2/16/02



Damn, do I have a lot to talk about. Let's start with Thursday.

Thursday, February 14th, 2002

Ok, it's Valentine's Day. I have a field trip. My team is going ice skating. Whoop-de-doo. Anyway, I had to drag my dad out of bed early because I needed to get to school by 7:15 because I had to practice with the 8th graders. For those of you who don't know, Brad, Betsy, and I are all playing in a contest with the 8th graders. In the contest you play songs in front of a judge and get a rating of either I, II, or III, one being the best. Anyway, the little rehearsal at 7:15 was really fun. After that I looked for Austin before homeroom started. He didn't show up. Then in 1st hour we had a test in Health. Ugh. In second hour, Orchestra, Mr. Hale gave me a cookie for getting up "early"! Woohoo! He recorded our practice times and then we went to the bus to go skating. I can't skate. I suck. Well, I get there, and the only way I can skate is if Tony pulls me around. I just grab his sleeve and it's all cool. So, like 10 minutes before we had to go to this other building across the street to eat lunch I went inside the skating rink place and checked out the vending machines. There was a hot chocolate/coffee macine. One of the buttons said "French Vanilla" and I got it, thinking it meant hot chocolate. Uhh... no. But it was damn good for coffee. But on the way over to the restaurant building, Allison spilled the coffee on me while we were crossing the street. It was all over my left sleeve. Then we get inside and Ashley, Brittany, Allison, Maggie, and I all went to Fritz's. Fritz's is a restaurant that serves you food by train. These little trains on tracks above you drop your food on a little elevator that takes it down to you. I can't really explain it. Anyway I had a cheeseburger and a Sprite. Then we went to the Candy Barrel and stocked up on candy. On the way to K.C. Fudge, I went to Harvest Bakery and got another vanilla coffee. I caught up with everyone else at K.C. Fudge and we sat down at this food court place. Allison rattled my arm and I warned her not to knock my coffee out of my hand. Then Kelsey, being the annoying bitch she is, grabs my arm and shakes it. The coffee goes all over my khakis. End of story.

Friday, February 15th, 2002

On Thursday night Betsy had called me to ask if I was doing anything that night. I said no so she came over and spent the night. It was a wild night, it was, full of... umm... wildness. We talked about some wierd stuff. Anyway, we got up on Friday morning and my mom wasn't home. We were downstairs and my brother came down. Him and I were passing a Nerf football. Then he asked if we wanted to play dodgeball. So we played dodgeball for about an hour. Then when my mom finally came home Betsy and I went to Pizza Street. It was fun. Then when we went back to my house, Betsy asked my mom if I could go over to her house and keep her company when her mom had friends over. We ended up playing Guess Who for like 3 hours. It was fun as hell anyway. I'm cutting this day short because I need to get to today...

Saturday, February 16th, 2002

Today there was a Science Olympiad tournament. A real one. All the previous ones I've written about in this journal were practice tournaments. Feel free to look back upon them. Anyway, it was at Penn Valley, which is a college. It was huge. I only had two events for the entire day, so I was all over the place. I helped Andrew and Chris with Storm The Castle, which is an event where you have to build a catapult. Then I went and watched Balloon Race for a bit. Then I did Life Science Process with Bryan, which is a Biology event. Later I did Bridge Building with Jonathan. It was his bridge and the damn thing broke. Oh well. Anyway, I want to tell you about the most dramatic time of the day... the award ceremony. Prior to today, my Science Olympiad team, New Mark Middle School, has taken 1st place at all of the practice tournaments we've attended. Everyone who has any sense wanted us to get 2nd or 3rd at this one. Here's why. If you place in the top 4 at Regionals, which I was at today, you go to State. State is at the University of Missouri. If you place in the top 2 in State, you go to Nationals, which is at the University of Delaware. So basically you have to do well to advance to the next level. Since today at this tournament we only had to be in the top 4, we wanted to get 2nd or 3rd. That's because it gives the slackers a wake up call, helps them remember to lose the big head, that New Mark is not unstopable. At the award ceremony I got a gold medal for Life Science. Hell yeah. Our team did pretty well, but not as good as usual. Most of us were happy because we thought we would come in 2nd, and that's exactly what we wanted. Here's what happened...

The old guy at the podium was announcing the team placings...
"4th place... Blah Blah Middle School!" *cheering*
"3rd place... Blah Blah Middle School!" *cheering*
"2nd place... Blah Blah Middle School!" *cheering*
"1st place... Blah Blah Middle School!" *cheering*

We didn't place. We didn't even fucking place. Immediately I looked at Ashley and said, "Oh my Lord... we aren't going to State."

State is awesome. We get to live in dorms. We get to run around campus and get in trouble. And best of all... no parents... ahh...

Wait... back to reality. NONE OF THAT!! No running around, fucking with Ben's Battery Buggy, none of that...

Immediately after I said that to Ashley, Mr. Manchion was up at the podium I guess demanding to see the scoring spreadsheet. While all the winning teams were taking their fucking group pictures and hugging their trophies like they were the most precious thing...

Then the old guy gets on the mic and says that they are "retabulating the B-Division results." After we all wanted to start bawling, we thought

NO FUCKING WAY!

No fucking WAY do we get 1st at all the practice tournaments and not place...
No fucking WAY do we place in the top 5 in 17 events and not place...
No fucking WAY does Lincoln College Prep beat us...
No fucking WAY does that team over there with 5 medals taking a group picture beat us when Bryan ALONE has, like, 6...
No fucking WAY am I not going to state...
No fucking WAY are my Science Olympiad days over.

I heard someone say that we were in LAST PLACE!
I heard this one chick behind us yelling to her kids at Lincoln College Prep going

"Everyone! Calm down! Don't get your hopes up... there's no way New Mark didn't make the top 4..."

If that bitch told them why did they keep celebrating... I don't know.

As it turns out, after 15 mintues of pure confusion, the old guy comes on telling us that on the spreadsheet there was one error in one cell. It was New Mark's. The school next to us didn't show up. So they had 17 points in each event. The lowest score wins, so obviously they were in last. The spreadsheet someone put their score in our cell. Anyway, we got first place. Right when they said that Lincoln College Prep broke down. I mean, every chick at LCP was bawling. And I felt like shit. Because just 30 seconds ago I was them. I wanted to cry. People put so much work into this... and to not make it?? That really, really, genuinely sucks. So we all walked up the bleachers to where they were and were going to shake their hands. We said we were sorry about what happened, and guess what. They didn't say a word. They just paused their crying to give us cold stares.

They hated us. And if I were them... I'd hate me too.
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