The Little Daddy Monticello Pizza Toss

You’ve got to wonder why we do this sometimes. Let’s look at the Montwegian MHL, for instance. It’s standard. I mean, everything about it is off-the-rack. We’ve had a Montwegian MHL since the days when there were mastodons still loose in Sullivan County. We’ve had a Montwegian MHL since the days the Kaiser was just a pile of unrisen dough not yet shaped into little rolls. We’ve had a Montwegian MHL for as long as there have been Montwegians and MHLs. Kant wrote about the Montwegian MHL as the only a priori fact in the universe. In a word, there is nothing exactly new about this particular tournament.

We set up registration to close on Wednesday. Somehow, this is interpreted as the moment not when registration closes, but when people change the way they register, emailing me changes rather than entering them into tabroom. Not drops, but wholesale new entries. Not one person, but oodles of them, and their sisters and their cousins whom they reckon by the dozens and their aunts. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.

Oh, wait a minute. I am complaining. You would too.

We ask for people to cover their judging. We haven’t had extra judges at an MHL since [you’ll have to do your own work here; I exhausted my long-time-ago metaphors in paragraph one]. Nevertheless, schools don’t have all their judging covered. I know. You're shocked—shocked—to hear it.

We end registration at 9:00 a.m., and try to start as quickly as possible after that. Granted, this is a relatively new wrinkle, but this will be the third time this year, so it’s not as new as some other really really new thing, but still, schools have already put me on alert that they’ll get there when they get there. Which means I’ll want to kill them when their bus pulls into the driveway, but I’ll have to satisfy myself with forfeiting all their teams. The students punished for the coaches’ tardiness. Sigh.

Then I’ve got people who want to leave early. Leave early? The last round ends and then two minutes later we have awards. How early could you possibly want to leave within that two-minute slice of your busy day? To what effect?

On top of all of this, what are the odds that there will be anything for anyone to eat? Is Monticello’s Round-Stopper-in-Residence in charge of ordering the pizzas again? I’m bringing a peanut butter sandwich. And chips. I’ve been at the Montwegian MHL before. Me and the mastodons. And Kant. A swell time was had by all.