laughter. So, yeah, I rehashed all my points and eventually made it to the end. I finished off my speech and just kinda stood there. I turned to pick up the paper I had the quote on and handed it back to the judge without actually looking at him. I just left the room in shock. I got outside, so did my friend, the door closed behind us, and then I freaked. OMG! What did I just DO!?!?? I'm insane! Friend laughs. OMG! Friend laughs. Other speakers waiting in the hall kinda just look at me, one asks if I'm all right. OMG! I just kinda started laughing nervously, explained that I'd just spent the last five minutes yelling and telling the judge he was fat and stupid, and that I had to go now. We left, I was still kinda numb. Here's the ballot from THAT speech:

Yes, that's right, I got FIRST FREAKING PLACE!!!!! Full speaker points, 1st place! If you look at the bottom left corner of the ballot you can see where the judge wrote down the topic of my speech, just so you know that I'm not lying to ya! WOOT! I was very excited about this ballot, but remember, I didn't see this until the tournament was over. Until then, I had no idea how well I did.

That was the end of impromptuing in normal competition. After three speeches they announce the people who broke into finals. To my amazement, after two crazy speeches and 1 normal speech, I had actually made it to finals! I grabbed somebody from my school to come watch my finals performance so that in case I did anything crazy again I would have a witness.

• FINALS SPEECH was also an interesting experience. By this time I had realized that being a goofball paid off. I went into my final round and this time there were 3 judges and my one friend. The judges require some description. One appeared to be a college guy, looked cool enough, I knew I could get a few jokes out there and that he would appreciate them. Another was a middle-aged woman, I knew she'd be kinda hard to please, but not too bad. The third was, to be honest, a hard-a**. I went he never looked up when I went in, he was very strict about timing and topics, and he spoke down to me. He, I could tell, was going to be VERY hard to please. So, the mindset I put myself into was I'm only going to be able to please the college guy, the other two are kinda lost causes. I'm not going to win with one vote, so I might as just pull another Yoda and go down having fun! I got my topic, which was "Sometimes it is safer for a man to lie than to be honest". Cue hilarity. I spoke about ex-wives, bosses, and in-laws. My ex-wife story was, in a nutshell:

You've just gone through a nasty divorce settlement, and you WON! You took her house, her car, her clothes, her shoes, her BABIES, and everything! Now, she lives in a cardboard house in NE Salem begging for garbage. The next week, to add insult to injury, you walk by her on the street with your hot new blond girlfriend. Your ex-wife staggers up to you, begging for a popcan, and notices the blond bombshell. "Who is she?" your ex asks. Now, this is when you kindly tell your wife that this poor women was lost and you were just helping her find the UGM. If you don't say this, your ex will probably shank you, stab you with a piece of glass, you with whatever other CRAP (yes, I said crap) she has in that grocery cart next to her cardboard house. No, lying is safer.

This is pretty much how the rest of the speech was like. The boss part of the speech was about getting caught smoking pot in the lounge and the inlaws one was about not telling your inlaws that you have wild-animal sex with their daughter (yes, I said wild-animal sex). Again, I finished this speech up and was just stunned. What had I done?!?!? I had said crap, shank, pot, wild-animal sex, was I insane? The only reassurance I had was that my friend gave me a thumbs up, and that all the judges (including the one with the stick up his butt) had laughed or smiled through the entire speech. There were a couple of raised eye-brows, but that's to be expected. Anyways, I finished, and then sat and listened to the other speakers. When everybody had finished I left. I only ended up with two of the ballots from the final round so I don't know how I did on the third. I've only put one of the ballots on this blog (unless you count the picture of all the ballots, it's on there). Here. . . is that ballot:

FIRST PLACE!!!! Woot!1! If you read closely you'll see a line concerning my wild-animal sex line. Yes, I was telling the truth. Now, my final score for the entire tournament is based off of all three judges, so if this judge is the only one that liked me then I could still come in last place. Want to know what happened at the awards ceremony?

AWARDS CEREMONY

So, for awards, all the people in my impromptu round went on stage. There were 6 of us. They announced the 3 people that didn't place. I wasn't one of them, so I knew that I had gotten at least 3rd place and there were 20 people that had originally set out to compete. They called third place. It wasn't me. They called second place. It wasn't me. They called first place. It was me! I accepted it graciously, and just kept thinking "wow, insane"

END

So that's the story. I've never done impromptu, made a fool of myself, had a ton of fun, and got 1st place in senior division. My coach couldn't stop laughing! He said that I could insult him in every speech I gave from now on. It was a good experience. I recommend impromptu speaking, but only if you have fun. Here's one final picture of my ballots, including the one I didn't show from the final round. Thanks for reading, I know it was wrong, but I hope it was entertaining!!1!1 If there is any doubt to any of this, remember, there were witnesses in each round, and witnesses that go to my school in my two crazy rounds, so I can produce people to vouch for me!