In every speech kid, I see a version of myself that I love with frightening intensity: 14 years old, a closeted freshman at Liberty High School with long curly Weird Al Yankovic hair, thick glasses, blisteringly cheap dress shoes, and something to say. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was the second week of the new millennium. The Columbine massacre was less than a year old, its aftershocks still rumbling in my hometown, Colorado Springs. That Columbine High School was still holding its annual speech-and-debate tournament struck my whole team as unlikely and courageous, a tribute to the value of our shared nerdy passion. Everyone had signed up to compete in at least one category, motivated by reverence, ambition, and, at least in my case, morbid curiosity. I imagined inspecting the walls for bullet holes and the corners of the halls for spent casings, a different sort of forensics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This line of thinking was a distraction, though. Mostly, I wanted to win. Columbine was a Denver tourney, and Denver tourneys were a big deal: swanky, prestigious, competitive. I had never been to one, nor had I ever competed in this category, Original Oratory. Mostly, I had done Interpretation of Humorous Literature, putting on a little one-man show called \u201cBloodless Macbeth: A Humorous Reading or Skit.\u201d It didn\u2019t know exactly what it was, and neither did I, but I did okay with it. I placed third at a couple of novice tourneys, got Honorable Mentions at two varsity meets, but had yet to distinguish myself among the big dogs. Original Oratory, I thought, might be my chance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Friday night before the tournament, I went down to the basement in my black pleather loafers to practice my speech. At the bottom of the stairs, an unplugged treadmill gathered dust, its belt stained from our dog Max\u2019s pee from when my older brother, Mike, tried to make him run. The basement was Mike\u2019s territory. His windowless bedroom occupied one corner, and a mess of his unfinished schoolwork, football equipment, and dime bags covered the green baize of our secondhand coin-op gulley table. To my great relief, Mike wasn\u2019t home, leaving me free to rehearse in the empty family room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I laid all five pages of my speech on the pool table beside Mike\u2019s bong and set the timer on my digital watch. Despite the five A.M. wakeup call, I stayed up till at least midnight delivering the speech over and over to the basement walls. When Mike fought with Mom, he would sling the Bakelite balls into the plaster; I used the dents to practice my eye contact. My speech would be judged on thesis, evidence, word choice, and organization, but delivery was the most important, I knew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s what I remember of the speech, 25 years later:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Gift of Individuality<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Ah, individuality. Perhaps no gift is more precious. But wait a minute! Why do we treat it like a sweater from that aunt nobody likes?! [Pause for laughter<\/em>.] Our individuality should be recognized for its value, both monetary and otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [walk left<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Individuality can be quite profitable. Take Macy Gray, for instance, the chanteuse<\/em> whose inimitable, scratchy voice made her the subject of mockery as a kid [source: VH1, Before They Were Stars<\/em>]. Or what about Tyra Banks, top mod\u00e8le, <\/em>whose classmates would make fun of her beanpole body and enormous forehead [ibid<\/em>.]? They capitalized on what set them apart as individuals, and did it ever <\/em>pay off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [walk right<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Individuality can also help you resist people who want to take your money. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve seen those horrible GAP commercials where a bunch of expressionless oatmeal-colored models sing Donovan\u2019s \u201cMellow Yellow\u201d and then the screen says \u201cEverybody in cords\u201d? If you asked the average high schooler their opinion on school uniforms, 99 percent would probably say no way, Jose<\/em>\u2014because they want to \u201cexpress themselves.\u201d But do they really? Or do they just want to wear the uniform worn by the majority and enforced by corporate masterminds just trying to make another buck? As James Frank Dobie put it, \u201cConform and be dull.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But conformity doesn\u2019t just make you boring and take your money. [walk toward audience<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n It takes your very soul<\/em>, as exemplified in the poem \u201cThe Man in the Glass,\u201d by Anonymous:<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years<\/p>\n\n\n\n And get pats on the back as you pass<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the final result will be heartache and tears<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019ve cheated the man in the glass.