So tonight I was a "table monitor" at Cole's Knowledge Bowl competition. It was the most fun I've had all week. For those of you unfamiliar with Knowledge Bowl (this group included me until this evening), it is a sort of academic trivia competition for smart pre-teens. Teams of four 5th or 6th graders compete to get the correct answers in several categories: current events, American symbols, math, and geography. The winning team does not take home a trophy, but does come away ever more hopeful that someday they can get rich on Jeopardy or Who Wants to be a Millionare?
The first highlight of the evening was riding a school bus to Lewiston. I haven't ridden a bus of any kind in at least a decade, and I can't even remember the last time I stepped foot on a yellow school bus, but the memories came flooding back... the green vinyl seats... the person behind you pounding on the back of your seat because it's so, so funny... the smell of little kids who played hard at recess and then filled the bus with their sweaty selves... and of course all the cuss words and names of body parts overheard from the "big kids" in the back. Sweet, sweet memories.
Upon arriving at the elementary school gym/cafeteria (complete with turf carpet, a yellow climbing net hung from the ceiling, and a shared sink with four faucets in the hall between the boys' and girls' restrooms), I realized this was unlike Cole's other activities I've frequented recently (mostly sporting events). There was an excited tension in the air as all the smart kids ate pizza and talked about how nervous they were for the competition to begin. I felt like I'd been dropped into a Malcolm in the Middle episode, and was now face to face with Malcolm's class for the academically advanced. As I washed my hands in the sink after using the restroom, a polite, well-tucked young man next to me observed, "Well, at least the water is not scorching hot like it usually is." An unusual comment from a 6th grader to someone else's mom, I thought as he pushed up his glasses and scurried back to his group... but I liked it! Look here, I thought, polite young people initiating intelligent conversation with adults!
Cole chatted with his team and they wondered if they had studied enough as I found my table of 5th grade girls: Savannah, Peyton, Paige, and Emily. They fretted the most about who would be in charge of writing the answers down, and finally agreed to take turns. About twenty minutes into the competition, one of the scorekeepers hollered "Time out, time out, time out!" as she ran towards the stage. I turned to see who needed CPR, and discovered that a 5th grade boy had eaten too much pizza - this fact, combined with his nerves, resulted in a large amount of throw-up on his table. Rather than quietly try to clean up the mess and sneak him out of the gym, the scorekeeper stopped the whole competition so all two hundred people in the room could witness his humiliation.
The second major highlight of the evening was the answer to the question "In which state does Barack Obama serve as a senator?" One of the boys down the table from us pipes up, "Oh, oh, oh... I think I know this one! It's... it's... Africa!" (this last word said in a whisper to be sure other teams didn't overhear and steal their answer)... oh my goodness, what to say about this... it's just a tragedy on so many levels. However, in the spirit of encouragement, table monitors are to sit quietly, and most definitely are not to mock silly answers in any way, so I kept my stately demeanor and turned back to my girls as they came up with the answer to the next question, which I didn't hear, but it was something about early American pioneers or explorers. They hemmed and hawed for a few minutes, and finally Peyton said, "Oh, I don't know, just put down Will Turner." Yes, indeed: Jack Sparrow's nemesis from Pirates of the Caribbean.
The entire outing was just a hoot. I am most definitely volunteering to be a table monitor at next month's competition.
