I have to admit that I am touched—touched!—by the many
outpourings of affection debaters have been posting on Facebook now that their
careers have ended (most of them by bombing out at TOC). I’m reprinting verbatim one of
the more touching valedictions below.
This has been an amazing four years, and it all was made
possible by debate. If it hadn’t been for debate, I would no doubt be in a
juvenile detention center this very minute, never knowing that it was not my
fault but rather the fault of my not-yet-formed cerebral cortex. I’d be setting
up to learn the skills to succeed at a life of crime rather than setting up to
learn the skills of being a lawyer, which, admittiedly, is also a life of
crime, but at least you get to live in the suburbs. I will never debate again,
and once I’m in college you won’t catch me hanging around any high school
debate tournaments when I could instead be getting intimate with randy college
girls. I mean, seriously? In any case, the time has come for me to acknowledge those who have stood behind me through thick and thin, or at least through thick, in some cases.
First and foremost, I want to thank my parents, Hedgehog and Mickey
(“Pete”) Buonosera. If they had not had unprotected sex that night way back
when, I wouldn’t be here to write this. Throughout grade school they always
insisted that I put education first, limiting my Playstation time to four hours
a day. Once I reached high school, there was no question that I needed
something other than video games to entertain me, at least until the next
Bioshock came out, and they encouraged me to join debate. And then, weekend
after weekend, even though we couldn’t afford it, they paid for me to go to
debate tournament after debate tournament, the further away the better. Which
might explain my little brother who was born just a few months ago, much to
Hedgehog’s and Mickey (“Pete”)’s surprise and amazement, but they are not
Playstation people, and I guess you can figure out how they spent all their
time in the empty nest I had created for them.
I also have my Uncle Englebert to thank, as he was the first
person in my life to open my eyes to the variety that is human existence. Uncle
Egg, who identifies as a Belle Epoque French chambermaid, helped me understand
the myriad arguments I was hearing from an assortment of debaters over the
years, as they cleverly skirted the posted resolutions, concentrating instead on
why they should win because of anything but their debating skills. As a result of all those Thanksgiving dinners with Uncle Egg arguing, in French, with my
grandparents, I learned to deflect their identity arguments while at the same time acquiring a decent knowledge of Parisian home maintenance.
I have to thank my teachers at Southwest North Central High
School. They only saw me on Tuesdays and Wednesdays most of the time, but their
respect for education matched that of my parents, which informed all of the
theory arguments I began running starting the second week I joined the team.
And then there was my head coach, Dr. Thump, who refused to let me off
the team, no matter how poorly I did, and God knows, I was a disaster when I
first started out. Dr. Thump, whose stipend depended on having a certain number
of students on the team, refused to even listen to my pleas to let me go, let
me go, please let me go, I’m begging of you! Although Dr. Thump is no longer
with us, my alibi still holds and I refuse to say another word without my
attorney present.
And finally, I would like to thank all the assistant coaches
who worked with me this year, to get me to the TOC. (It is not their fault that
I totally tanked.) So in no particular order, my gratitude to Guy Kibbee,
Spencer Tracy, Dick Grayson, Rex the Wonder Horse, Nick and Nora Charles, Vito
Corleone, Ralph Nader, Wendy Darling, Maimonides, Rosemary Clooney, Professor
Plum, Howard “Sandman” Sims, Edward Everett Horton, The Beatles, Donald Trump,
Ma Rainey, Freddie Mercury, Philip Roth, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Claude
Monet, Anne Boleyn, Timothy Leary, Umberto Eco, Lao-Tzu, Vladimir Ilyich
Ulyanov, Humbert H. Humbert, Enrico Caruso, James Beard, George Washington, the
Fonz, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Cantinflas, Little Lulu, the Gershwins,
Charlotte Corday, Frank N. Furter, R. P. McMurphy, Winston Smith, Dolores del
Rio, Simone Simon, Bob Fosse, Ernest Hemingway, Leland Stanford, Huckleberry
Finn, Marjorie Main, Seven of Nine, Archie Goodwin, the Reverend Charles L.
Dodgson, Eliot Ness, Mamie Eisenhower, Hermione Gingold, Slim Gaillard, Rowdy
Yates, Jonathan and Martha Kent, Leo Gorcey, Busby Berkeley, Baby LeRoy, Jack
Soo, Gilbert du Motier, Ann Miller, Michael Moschen, Uriah Heep, Benny the Cab,
St. Augustine, Flo Rida, Tuli Kupferberg, the Realist Nun, Hildy Johnson,
Eustace Tilly, Lassie, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Mustapha Mond, Mia Hamm, Francis
Albert Sinatra, Wrong Way Corrigan, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, John Jay, Ian
Fleming, Joan Crawford, Daniel Boone, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Cecil B.
DeMille and a cast of thousands—plus a slew of others too numerous to mention,
including Horatio Alger, Henry Clay, Nanki-Poo, Fidel Castro, William Henry
Pratt, Ishmael, Eli Whitney, George Pal, Carrie Nation, Fala, Burl Ives, Yuri
Gagarin, Joseph “Socks” Lanza, Bernard Quatermass, Julie Andrews, Bob Wills,
Joe Rohde, Jawaharlal Nehru, P. G. Wodehouse, Federico Fellini, Roald Dahl,
bell hooks, and the cast and crew of the upcoming Hello Kitty movie… Guys,
and non-guys, and non-non-guys, and others, I couldn’t have done it without
you.
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