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n [return to center<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n In conclusion: a metaphor:<\/p>\n\n\n\n A butterfly flutters toward a soothing white light. All the other bugs are doing it. Then: bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt [convulsions<\/em>]. The once beautiful butterfly has become a fuming, indistinguishable corpse<\/em> underneath a bug zapper. Don\u2019t be like the butterfly who flew too close to the light. Revel in your individuality. Celebrate your true identity. And, as Fiona Apple so eloquently put it at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, \u201cGo as yourself!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The real thing was better, I promise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It had to be memorized, and it had to be under 10 minutes and 15 seconds; otherwise, I could not be ranked first in the round. By the time I finally went to bed, it clocked in around 10:10. It wasn\u2019t perfect, but I slept with the satisfaction that I had authored it. It was complete, original, and mine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When my alarm screamed me awake at five A.M., I put on my not-altogether-very-formal tournament garb: an orangey plaid button-down tucked into wheat-colored corduroys fastened with a brown web belt that clashed with my black loafers. No blazer, no tie. I scarfed a bowl of Great Grains, threw on my thrifted houndstooth overcoat and backpack, hopped into a teammate\u2019s car, and boarded the District 20 schoolbus idling in a Ramada Inn parking lot, packed full of teens from four different high schools, all of them in blazers, most of them in ties, spewing exhaust into the freezing morning air. The sound of my speech reciting itself in my head drowned out whatever was on the radio.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the heart of every speech kid is a conflict between competition and care.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n When I remember forensics, I picture the Columbine cafeteria on a Saturday morning, suddenly and completely taken over by teenagers reciting their speeches to the walls between piles of backpacks and snacks and good-luck stuffed animals and Rubbermaid tubs of evidence for cross-examination debate, waiting for the nine A.M. Round One postings, which they will scan for their speaker numbers and disperse, antlike, to their sections\u2019 designated classrooms, where they will each speak, clap for each other, and hope for the One, a digit their judge marks on a ballot designating them as the best, the funniest, the most eloquent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At the heart of every speech kid is a conflict between competition and care. Their world runs on ratings, rankings, ballots, and trophies. They disparage rivals who break to semis despite the corniness of their interpretation of \u2019night Mother<\/em> or the shallowness of their views of South American trade policy. And yet, of the thousands of students in their high schools, they alone have read \u2019night Mother<\/em> or have anything to say about South American trade policy. They care about clarity and storytelling and connection. They care about foreign and domestic policy, utilitarianism versus altruism, definition versus evaluation, comedy versus tragedy. They care about domestic violence, terminal illness, genocide, and structural racism. Most of all, they care about their teammates. They melt into little business-casual cuddle puddles on the cafeteria floors. They watch each other\u2019s final rounds and applaud raucously at the awards ceremonies often beginning well past nine P.M. They share hotel rooms and bus seats and secrets. They cry into each other\u2019s shoulder pads when they don\u2019t break to semis or finals or nationals. They know the depths of this sorrow runs deeper than this one exclusion.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Around the time I turned 11 or 12, Mike started calling me his little sister. He was disgusted by my soft, unathletic body, my love of jigsaw puzzles, my belief that it was past time our country had a woman president. He and his handsome friends would corner me at the bus stop and squirt lemonade onto my glasses. Eventually, I became too inured to wipe the syrup off the lenses. I was far from popular in middle school, but I was mostly left alone. My only real bullies were my brother\u2019s gang, who, unfortunately, followed me home. My bedroom adjoined the driveway, where they would play shirts-and-skins two-on-two with the hoop mounted above my mom\u2019s garage and shout taunts through my window whenever they caught me watching. \u201cLike what you see?\u201d some shirtless Justin would ask, tracing his nipple until I grew so full of rage at him and myself that I punched through the screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I saw pictures of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, I saw my brother and his friends. They dressed similarly, backward baseball caps and Old Navy plaids unbuttoned over Unionbay t-shirts. I thought about their delight in cruelty, their love of first-person shooters. Their smiles were sneers. I was glad they were dead. I\u2019d wished I\u2019d killed them myself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But then I thought about punching through that screen. Or the time I lost it in the back of the R.V. on the way to my grandparents\u2019 50th wedding anniversary, whaling on Mike in a sort of fugue state, snapped by some forgotten jab. I knew what it was to hold something unspeakable, to be pushed too far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My speaker number at Columbine