The Turkey Trophy

For three weeks now, I have spent the entirety of my weekend at debate tournaments. The few weekdays between Monday and Thursday have been spent opening new purchase orders, more e-mails for entries for the contests, last minute drops from the tournament, an ever-constant battle of who is going to drive whom. I've had kids call me stupid, brilliant, witty, insane, and one even graced me with the pleasure of calling me fat.

When the fat jokes started yesterday, I knew all of us were too tired to even tell the difference between funny and unfunny. (The purpose of this exercise was to see who they could call fat before someone got a complex about it. And guess what? After two days of competition and an inordinate amount of losses for our team, someone did finally take it personal.) Then the kids moved from punch-drunk unhappiness to delirious levels of emotions only usually experienced by pregnant women.

She cried because he really meant to call her fat, she just knew it.

The next one paced the floor because she couldn't understand why she was losing.

He went into a fit of rage because everyone was being lame about the fact that they were losing.

They all mobilized against him for speaking reason, and now there's a feeling of mutiny on the ship.

They are all bored, so they form new islands of alliances and start hating each other from across the room.

I keep wanting to go hang out in the coach's lounge where there is a lot less drama (lot less drama for a drama and debate tournament, that is) but everytime I go in there, the company seems to somehow be worse than my survivor-bound students.
Plus, I have also sank to a new low because we really did lose rounds for SILLY and STUPID reasons, so I don't want to go look at all of the judges and coaches that are happy at their success.

Sad times when you would rather hang out with crying kids before you would sit near gloating coaches.

At that point, the perfume wars started. You know, the "it's really funny to spray things like Bod, Axe, and Ralph Lauren Blue and mix them with my funky nervous body sweat stains" smell?

Now our entire general area reeks. Let the drama continue.

The ex-boyfriend shows up so another one goes down crying.

Her speech was only 4 minutes long and she has never, in 4 years given a 4 minute speech, so she is crying too.

I guess because of all of the delirium in the air, another one decides to commence crying because her mother never gives her enough money and she's hungry. I gave her two bucks and sent her to the concession stand. Good Grief.

The awards assembly starts and we are ready to go home. During the awards assembly, there is supposed to be an opening skit where a monkey flies in and the Tournament Director knocks off the head of the monkey, but even that is ruined because the head falls off of the monkey before the awards even begin.

We all believe that was symbolic of our tournament experience, the head did indeed fall off the monkey.

But just like the Grinch learning the value of a Christmas miracle, I was caught off guard when I heard my name being called for The Monty Python Coach of the Year. In a stunned manner, I walked as quickly as I could to the stage to retrieve my prize. I look down and it is a turkey trophy. Not metaphorically, It really is a gold turkey, in plastic form molded to the top of a wooden base. Still kind of shocked from all of the applause and cheers, I walk back to the kids and they are screaming. Now, we investigate the turkey trophy, and all of the sudden the laughs start up.

We know why it's a turkey trophy, but I guess you don't. It's not because I am a turkey and it's not because my kids are turkeys, although it is fun to call them a bunch of turkeys and I might start using that antiquated phrase more often, however, it was just an award for Coach of The Year. The reason a turkey is on the top is because the trophy was donated. The coach trophy, and all of the champs trophies (champs is the division where people that have already placed at a tournament compete in, the rest of the kids compete in qualifying or novice) are donated from the community. Every year they use the money that they would have used to purchase trophies in Champs division and donate it to a local charity. This year the money went to a charity that tries to buy school supplies for underprivileged children. The tournament director's logic is that kids who have already placed at another tournament wouldn't mind a silly trophy instead of a realistic one. We ended up with tennis, track, and turkey trophies from that division. And from that point on, everything seemed a little brighter in all of our days. In another series of unexpected events, one of our sophomores managed to place first in an event, which I am pretty sure even surprised him. I am proud of all of my kids. Even though they drive me nuts at times, I think that I probably also drive them crazy.

We earned the turkey part of the turkey trophy and we are pumped about owning it now. I think the moral of the story is that all of us are going to go home to work LESS on our dramatic moments at tournaments, and MORE on our WE ARE HAPPY TO BE AMONG FRIENDS moments. As my eyes closed on three weeks of emotional hell, I reflected on its happy hilarious ending. Right before my mind gave way to deep comatic sleep, a smile curved across my cheeks and I reached down and tapped the black revenge bracelet on my right hand and drifted off to sleep...