On the positive side

Some people, on the other hand, showed up with the people they said they’d show up with, paid in full and were on time in getting to their rounds. Fewer than usual, but plenty enough. They know who they are, just like the miscreants know who they are. They are my favorite people in the world: responsible forensicians, young and old. The irresponsible ones? Feh!

As always, Bump is a laboratory for the study of Sailors under pressure. (Me, I’m terrible under pressure, but everybody knows that by now. I have a boiling point somewhere a degree or two above freezing.) I spend some time in advance prepping the Hudonauts before the event, and the rules are fairly simple. 1: Do what I tell you to do. 2: Don’t whine about it. 3: Don’t give it to someone else to do. 4: Look up “run” in the dictionary, then look up “saunter,” and do not confuse the two. If the Hudonauts do not perform up to speed, the tournament falters. Many is the tournament that has been torpedoed by bad running or, even worse, no running. Bietz hires off-duty KGB agents to run VB, and I wish I had the money for that. Still, after the usual fits and starts, the Plebes mostly came through, especially all those new Speechonauts, many of whom have never even been to a tournament, much less run at one. I was remarkably unsurprised by which of the debaternauts performed above and beyond. Anyhow, one sets one’s future work at Bump by one’s past work at Bump. I’ve got some clear ideas of who’s running the tables next year. And Kathy (the new speech coach) has ideas on who’s handling the concessions; she includes among the requirements for this job the ability to remain at the table during the tournament and not leaving: a) the concessions, and b) the money, lying around unattended. Also next year we’ll get water bottles that are actually big enough for water, although on the bright side, the little bottles got remarkably cold in a very short period of time: one of those good news, bad news deals.

In an interesting side note, someone lost a computer in its computer bag and, lo and behold, it was actually found. As a general rule, at Bump people lose stuff we don’t find and we find stuff people didn’t lose. This was a real miracle, if you ask me. (It must have been a crappy computer, I guess.)

There were other bright spots; the weekend wasn’t entirely hell in a cracker jack box. Although I missed Kaz, it was great having CP in the house. He and JV made a great team and did fine tabbing, plus they provided the necessary ballast in the back to keep things going through thick and thin in varsity land. CP also comes equipped with wireless, which makes him an almost essential player. Down in novice land, O’C managed to solve a mess of my own making in the first round, where we paired some teams that weren’t there (entirely my fault, aside from the fact that the teams should have been there). He had a great guy named Matt Hoyle working with him, an ex-Manchester debater: Welcome to the family. They were having a good time, and that kind of thing makes the tournament enjoyable for the kids who are down in the grammar school, probably all of them at their first invitational. There is some responsibility, running the first invitational for people. You want them to have a good experience. O’C is attuned to that, and makes it happen. Simply put, I can’t be in two places at once, so it’s good to know that in both buildings, no matter what happens, somebody is in charge who can handle whatever comes up.

And we did have a boatload of alums on board. I feel bad that a lot of them are not ranked as As, which means that they don’t get to judge absolutely every round, but Bump is community rankings, and the universe at large has a short memory. Next year I’ll set it up so that they are all in the PF field and at least get a workout there when we can’t find an LD round for them. In any case, the India House dinner was excellent, as always. If IH ever goes out of business, we’ll just have to put an end to the tournament.