was 26B, one of about 70 Original Orators. I would give my speech in three prelim rounds for three different judges as part of three different groups of five other speakers, some of them very good. Luckily, tournament rules kept me from competing in the same prelim section as 26A, Maria Bennett, a Liberty junior whose speech was about persevering through the adversity of a dance injury and nurturing her other talents. She had placed in every varsity tournament that season, and she was poised to continue her streak. Each judge would rank the group of six from one (the best) to one of three fours and assign us speaker points from 50 to 35. The six orators with the lowest cumulative ranks at the end of the prelims, with ties broken by speaker points, would advance to Finals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Round One was in a sunny room with Spanish conjugation posters. I wrote my name, code, and speech title on the whiteboard with a black dry-erase marker. First in the speaker order, I took my place at the front of the classroom and got it out of the way, managing not to stumble once for the entirety of the speech. While I spoke, I watched the middle-aged white judge give time signals\u2014three fingers for seven minutes elapsed, two for eight, one for nine. My speech ended right when he gave a fist for ten minutes. I soaked in the polite applause and sat down to enjoy the rest of the speeches. One of them was an incredibly moving story of the speaker\u2019s childhood in Vietnam, the legacy of the French and American wars there and how they affected her family. She won the round, I was certain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Round Two was in a choir room with tiered seating and no desks. The first speaker, a greasy-haired white boy, clutched a few sheets of notebook paper and droned a speech in favor of the legalization of marijuana that he had very obviously written in green magic marker. Everyone else had their speeches memorized. He seemed to be competing under duress. It was as if my brother had been conscripted onto the forensics team as part of some community service. He saw speech-and-debate as he saw me: derisively feminine. He bragged about the time he improvised a mock Poetry Interp performance in his English class after a female classmate had practiced her competitive interpretation of \u201cAnnabel Lee\u201d for extra credit. \u201cI can get up and pretend to be tragic, too,\u201d he said after she ended her piece. Then why don\u2019t you? his teacher asked, expecting, probably, for him to either chicken out or make an ass of himself. Little did she know how much he enjoyed the latter. He got up in front of the class and free-styled some lines about wilting flowers and bittersweet kisses, punctuating each sentence with a sweeping arm gesture or arabesque. To hear him tell it, the class\u2019s applause after he took his final bow was deafening\u2014and I didn\u2019t doubt him. Had my brother had any actual interest in performing, he would\u2019ve kicked ass at Humorous Interp. I told him as much, not to recruit him, but to corner him into some sort of appreciation for what I loved. If it worked, he kept it to himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I knew what it was to hold something unspeakable, to be pushed too far.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Between rounds, I cruised the halls of Columbine, the pleather of my loafers digging into my heels. The library was still under renovation, paint tarps and plywood panels marring the face of the school\u2019s otherwise spotless, airport-like interior, its almost Grecian color scheme of light blue and silver. I didn\u2019t know a school could be this beautiful\u2014how wide and clean and sunny its hallways, how spacious and modern its restrooms, how posh its jewelry-making studio! I had only ever competed in tournaments in Colorado Springs and farther south in Pueblo. Pueblo\u2019s high schools seemed out of the \u201950s; Colorado Springs\u2019s, the \u201980s. Columbine felt like it came from the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Round Three must have been in an art history room, for there was a poster of Van Gogh\u2019s Caf\u00e9 Terrace at Night<\/em>, unless, I thought, this school also taught Dutch, which wouldn\u2019t have surprised me.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was in this round that one of the speeches finally mentioned the massacre. I had expected more of this and was pleasantly surprised by my competitors\u2019 reticence on the topic. I couldn\u2019t quite suss out what this speaker, let\u2019s call her 14C, was arguing by bringing it up, but the rhetorical gesture was, essentially, wow<\/em>. \u201cLook where we\u2019re sitting today,\u201d 14C effused. \u201cDoesn\u2019t that say it all?