Well, instead of the good news, they could have brought the haggis

Last weekend, while some of you were hobnobbing with the beys and poohbahs and assorted muckamucks at some tournament with a longer official name than many of the rounds, the rest of us were doing the day-to-day work of the activity, digging the ditches with the novices and jvers and making the world safe for people who don’t happen to have keys dangling from their nether parts. (Do they dangle the keys from their nether parts? I’m just guessing here.) At the MHL we don’t have keys, we have medals, and we give them to the debaters, not the coaches. We’re strange in that way.

(Of course, whether the medals would make it to us or not was a sort of “Ghent to Aix” kind of adventure, as it turns out. They had been left…somewhere, and…someone…forgot to pick them up, although…someone else…forgot them altogether in the mad rush to dangle the key from his nether parts, so…someone else again…had to beat the horses to death getting them from…somewhere…to us. But they did arrive, so I won’t mention it.)

I had never been to Beacon before, but it’s easy to drive to, accessible right off the West Side Drive. Parking was another thing, because NYC remains under about thirty feet of snow, but there was a cheap garage (really!) in the neighborhood, so that was no big deal. We only had about 40 rooms for the rounds, but that was fine, and we had just enough overage for switcheroos when one of the ceilings fell in and other catastrophes like that. Harry F, the Beacon coach, had to solve those problems. When someone came into tab and told me the that ladies room was about to float away on the flood, I was happy to refer them to Harry rather than having to grab a mop myself. Such is the joy of working in someone else’s building.

We ran four rounds and had them finished by six, thanks to the rule that no table changes are accepted anymore other than drops. The usual suspects who ignore the idea that their students should sign up a couple of days before the tournament rather than at the tournament or maybe halfway through seem to have learned their lesson. Round 1 was on the boards by 9:45 and in action by 10:00. That’s good. We even threw in a half hour break for lunch at some point. That’s very good. The era of the half-starved polician is no longer!

Of course, this was the kind of event where you do everything yourself, aside from mopping up the ladies room, although I had great help from Ms. Diaz and Mr. Bathhurst, both of whom know how to move kids and sort ballots and all that sort of thing you need to do to run an event. I even managed to sort out the pairings for the upcoming Newark RR during down time, but by now that’s second nature: I did the heavy RR lifting a long time ago (and believe me, pairing RR rounds the first time or two you do it is heavy indeed). At the end of the day Harry’s eyes were wide when he asked if he could read the results. Like a little kid, you know? Apparently he’d never done that before, and I have to admit, it is kind of fun. As the VCA knows, I’m very bad at pronouncing names so I always cook the results so that only kids named Smith and Jones ever win, but I don’t let on about that because, well, it might not be so popular in the world at large. (Actually, I always feel I pronounce everyone’s name perfectly, and they’re the ones who get it wrong, but what can you do? Is it my fault their parents are confused?) So Harry was happy, the medals were distributed, and the ditches were dug.

All in all, it was a successful day. I crept out while the awards were going on, and got home in time for a nice pasta Bolognese. What more could you ask for, except, maybe, a key dangling from your nether regions.