Just cuz somebody is a real smarty-pants doesn’t mean they don’t make dumb decisions on occasion.
And, no, I’m not returning my medal, man…
“And in fourth place…”
I held my breath. There were only five spots on the All-League team, and three out of my four teammates already had had their names called. I was but a lowly freshman, and I could merely hope to land a spot behind Ryan, the junior on our team, who was still aspiring to make the cut himself.
“…well, it looks like we have a three-way tie! All earning the honors as co-fourth-seats on the team are Ryan H. and BJ A. from Rolla High School (no surprise there), and Hanston High School’s very own, Local Kid! Come on up and get your medals–you earned them!”
I was slightly in shock. As a freshman, not only had I pulled it off, but I tied with the big-headed junior on our team!
The three of us walked to the front of the lunch room where the awards ceremony was being held. It didn’t take much more than that short walk for us whiz kids to quickly realize that the math didn’t add up here.
“Uh…I’m sorry, Local Kid, but we’ll have to send you your fourth place medal later in the mail,” the Hanston principal, who was emceeing the show, looked as compassionately at his student as he could, hoping not to kill the buzz of the dude’s modest victory…
Back in the day when I was attending Rolla High School, I had the great pleasure of partaking in the one activity in which our humble little school from Kansas was consistently a powerhouse: Scholars’ Bowl (aka Quiz Bowl, aka Jeopardy Light, etc). ‘Twas my freshman year, and at the time I was the runt of the proverbial litter, usually just relegated to watching the four upperclassfolk on my team kick intellectual ass. If I was lucky, I would get to sub in a late round once the tournament was already well in hand and I couldn’t possibly screw us over.
But at long last, here at the Santa Fe Trail League tournament–hosted by perennial football rival and now-defunct Hanston High School–I finally had the chance to prove myself and give the world a glimpse of the 100% Grade-A Quiz Bowl stud that would soon rise to state-wide domination over the next 3 years. Making the All-League Quiz Bowl team was an honor that any scholar could attain strictly on their own merits, even if they had 4 other mental dead-weights dragging them down.
Conversely, even if your other 4 teammates were frickin’ brainiacs–as was my case–you had to punch your own dang ticket onto the team.
And unlike most other Scholar Bowl activities which were oral-based and relied on one having speedy reaction times, admission into the exclusive All-League team featured a written test as it’s bouncer. Halfway through the tournament, the academic administrators running the show would herd all 35 or so of us youths into the Hanston lunch room and let us sit wherever we wanted. It should go without saying that they would precede to hand out pencils and sheets with roughly 20-30 questions,1The typical quiz bowl round consisted of 16 questions, so maybe that’s how many questions were on the test…but it seems like they should have given us more in that situation. Hell, I don’t remember. It’s been almost 30 years! set a timer for 15 minutes or so, and let us go to town.
Apparently, it was just the right conditions for my species to thrive…
“Ah, crap, a trigonometry question!” I muttered under my breath. “I won’t take trig until next year…I have no chance of getting this one right.”
Up until that point on the written test, I had been doing fairly well, but for some reason, not being able to throw out a wild guess and thus having a non-zero chance of getting this one right seemed to stick in my craw. It was only one of many questions, so I should have just counted my losses and moved on, right?
Wrong.
I simply could not bear the horror of that lone blank spot on my paper staring back at me.
I looked up from my test and locked eyes with David, the sophomore on our team and young man of noble character, who was sitting two feet away from me on the adjacent side of the lunch table. Yes, you heard me right–the dumbasses running the show haphazardly let us all sit together as a team. With my eyes, I drew his attention to the sad little empty spot on my sheet.
“I got you covered, my man,” he replied only with his eyes, as he slightly angled his answers just enough so I could see his chicken scratch scrawled at the bottom of the page.
“Tangent!” I proclaimed in my head as if I had just had an epiphany. “Hah! I knew it was something I would have never guessed on account of my complete lack of acquaintance with the topic of trigonometry. But now I will always and forever know that the tangent is ‘the ratio of the vertical leg of a right triangle to its horizontal counterpart.’ Done and done!”
I gave David a nod of appreciation and proceeded to jot it down, finally feeling at peace about turning in my test–all of which I had otherwise answered all on my own with my little freshman mind…
“Sorry, Local Kid, but we’ll have to send you your fourth place medal later…”
Those words hit a little differently now, don’t they? Now that you, Dear Reader, know that it should have been a two-way tie for fourth place and, ergo, enough medals to go around. Poor Local Kid.
“Sh*t. Had I known that one question would end up being so significant, I wouldn’t have even cheated on that singular occasion,” I thought to myself, acknowledging that I hadn’t really thought about how my error in judgement might possibly play out–it was only one question for crying out loud! I hadn’t done it to win, I had done it to avoid the wounded pride and shame that comes along with leaving one question blank. But whether premeditated or not, I was in this predicament either way.
“Welp, looks like I’m in too deep now,” I thought as I accepted my medal, still stunned not only by making the team as a freshman, but under the circumspect circumstances which it had happened.
“Guess I’m taking this one to the grave with me…”
“Why come clean now?” you may be indubitably asking.
Well, Dear Reader, that is a fantastic question. After all, I’m not dead…yet.2I do have some unresolved health issues indubitably related to officially becoming middle-aged over the last year, so my longevity actually can’t be taken for granted. Well, if nothing else I’m honest, and honestly it was never that big of a secret. I’m sure I’ve told some people over the years, including past girlfriends and current wives.
Heck, I figured I would just toss it out there for sh*ts ‘n giggles…and, in the spirit of Primary Season during an election year, I thought that just in case I ever want to run for President, I might as well get out in front of this scandal. Control the narrative and what-not. And I do want to point out that at least on the bright side, I hadn’t robbed anyone of a rightful spot on the All-League Team–had I let the tangent question go, Ryan and Local Kid would have filled the last two spots on the team, and I would have been left with the bragging rights of “making All-League 3 out of my 4 years of high school…”
So basically the point of the story is that if you’re going to cheat, you better be prepared to win–and all the emotional baggage that comes with carrying that unwelcome weight around until the statutes of limitations expires or you die, whichever comes first.
Anyways…I almost forgot the coda to the story: the following year when it came time to head to the host lunch room and take the All-League written test?
“This year we’re making a slight change,” they announced. “We’re randomly assigning you to a table, children, as no two of you from the same team are allowed to sit together…”
Okay, now I can’t confirm that the little stunt that David and I pulled was the cause for this much-needed ----- common-sense rule to be put in place–as far as I know that secret stayed between the two of us well into our college years–but a part of me can’t help be just a wee bit proud for perhaps making the world a tiny bit better place.
Of course, leaving an ass-backwards legacy was already kinda my thing by then.
What’s that? You don’t know what I’m talking about?
Oh, my friend, just listen: the answer is Blowin’ In The Wind…
Content created on: 23/24 February 2024 (Fri/Sat)
Footnotes & References:
The latest word on the street