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n I was confident I placed higher than 14C\u2014her and Marijuana Boy\u2014but the rest was up in the air. My respect for my competitors grew with every round. They were sharply dressed, smart, funny, sociable kids, most of them older than me and most of them girls, juniors and seniors at their schools all over the Front Range. They spoke eloquently about ideas I\u2019d only ever heard discussed on 20\/20<\/em>: race, consumerism, environmental peril, foreign policy, workaholism, how to live a life well lived. Their brightness and sincerity were better responses to the shooting than any memorial I could have imagined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the end of Round Three, about five P.M.., the sun had mostly set over the Rockies. Satisfied but pessimistic about my hopes for advancement to Finals, I walked down the huge set of stairs to the cafeteria, which looked like a mall food court with all the storefronts grated. I gravitated back to my team\u2019s tables, empty for now. Everyone was off in their own little worlds, finishing the prelims of their own little categories: Extemporaneous Speaking, Dramatic Interp, Lincoln-Douglas Debate. In the cafeteria men\u2019s room, I adjusted my web belt, pushed my hair out of my eyes, breathed on my glasses and untucked my plaid to wipe the lenses. I bought a slice of cheese pizza from the Snacks table, chomped on some chocolate-covered espresso beans, and waited for Finals to be posted. Who knows? I thought. Stranger things had happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Thanksgiving before the tournament, Mike got me drunk for the first time. My mother and soon-to-be stepfather were off on vacation with his family in Durango, leaving us full reign over her house, where it was Mike\u2019s wont to throw keggers in her absence. In the empty garage, surrounded by a circle of dozens of Liberty football players and cheerleaders and burnouts and high-achieving stoners, I downed a foamy red Solo cup of Fat Tire, relaxing my throat as Mike instructed so the beer could pass freely into my body. His cheering when I dropped the empty cup was more intoxicating than the alcohol. His friends chanted James, James, James<\/em>, and I felt like I did onstage at the end of a forensics tournament: accomplished, included, free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What I didn\u2019t want to admit about my brother at the time was how much I loved him, how much I wanted to be him. He was beautiful in high school, a varsity offensive lineman, well-built and mischievously handsome. He did not have my scoliosis; his acne was less severe than mine; his hair was straight, ruly, center-parted, mahogany brown. I would overhear girls in my class giggling about him during study hall\u2014perhaps they didn\u2019t know he was my brother, our last name being so common and our bodies differing so markedly. But <\/strong>in that garage, for the first time in years, I felt like his brother, not just in blood but in spirit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Later that night, after three more cups, I was ready to barf. Mike taught me how to do this, too. Bent over Mom\u2019s kitchen sink, he stuck his first two fingers instructively down his throat and regurgitated the better part of the Thanksgiving dinner we\u2019d eaten together at our father and stepmother\u2019s house that afternoon. Mike ran the tap, flicked on the garbage disposal, and left the sink so I could take my turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I woke up Friday on the living room couch next to a cluster of half-empties on the coffee table and my brother\u2019s handsome Iranian friend Arya, who had passed out shirtless on our fireplace. \u201cThe brick feels good,\u201d Arya explained. \u201cCold. Nothing worse than hot when you\u2019re hungover. And nothing better than hair of the dog.\u201d I looked over at Max, our black Lab mix, with a touch of concern before Arya picked up a Solo cup with an inch of ale flattening at the bottom and downed it like a shot. In the center of his chest was a deep concavity. I imagined filling that concavity with beer, lapping it up like Max did the night before when my brother filled a frisbee and set it on the ground of the basement like a water dish. Max got so drunk he started headbutting the closed door of my brother\u2019s bedroom, desperate for the dark and quiet. I laughed. I couldn\u2019t help but laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arya picked up another half-empty and handed it to me. \u201cDown the hatch,\u201d he ordered, and I obeyed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lying down in a pile of bookbags, blankets, and peacoats in my team\u2019s corner of the Columbine cafeteria, unshod, waiting for Finals to post, I took a moment to appreciate that I was coming of age at the dawn of a new millennium. The VHS was giving way to the DVD. The 13-note Nokia ringtone had invaded every public space. Britney Spears had declared she was \u201cnot that innocent.\u201d I, too, was changing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In that garage, for the first time in years, I felt like his brother, not just in blood but in spirit.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n I\u2019d been growing my hair out since the beginning of freshman year, when I\u2019d been cast as Riff, a guitar-toting beatnik in the fall musical, The Nifty Fifties<\/em>. At the first read-through, I hammed up every syllable of dialogue like Ned Flanders\u2019 dad. In rehearsals, I belted all four lines of my solo in \u201cRebel with <\/em>a Cause.\u201d One of two freshman given a speaking role, I got taken in by the theatre and forensics upperclassmen as a sort of pet. By January, my frizzy pouf had grown to a weighty, chestnut, ringleted mane I let my new friends run their fingers through. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One of those upperclassmen was Matt Lira, a senior and speech team captain who T.A.