7/26/15

There are a number of possible captions for this picture.

“Oh my God, they’re headed for the tab room!” is one. “On, no, I accidentally voted for Donald Trump!” is another possibility. You might be able to come up with better ones. Give it a shot.

In reality, this is me looking down off the deck of CLG’s house, and discovering a thundering herd of my ex-debaters shouting, “Surprise!”

I think I look surprised.

Claire pulled it off perfectly. She put together a private group on Facebook and got the invites out, while telling me she and Erin were in town for the briefest moment, and they wanted to take me out to a local restaurant I’ve been wanting to go to. By throwing the party, this means I still haven’t gotten to that local restaurant, but I’m not holding that against them. I had no idea what was really going on.

The VCA knows that I’ve retired from coaching; this party was in honor of that retirement. In a word, I retired because I felt the time had come. I have not yet retired from debate, however, as it now seems that I am tabbing virtually every tournament in the coming season that I tabbed in the previous season. But tabbing and running a team are entirely different animals. But that’s beside the point.

I have never doubted that being a debate coach was a good thing for me. I learned things I would never have dreamt of. I studied books that would otherwise never have come into my house, and argued ideas that are among the most important possible, about how to live in a moral and just fashion, and how to describe a society that is moral and just. Most people don’t do that sort of thing. I should point out that I also have a pretty interesting day job editing books, which also feeds my imagination, and perhaps my intellect, but never as ferociously as debate has. This would not have happened if I had merely done my stint as a parent judge, but the fates allowed me to become a coach, and to take on the responsibility of imparting what knowledge I could to a serendipitous group of high school students for a span of twenty years. It changed my life completely.

The attendees at the party were alums going back to the very beginning of that twenty years. They had come from seriously wide and seriously far; a few sent messages from either wider or further (or, in Noah’s case, from a bus broken down somewhere unknown on the Eastern corridor).  They’re all out of college now, and many are established in their adult careers and lives. Some of them have kids. Most of them seemed pretty happy, and I hope all of them are or soon will be. All of them claimed to have gotten something  life-changing out of debate. For some, it was direction. For others, it was much more.

If you are an educator, this is probably not new to you. For me, I certainly thought I had made a difference in people’s lives, but to actually have those people all together in one place telling me about that difference? It was one of the most emotionally profound days of my life, as simple as that.

I love these people. They are as much a part of my life as can be imagined. I love following their continuing stories on Facebook. I love seeing them in person when the opportunity arises. And I want to thank them, not just for tossing a party for me (although I do thank them for that too), but for letting me into their lives. When all is said and done, I am the biggest winner here.

Thank you.