In which we no longer wonder how many divisions is too many

I know what you’re thinking, that it is no big deal to run 11.5 divisions simultaneously on a given weekend.

To which I reply, in a soft, gentle voice, Can we get a bigger tab staff next year?

JV, Kaz and I performed relatively admirably, as did tabroom for the most part. The only times we got into serious trouble is when the .5 we weren’t running put together a parli round that didn’t have pre-assigned rooms, and similarly when one of our LD rounds didn’t have its pre-assigned rooms. Part of this may be because one has to designate, for 12 divisions with at least 7 rounds each, a minimum of 84 individual room uses. Miss one, and all hell breaks loose, in a room it’s not supposed to be breaking loose in, multiplied by the number of rounds that hell can fit on a rainy day when the sun don’t shine. Unfortunately you can’t print out a list that shows room usage, so the more you have going on, the less likely you’ll avoid at least one crush of middle schoolers when you least want it, i.e., in your lifetime.

Middle schoolers, you say. Yes, middle schoolers. They look like debaters, only wee sma. They are surrounded by a cloud of parents, who occasionally crawl into tab on their hands and needs telling us that they can’t judge another round, having done two already that day over the course of 6 hours. JV, who missed Saturday morning because he was taking a course on Civility in the Tab Room, was assigned to running these parents over with a cement mixer. “Flights!” they would say in their best Lady Bracknell voices (http://youtu.be/oyuoUwxCLMs). “And what, pray tell, are flights!”

Imagine JV revving up the cement mixer engine.

11.5 divisions (plus cleanup from the other .5) pretty much takes up every breathing moment, aside from the five minutes we used to get an ice cream from Mr. Softee (always a highlight of Bronx Science—I think Mr. Softee is a Brx Sci alum from ’73). Some other highlights: the People’s Champion slept late, showed up, got pushed a ballot, then left to do AV for a play; once an AV Clubber, always and AV Clubber. I paired at least two elim rounds and forgot to release them until someone showed up wondering whatever happened to such-and-such division. Needless to say, my response was, We’re working on that now. (Oy.) Then there’s, we waited outside the room for an hour and the judge never showed up, about fifteen minutes after the judge who was waiting in the room walked up to tab to ask if she should forfeit them. We told her to go back and wait another five minutes. There was the kid who claimed his judge was incompetent and that all the good policy judges were doing LD instead of novice PF, where they belonged. Have you heard the one about the judge who’s critique of the PF rounds was that, having worked at a single-gender school, you’d really have to work double hard to change his mind on the subject? Oh, yeah, and I’ve polished my response to questions about my novice LD judge’s ability to do her job because of her accent: “She’s been speaking English longer than you have, kid.” (Of course, I can’t match a mufti’d Father Michael’s response to some kid who accused him of knowing nothing about philosophy with a casual mention of having majored in it at the seminary.)

On the other hand, our Novice LDer made it to Quarters, and our Novice PFers are now State champions, so I guess it was all in aid of something in the end.