\u2019d for my Honors Algebra II class and took me under his wing. Matt competed in Foreign Extemp, the most hardcore of the speech categories. Extempers spent all tourney in the school library (or, in this case, the teacher\u2019s lounge); for each round, they drew three choices from a pool of prompts, picked the one they wanted to speak on, and then had 30 minutes to research, outline, and rehearse a seven-minute speech, which they finally recited to a judge. \u201cHow will Ecuador\u2019s economy react to the transition to the dollar?\u201d \u201cWhat is the future of English foxhunting?\u201d That kind of thing. The best extempers\u2019 delivery sounded completely fluid, as if they had written, revised, and memorized their speeches months in advance. Matt was one of those extempers. He\u2019d gone to Nationals twice. He told me we were going together that summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maria Bennett and Matt loathed each other\u2014something to do with a friend of Maria\u2019s whom Matt had spurned\u2014and, because I had become Matt\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Maria was not too fond of me, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Around 6:30 P.M., when the O.O. Final Round roster was finally taped to the big plate-glass windows of the cafeteria, it was Maria who joined the mad huddle to scan the six finalists\u2019 codes while I lay on the team coat pile and watched, too unsure of my odds to risk the disappointment. For about a minute, the crowd jockeyed for view, the din of the cafeteria punctuated every few seconds by a squeal or \u201cYes!\u201d Maria\u2019s voice was not among the squealers. She shouldered through the others and limped back to our team\u2019s outpost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCheck the posting,\u201d she said, taking off her heels, her eyes refusing to meet my own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the time I made it up to the little white sheet of computer paper, the crowd had dispersed. Fifth on the list was a 26\u2014and a B next to the number. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I stared at it for a while. At first, I still thought it was Maria who\u2019d made the cut and I had misremembered my own code. Maybe her disappointment and shoe-doffing were an elaborate ruse designed to humble me. But it didn\u2019t take long to set in: 26B was me. It had been all along. And there I was, in Finals, at Columbine, with a speech I\u2019d never competed with, never even rehearsed with our coach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The elation of this news was tempered by the realization that I had work to do, and soon\u2014Finals started at 6:45. I noted the room number, found Matt and threw my arms around him (he\u2019d made Extemp finals, of course), slipped my loafers back over my raw ankles, and offered Maria some breezy condolence before I clambered up the stairwell to give my speech. From the balcony above the cafeteria, I heard her let out a deep, primal \u201cGODDAMMIT.\u201d And I didn\u2019t blame her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t have the ballots anymore, but I do remember my rankings for each of the prelims: one, two, two. A cume of five, just low enough to make the final cut. Maria got a one, two, three. There\u2019s something sweetly sad about my retention of these numbers, evidence of a worth I still struggle to internalize. The facts are still so meaningful, so helpfully determinate of how good I was and, perhaps, still am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was around this time that I began to realize my memory made me beautiful in a way my brother\u2019s social skills and athletic prowess and good looks made him beautiful. I had no trouble learning my lines for the Nifty Fifties<\/em>, off-book by the first read-through. I soaked up the vocab lists for my French classes like a nice crouton in a crock of onion soup. And beyond words, I remembered feelings. I remembered the rules of the gameshows my brother would set up for me in the basement of the house dad and mom shared before the divorce, throwing paper airplanes at rows of toys worth 10, 20, or 50 points the farther they were from the staircase. I remembered him playing host, like Mike O\u2019Malley on Nickelodeon\u2019s Get the Picture<\/em>. \u201cI wrote this song,\u201d he sang to me in the middle of the show, \u201cto make you hap-peeee!<\/em>\u201d And I remember feeling very, very happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I couldn\u2019t remember feeling anything about Columbine\u2014the shooting, not the tournament. Or, rather, I could<\/em> remember feeling nothing<\/em>: a certain nothing, an emptiness I have come to know intimately over the course of the 574 school shootings since April 20, 1999. It\u2019s an emptiness roughly the shape of the cave in Arya\u2019s chest. It\u2019s an emptiness I have filled with beer and smoke and forensics scores from 25 years ago. It is beautiful in its inwardness, its frailty. And it\u2019s never going away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The final round was, oddly, in the smallest room of any of the four rounds I competed in that day, a windowless nondescript mathematical-seeming room tucked away in some corner of the second floor. Of all the categories in speech-and-debate world, Original Oratory has among the most competitors but among the fewest observers. They flock in droves to final rounds in Humor or Drama Interp\u2014people want to laugh, to cry. O.O., at its best, makes you go huh!