I judged 48 speeches given by high school seniors last night. [View All]

24 of them gave two speeches each for a regional Academic Decathlon meet. It took FIVE hours.

It was interesting, but by the time it was done, I was READY for it to be done.

Too many of them were proselytizing speeches (one said "If you are a Christian and you don't go to church, you are just a baby Christian, still drinking milk. Only in church can you feed on the solid food of the Bible." How much I wanted to tell her churches don't OWN the Bible. The smug look on her face was horrid. And "feed on?" "Drinking milk?" Strange imagery, I'll leave it at that.).

One praised bush to the skies for his "strength" and "intelligence". I looked down at the criteria sheet and thought "stay unbiased, stay unbiased" but there was a category for "appropriateness of topic, strength of LOGIC." Um. Ok. Had to count down on that. He sucked at speech-giving and lost points in other categories, too.

One gave us the entire history of rock and roll in four minutes.

Another one stammered and "um"-ed her way through it, with long painful pauses during which she would stare at the ceiling, desperate to remember the next part. When she got big fat tears in her eyes, it became truly painful to witness. Poor thing. It was about ballet.

And I do need to say I have true admiration for a kid who has a speech/hearing impediment and gives speeches. Two of them, you could tell, had suffered from some degree of deafness. It's hard enough to get up there and do that when you haven't struggled with that.

I shook a lot of sweaty hands.