I wish this was the day I got to tell you about how my massive
intellect and production capabilities catapulted my friend,
girlfriend and I to places one through three in the state science
competition. I cannot, because a dim kid won. I thought the
competition was about cool stuff but it turned out to be all about
butt kissing and cheating. As is the custom in award giving they
started out with some lame speeches while we all ate out our insides
with anxiety. My friend got honorable mention, which was good because
that left the other honorable mention and third through first wide
open for me. The other honorable mention got mentioned and it was Mr.
Mad Scientist. That's fine we're down to the real prizes now. Third
place went to my girlfriend which was nice for her because she was
going to get some recognition for my work and there was still, not
second because they announced that, which was a girl who's project I
hadn't seen. Just the big daddy left and I was starting to worry it
might not be mine. It wasn't. They called up a eighth grader with an
unbelievably magnificent project. I mean that it was not within the
reasonable realm of probability that he constructed his project. It
was a massive 8'x8' map of the United States with thousands of color
coded flags witch showed where major electrical plants and
substations were and other flags showing statistical clusters of
cancer cases with some analysis that demonstrated no correlation
between cancer rates and electrical infrastructure. Wow, I guess.
The kid is called up on stage to explain his electric company
vindicating offering and when he is given the mic it is instantly
clear to everyone that he was rather dim and clearly not involved in
the conception, researching or execution of this project. He was an
idiot who went on vaguely describing what he was seeing in front of
him on the project he purportedly made. After about a floundering
minute his dad took the mic from him and spent 10 minutes explaining
the science and the implication of the project while his kid cried on
stage. I was mad that I lost but I was more mad that I lost again to
a kid who didn't do his project. I was sick to death of competing
against adults and the idiot judges who gave prizes to projects
clearly not made by kids. I vowed that was never going to happen to
another kid who honestly competed under my watch. Any chance I got
after that to judge a science or art or anything contest, which was
several times a year I took it and used my powers of persuasion to
get all of the judges to vote for the passionate smart kids who did
their own work and I would leave nasty notes on the judging papers
for projects that were clearly built by adults.