<\/em>, a sensation with a small cadre of appreciators. Such a cadre filled this modest classroom, making it seem even smaller than it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was the fifth speaker of six in the final round and the only boy, including the panel of three judges. All six speakers were white. The judges took their time penciling in our names, speaker numbers, and speech titles in their packet of ballots before the oldest judge finally called the room to order with a round of applause for the finalists for advancing. She identified which of the judges would be giving time signals, the woman seated farthest in the back, and the round began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first speaker was a bob-haired, pants-suited gal I\u2019d had in my first round. She was great\u2014her speech had to do with not wasting too much time at work and spending more time with your family. \u201cYou can\u2019t take it with you,\u201d basically, was her thesis. She had the warm, professional cadence of a teenage Diane Sawyer. I felt proud to see her there, proud to be among such good company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third speaker was a tall, athletic blonde in a gray skirt-suit. Her speech was on the dangers of consumerism. Midway through, she cited the same GAP commercial my speech did, for more or less the same rhetorical effect: \u201cDon\u2019t be like those weirdos.\u201d I saw the first speaker\u2019s eyes dart toward me when the third speaker made the reference. She remembered my speech from Round One, I deduced, flattered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Somewhere, somehow, he learned that enacting his anger is better than questioning it, holding it in.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n The fourth speaker was dressed in a black top, gray skirt, black leggings, and black Doc Martens. Her speech was about the plight of the American Indian. It brought up the Trail of Tears and broken treaties and her experience volunteering on a reservation. It ended with about 10 seconds of her making the sound of a drum gradually fading into silence: \u201cRUM pa-pa PUM, pa-pa pum, pa-pa pum<\/em>.\u201d She looked toward the carpet as her foot punctuated the final pum<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thunderous applause. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Two minutes or so of chicken-scratching while each judge fills out her ballot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The syncopated whisper of paper against paper as each turns to the fifth page of the packet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, one calls for 26B. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I take the front of the classroom crowded with applauding spectators. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJudges ready?\u201d I ask, de rigueur. They nod. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAudience ready?\u201d I ask. Unanimous nods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Begin time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I gave the speech I memorized, of course. But here\u2019s the speech I should have given:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Gift of Individuality<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n About a year ago, my brother pushed me down the stairs into our basement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, kicked, actually. We were at mom\u2019s house that night. She was working the graveyard shift at Lockheed and left Mike and me with a blank check for Domino\u2019s, as usual. When the delivery guy rang the doorbell, I couldn\u2019t find the check. I remembered calling in the order, cradling the receiver in my shoulder, writing down the total in digits and letters. I checked the dining table, the kitchen counters, in between the couch cushions, all the usual places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The doorbell kept ringing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mike stomped up, answered the door, asked the delivery guy to hold on, and told me to go downstairs to get a 20-dollar bill from a birthday card in his bedroom\u2014he\u2019d turned 16 a few days earlier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As I lifted my leg to step over the dog gate, Mike kicked me squarely in the ass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I fell\u2014onto the gate first, then sideways down the narrow well, landing against the treadmill at the bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I could stand. I could walk to his room to find the card on his nightstand and pluck the bill from the sleeve with my grandmother\u2019s handwritten declaration of pride. Holding onto the railing, I could walk back up the stairs and give my brother his money for our dinner. I could take a couple of slices out of the box to my room. I could lock the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why did he do it? You might ask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because he could. Because he didn\u2019t really like me all that much. Because somewhere, somehow, he learned that enacting his anger is better than questioning it, holding it in. Because my back was turned. Because no one was there to stop him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It doesn\u2019t matter why he did it. It matters that I survived. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t remember crying. I don\u2019t remember hating my brother or wanting to hurt him back. What I remember feeling most distinctly was\u2014nope. Nope: that most positive of negations, with its terminal plosive. No-p.