When she’s feeling particularly brave — or foolish — Jana Riggins invites me to speak at the Cross Examination Debate State Tournament’s opening assembly. I don’t know much about CX debate, but I enjoy the opportunity to address an audience of speech coaches and their charges. It’s even more sobering because the lectern rests in front of the tournament guru table, so sitting within spitting distance of me are fi ve or six of the fi nest speech educators on the planet. I can only imagine what’s going through their minds as I stumble through my notes.
“Leans on podium.”
“Shuffl es notes.”
“Wears brown shoes.”
“Needs a haircut.”
It’s humbling.
Last year, my wife and I took a short trip to Paris, so I wrote a speech and dared Jana to read it at the opening assembly. Here’s what I wrote: “I regret that I cannot be there to welcome you in person, but my wife purchased cheap tickets to Paris, France as part of the federal government’s Defense of Marriage Act, although I’m sure the Bush administration would have preferred that we spend our American dollars in a country that is a member of the Coalition of the Willing but frankly, we didn’t want to visit El Salvador or Ethiopia.
“First, congratulations on earning the right to compete at State. No matter what else happens in the next few days ahead, you’ll always have the memory of competing at UT-Austin. In my junior year in high school, I qualifi ed to state in feature writing, where I bombed. But that’s okay because my memories of the trip are among my fondest from high school.
“So enjoy this moment. Tour the campus. Check out the Tower and the Perry-Castaneda Library. Wander up and down the Drag, and don’t worry about the beggars with the body piercings and tattoos. Most likely, they’re liberal arts majors.
“Second, I want you to give a big hand to Jana Riggins and her staff. You can’t imagine how hard they’ve worked to put together this tournament, particularly since CX is the fi rst UIL academic contest to use the Spring Meet Online Entry System, which has been quite a challenge inasmuch as a few teachers out there apparently can’t read clear written instructions.
“Third: Give your coach a round of applause. Heck, give them a standing ovation. They deserve it. Sure, they’re paid like Halliburton executives to spend the two or three hundred hours it takes to prepare you for district, but my guess is, they do it — not just for the fat wads of cash — but because they love working with bright, motivated young people like yourself. Which leads me to this:
“Fourth: Give yourself a round of applause. Whether you walk out of here with a Gold Medal or nothing more than handshake and a headache, be proud of yourself. You worked hard. You competed. You represent the best of your generation, and we admire you.
“Finally, I expect to see many of you back in Austin for the Academic State Meet in May and you sophomores and juniors back here next year, unless my wife fi nds cheap tickets to Spain or Italy.” My wife didn’t, and thus, I was available to welcome the 4A and 5A CX state qualifi ers on Saint Patty’s Day, 2005.
I didn’t speak to the 1A, 2A and 3A qualifi ers earlier in the week because I didn’t want to follow Gov. Perry, who gave a heartfelt speech that I wish I’d recorded.
This isn’t verbatim, but he said something along the lines of, “What you do, the sacrifi ces you’ve made, the commitment you’ve shown may be lost on some people, but it’s not lost on me.” I thought he was great, although I’m not sure how the gurus at the head table measured his performance.
“Doesn’t lean on podium.”
“Spoke without notes.”
“Ostrich cowboy boots? Cool.”
“Hair? Perfecto!”
“Plan to give school teachers a raise? Needs polish.”
Of course, the small school kids are a much easier crowd than the 4A and 5A qualifi ers. The small-town kids are content to debate, ride the escalators in the University Teaching Center, shop at Old Navy, eat the Shrimp Lover’s Combo at Red Lobster and head home.
The big-school kids are more demanding. We could trot out Oprah Winfrey, and some of them would yawn.
It reminds me of the difference between the kids attending our scholarship foundation banquet at UT and the banquet at Texas A&M. The UT kids tend to come from cities or their suburbs, the Aggies from one-stoplight hamlets where a night on the town means a trip to Dairy Mart.
