MY FIRST DEBATE Part 1

FURTIVE GLANCES

Bulletholes, Christmas 1974, glancing furtivley toward the photographers lovely daughter

I had a Navy Blue sports coat and the Worlds Biggest tie.

My partner wore a Marigold miniskirt and White Stockings with a seam up the back. The type stockings that make the legs look kind of blue on the edges, a sort of Doppler effect.

Her name was Kathy, with a K, and she wore a blouse with Peaches on it. Like most Kathy's, with a K, , she had great breasts, and when she wore that blouse there were these two really well placed Peaches, and when I was stoned I always had to ask myself if the designer had done that on purpose.

I wonder that to this day.

Kathy was my partner on the Debate Team.

We had two shoeboxes filled with index cards that we carried with us into our first debate. One held cards with quotations and information about our case, otherwise known as "The Affirmative", which was our answer to "The Resolution":

"Resolved: The United States of America should significantly change the method of selecting and electing Presidential and Vice-presidential Candidates"...

Resolved being the topic adopted by the UIL for High Schools throughout America for the 74/75 season, it was part of the aftermath of impeaching Nixon. It also was the most Scholarly thing I have ever attempted to do.

The second shoebox was filled with index cards for the Negative. That is, after our opponents presented their Affirmative case on what to do about the scumbags in Washington, we were to pull index cards with quotations, facts and figures in order to rebut, destroy and make nonsense of the affirmatives case. As I was to find out, this is a difficult, pressure filled thing to do.

Sometimes I wrtite posts that would indicate I am a master of snappy comebacks and light on my feet in a verbal exchange, like Jack Kennedy or Don Rickles or something. I assure you I am not and am almost out of stories where I come out on top.

Sitting behind the table at the front of the classroom on the day of our first Debate, I took note of my suroundings. There was the Chalkboard with Eisteinian equations, there was a Periodic Chart of the Elements, a poster of Madam Curie or Ethel Merman in some Movie, I couldn't quite tell. There was a chart of the 10 rules for Chemlab.
There was a machine my math teacher had brought to my own classroom one day called a "computer" that you fed "Data". I had gotten sent to the office for asking if his newborn son had learned to say 'Data" yet, while predicting the ultimate failure of this "piece of ca-ca*"
It was a Math and Chemistry Room and I flunked both of those classes.
When you say "let x=y" I can't comprehend it. It strikes me as being most unfair, and to both of them. But I do believe in Alchemy. Thats part of why I flunked Chemistry twice, but thats another story.

And then the were the three judges siitng in front of me. The first was a dust dry little old lady with those CatGlasses, attached with a chain that ran around her neck that allowed them to rest on her bosom until she put them back on to take a long critical look at me. I nodded and gave my best Eddie Haskel smile to her, but she took them off with a disdainful look, seemed to shiver a bit and went back to chewing her gums** and reading "The Grape Gaspy" or something She wore support stockings amd Army Boots...no....Granny Shoes and I imagine she had a really bad case of varicose veins.

Yes, she had blue helmet hair.

Do you even have to ask?

The second judge was a studious looking middle aged man and completely unremarkable. Sometimes the most you can say about someone is that they are unremarkable. Bald or with hair, necktie or no, bearded, cleanshaven or in blackface, this guy would not get your attention even if he were barebeamed and buck naked. He looked like the kind of guy that kept a diary of every nonevent that occurred during his livelong day. Cut out articles from the Student Newspaper and latest hobby would be "Paint by Numbers".

But the third judge, well....

He was young, cool looking and dressed smartly. The shirt was solid colored, Deep Purple I believe, , except for the collars and cuffs, which were white. On the corners of the collar, was a tiny little embroided Carrot, and the Green top of the Carrot fairly resembled a stylized Marijuana leaf. He had hair longer than mine, and droopy eyelids, but his eyes flashed a certain brilliance that I was sure went brain deep. He had on Brown corduroy pants, and they were tucked into Buckshin knee boots . around his neck was a leather strap holding a little leather Medicine bag. He looked like a cross between Zonker and Mingo.
I looked at him and he gave me me a backwards nod, you know, not one where he dips his head towards you, but rather tosses his head back a touch.

Then he went back to looking at his copy of 'Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" while stealing furtive glances ay Kathy's Peaches.

I had an ally.

*ca-ca:

spanish noun

colloquial (excremento) poop
(defecto) defect, error:

also: crap, junk

**gums...

Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English gome, from Old English gōma palate; akin to Old High German guomo palate, and perhaps to Greek chaos abyss
Date: before 12th century : the tissue that surrounds the necks of teeth and covers the alveolar parts of the jaws ; broadly : the alveolar portion of a jaw with its enveloping soft tissues







to be continued...