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n This won\u2019t do at all, I thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I started spending more time in after-school activities:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mom told me she was proud I was coming out of my shell. She didn\u2019t know\u2014and neither did I, exactly\u2014how necessity drove the molting. I wasn\u2019t going to be something <\/em>to kick down the stairs. I couldn\u2019t be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My brother once told me he got made fun of in fifth grade for saying his favorite snack was Wheat Thins. Then, he stopped eating Wheat Thins. This, I think, more than anything, explains why he kicked me down the stairs. He wanted me to stop liking my favorite snacks, in a matter of speaking, because they\u2019re not everyone else\u2019s favorite snacks. Because some jerk might make fun of me if he saw them in my lunchbox. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I am going to love what I love, think how I think, be who I am.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Let me be crystal clear: I hate<\/em> Wheat Thins. They are somehow both bland and too salty, and they cut the roof of my mouth. But you know what? I have never felt sorrier for my brother than when I learned he was too scared of another boy\u2019s opinion to hold on to his own. I wish him Wheat Thins by the boxful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And me? I\u2019ve decided to eat whatever crackers I want, with stinky French cheeses. <\/strong>I am going to love what I love, think how I think, be who I am. <\/strong>I am going to listen to the Rent <\/em>soundtrack on repeat and wear my mother\u2019s magenta sports coat and get a full-ride to college. I am going to be the weirdest, smartest, gayest James Davis there ever was\u2014and there have been lots of us. And no matter how far anyone kicks me down, I will always get back up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have just finished reciting the poem by Anonymous when I see the head judge hold up one bent finger: 30 seconds till 10 minutes elapsed. I didn\u2019t account for so much laughter. My speech takes on a new urgency. I see the 10-minute fist right at the end of the bug-zapper routine. As I utter the very last word of my speech, \u201cyourself!\u201d, I hear the head judge say \u201cSTOP,\u201d the regulation signal that the grace period has elapsed. Any speaker who exceeds those 15 seconds cannot be the One.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the applause dies down, I return to my desk and ask for my time, a standard nicety of forensics etiquette.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c10 minutes and 15 seconds,\u201d the head judge says, matter-of-factly. Then: \u201cDon\u2019t worry. You won\u2019t be zapped for that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rum-pa-pa-pum speech came in second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hope everyone has experienced something like the sweet exhaustion of riding a schoolbus back from a speech tournament they\u2019ve just won\u2014taking off cheap dress shoes, blisters on heels, and lying across an acrid-smelling vinyl seat cover in the dark while the radio plays Top 40. Dehydrated, ripe with cortisol-rich B.O., I clutched a blue-and-silver first-place trophy the size of my forearm and read my ballots\u2019 glowing comments by the light of passing street lamps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I went straight ones in Finals. That never happened, especially not to freshmen at Denver tournaments. The judges said I was a natural: Everything worked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\u2019ve got it goin\u2019 on!\u201d one of them wrote. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That night, Columbine High School became a site of transformative joy. It was where I learned I was good. It was where I fell in love with myself. Squinting in the lights onstage during the awards ceremony while each of the other five finalists\u2019 names was read off before mine, I could catch the first few glimpses of a future in which I became my own person, loved by beautiful boys instead of ignored or tormented by them. A future in which my brother would become a friend, make amends for the ways he hurt me, and name his son after me. The brightness of this light washed out the tragedy such that I was slow to grieve what happened there, the senseless, brutal violation of children\u2019s lives. I was so focused on saving my own. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Original Oratory by James Davis In every speech kid, I see a version of myself that I love with frightening intensity: 14 years old, a closeted freshman at Liberty High School with long curly Weird Al Yankovic hair, thick glasses, blisteringly cheap dress shoes, and something to say. It was the second week of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9323,"featured_media":312406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[85,6181],"tags":[178,82,55,6234,94],"class_list":["post-312405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","category-personalnarrative","tag-family","tag-lgbtq","tag-politics","tag-queer","tag-relationships"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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