Today’s speech contest started with a half hour delay. A train line that doesn’t even reach the school where I work stopped working for a while and that slowed things down.

Strangely enough, I arrived early and texted everyone else and a few minutes later two of everyone else arrived and I delivered the message personally. We then had that awkward moment where they checked their phones and thanked me for sending them the message.

Eventually the speeches began and for complicated reasons I was scheduled to be head judge for the first set of speeches (the JHS 3s/9th graders) and then demoted to ordinary judge for the second set of speeches (the JHS 1s/7th graders). I actually like being ordinary judge because that means I have no responsibilities. (More on that later.)

The main thing I liked about the speeches in this contest was that I don’t teach those grades this year which means I haven’t heard the same speech again and again. This meant I got to hear them fresh (granted, we have been using the same topics for 15 years but, well, yeah, I hadn’t heard them recently).

During the first set of speeches, as head judge, I had to stand up, read certificates, hand out certificates, shake hands, give a coherent speech (not always easy for me to do) and pose for pictures.

For the second set of speeches all I had to do was stay awake.

The problem was, for the second set of speeches the top three speeches of the first set of speeches were added to the program. Since the winning speech was almost five minutes long this added a lot of time to the already delayed speeches. (Oddly, the winner actually did better the second time, the second and third place winners did worse.)

Luckily, I was able to leave before the hunger games started. The hunger games were the third set of speeches (the JHS 2s/8th graders). They were being pushed back into lunch time and would have to listen to the top speeches from the first two sets of speeches. Being 8th graders they are naturally restless. Add in hunger and I’ll bet it got dangerous.

I’ve heard from one of the judges since then. I’m not sure what happened to the other one.