For example:
(UT kid) “Good evening. My name is Heather Laurel. I graduated from Humongous High and am a sophomore ethnomusicology major with a 4.3 grade point average.
I competed in UIL prose interpretation and all the writing contests and was a member of the all-state choir. I’m currently a member of Campus Wellness Center for Stray Kittens. My life-goal is to bring joy and harmony and sunshine to all the world.”
(A&M kid) “Hidy. (‘Hidy,’ the other Aggies respond.) My name is Buck. I’m from Shoot First, Texas and am a junior petroleum and fi nance major here at Aggieland,” at which point about a third of the room makes the same noise you or I would make if we sat on a wet toilet seat.
“I competed in UIL calculator applications and mathematics, and was an all-district tackle and shot putter. I plan to graduate next year, get a job with an oil company and vote Republican.” At which point, the whole room responds, “Whoop,” which apparently means, in Aggietalk, “Righteous.”
This is all foreign to me. I’m an inveterate Longhorn. My daughter is a UT junior. We live and die UT. But do I admire the kids at A&M and am willing to bet it all that whatever progress this nation makes in the next decade or two will be brainchild of a couple of Aggies with graphing calculators and two hours free time.
Fact is, I admire all of these young people. While I’m sure each has their own special reason for having competed in UIL academic contests, I don’t think I’m off-base by suggesting they competed because:
• competing in UIL offered them an opportunity to get out of class, even out of town now and then.
• UIL provided a social circle, if not a social life.
• UIL was academically challenging at a time when some of their classes were not.
• they were forced to. Drafted. Shanghaied. They were minding their own business, listening to their MP3s or saving the world from alien vampire robots on their notebook computers, not bothering anyone, and out of nowhere, a teacher tapped them on the shoulder, thrust the Handbook to Literature in their paws and said, “Read.” The remarkable thing is, they did. They read. Studied Steinbeck and Walt Whitman before, during and after school. Rehearsed the one-act play on weekends. Crunched endless calculator numbers. Survived on cold pizza, fl at Dr Pepper and stale potato chips. Rode countless miles on a beat-up school bus to invitational meets. Overcame butterfl ies and writer’s cramp. Won some they should have lost. Lost some they should have won. Survived to tell the story.
Chances are, they did all this in relative anonymity. Might have received some recognition over the school PA system Monday morning, but probably didn’t. Daily newspapers rarely cover high school kids unless they’re shooting a ball or a gun. Oh well, I’m satisfi ed knowing these kids are the best the state has to offer.
The world is crying out for young people who are creative, diligent and disciplined, kids who are motivated by something more than celebrity and fortune. The cure for muscular dystrophy won’t be found in front of a studio audience. This nation’s fi scal mess won’t be solved by people grandstanding in front of a TV camera.
Only those willing to devote the time, energy, focus and passion will be capable of solving our planet’s most vexing problems: hunger, war, disease, injustice.
And they’ll have to overcome enormous odds to do so. The entrenched global interests will surrender their stations neither quickly nor quietly. The struggles ahead will dwarf the battles already fought, I fear.
But I take heart in knowing that the young people who’ve participated in our contests are better equipped for the coming scrape than if they’d not participated. We’ve nudged them in the right direction and they took the jump.
So what did they get from it, beyond possibly a medal or ribbon or trip to the Red Lobster in Lubbock or Waco? They forged friendships that will last a lifetime. The made memories they’ll cherish forever. They learned how to think on the spot, how to write with power and clarity, how to speak with confi dence in a public setting, how to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem.
They learned they possessed the discipline, the grit to drag themselves out of bed at 5:30 on a Saturday morning after arriving home from an away football game at 1:30 to catch a 6:15 bus going to an invitational meet 150 miles away. They learned to survive on cold pizza, fl at Dr Pepper and stale potato chips.
They learned it’s OK to be smart.
What more could anyone want or need?