When I tell people I was a big nerd in high school, I always feel compelled to articulate just how big a nerd I was. Usually I can convey that message with one sentence: “I was on the speech and debate team.”

On the popularity hierarchy, identifying oneself as a member of the speech and debate team ranked one somewhere between being the kid who crapped his pants on a field trip and the kid who took his mom to the winter formal. It may as well have been called The Nerd Club. But it was a sanctuary from popularity. None of us was popular and we knew it, so we didn’t even bother trying to put on airs or impress each other or, in some cases, bother with basic personal hygiene. It was understood that if you were in that room, your existence was essentially devoid of social graces, popularity, and athletic prowess.

Though we were all part of the same team, we were cast into two distinct groups: the debaters and the speakers. The debate team was comprised of the smarter nerds. They competed against other local high school teams in what was called Lincoln-Douglass debate. I didn’t know what that was. Still don’t. But they won a lot of trophies.

I was a part of the other group: the speakers. I think I chose that rout because debate implies conflict, whereas public speaking was just me up there talking. There was a great variety of speaking categories from which to choose. The kids who elected to do Humorous Interpretation (HI) or Dramatic Interpretation (DI) selected a previously published literary work and crafted an 8-10 minute speech out of it. (My buddy Andy, who’s now a bad-ass glass artist, performed a DI that included the speech President Ronald Reagan gave after the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. Our friend Mike Moon, a champion in the HI, won an Emmy in 2005 for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation for his work on “Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends.”) Extemporaneous speakers were given, with very short notice, a series of three questions related to current events and required to prepare a speech that answered one of them.

And then there was my event: Original Prose or Poetry (OPP). I was so down with OPP (“Yeah, you know me.”). OPP was quite similar to HI, the notable difference being that the “literary” work being interpreted was written by the speaker himself.

My speech was called, “Spin The Wheel And Guess The Word For Big Bucks.” It was the humorous yet harrowing tale of a high school senior who appears on a game show in hopes of winning enough money to take a girl to the senior prom. The name of the speech is the name of this imaginary game show, which was obviously a complete rip-off of Wheel of Fortune. I remember very little about the speech, but I remember the day I won the league tournament and was handed a big trophy topped with a well-dressed man standing next to a lectern. The engraved gold plate on the bottom of the trophy read, “1988 Marmonte League Champion. Original Prose and Poetry.”

At the time, that was the highlight of my life.

My league championship qualified me to enter the high school state championship tournament at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo, a quaint college town along the Central California coast, due east of Bakersfield. I was eliminated in the first round of the tournament because one of the judges ruled that casting my arms out in front of my body and drawing them sideways across my body to look like I was spinning the big wheel went to far astray from “interpreting” and into the no-no realm of “acting.”

Although our “coach,” the inimitable Mrs. Reese, did her best to console me, I simply couldn’t accept her sympathy. Our fearless leader was known among the team for two things: her enormous eyeglasses and her propensity to leave her various coffee mugs on her desk so long that they began to breed plainly visible bacteria inside. Sometimes it was green, sometimes it was brown, sometimes it seemed to be breathing.

One might be inclined—as I was—to believe such a high concentration socially inept nerds would make the speech and debate environment a sex-free zone. But this is high school. Hormones don’t rage any differently in the geek teenager than they do in the jock or the stoner or the student council president. This naturally created an intense conundrum for me because although I was horny as hell, I lacked the knowledge of how to actually take that out on anything other than my sock drawer.

Still, at a glance, we weren’t all that different from other extracurricular clubs. While the jocks shared tubes of Ben-Gay and the cheerleaders borrowed one another’s tall purple cans of AquaNet, members of the speech and debate team were happy to help a teammate by loaning him or her a few Clearasil wipes or piece of the white wax we wore on our braces to keep them from slashing the insides of our lips. And while other groups may have prepared for battle with a collective yawp of WIN! or FIGHT! or PIONEERS!, we gathered in a circle, put our hands together in the middle and simultaneously shouted SPEAK! Ironically, every dog in the surrounding residential neighborhoods started barking when we did that.

Comments

I was in Show Choir, Danny. Which is so cool, there's now a show about it. No, not 'Fringe,' but 'GLEE!'

We had plenty of fun at our wild, raging parties. You did NOT want to miss the 'Grease' act-out sing-alongs, or the "Let's Choreograph New Moves to 'Fame' with the Cunning Use of JAZZHANDS! Ragers."

Ahhhhhh, 1988. It was a very good year for humiliation.

Dude, I went to Band Camp. Cadet Band camp no less.

Ok, so you guys were nerds in High-school. Look what came out of it, your buddy sporting the NFL shirt from a previous post went on to command a nuclear submarine and you went nuts and wrote a book about it. How many cheerleaders have done that?

P.S. Fullerton Union High School is a power-house Speech and Debate team in Orange County. The teacher there uses the team as a way to get kids into college who would otherwise never have the chance.

Did you take the speech/debate class from that lawyer guy when you were at Moorpark? I took his night class during my last year of high school (86-87). I won extemporaneous at some intramural/Miramonte event that year, too. Unlike you, I actually felt like a stud at these events, given that it was a tremendous step up from my younger years in drama. Glad I didn't know you then. I actually would have felt threatened by you.

I would so have had a crush on you....lol!

While you were nerdin' it out in 1988, I was born just a year earlier.

I doubt times have changed in regards to high school hierarchy, but in my high school we didn't even have a sports team. If you wanted to play in a sport, you needed to enroll into another school's team because all my school cared about was academics.

It was as hellacious as it sounds.

At my school, whoever was in speech and debate had popularity, because, really, we were a school infested with nerds.

One of my very best friends was involved in debate at our high school. I'll never forget the morning she announced to all of us sitting around our homeroom table that she was a "Master Debater." We're 35 and she's still catching crap for that.

Your friend's glass art is beautiful, especially the leafy chandelier.

<==Band camp nerd. Learned how to do some 'interesting' things in the back of the school bus. LOL!

Hi Danny, I rarely ever comment (I know, tsk tsk, etc. etc.) but I had to pipe up in response to this post. My theatre company produced a little off-Broadway play 2 years ago called SPEECH AND DEBATE, written by a brilliant playwright from Brown who was all of 26 or 27 at the time. This year, it is the second-most produced play at regional theatres across the country; and if it is playing near you, YOU SHOULD SEE IT. It is HILARIOUS, witty, poignant, and very very smart. And one of the characters has a vlog. What else do you need?

Oh, and here's a glowing review in case you don't believe me: http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117935233.html?categoryid=33&cs=1

Loved speech. We had debate, but it was a whole different club, so I didn't hang with those kids. We had different events, though. I did it all the way through college, does that make me twice the geek?

My proudest high school moment was leading my team to victory on a TV quiz show, "It's Academic."
I would have had a crush on you, too.

Yep... Speech and Debate team AND Drama Club. What can I say... I was awesome.
P.S. You are great story teller.

I guess I could crush on you too, but mostly just really like your blog. I read several times each week and have linked it to my dad blog, so my friends and family can follow too!

Love it, keep posting,
-ML

Keeping the Schwartz alive...

Fuck that shit. I was on the Debate Team, DECA (Marketing Club), Student Council, Wrestling Team, Mentoring Program etc. All that stuff is only as Nerdy and as cool as you make it. Plus, all the Nerdy girls grow up to be HOT eventually, so it's a foot in the door. You had it all and you didn't even know it.

Awww, your tales of high school nerdiness are endearing. Glad you've graduated from the sock drawer!

Well...at least you weren't in FFA. We were out to lunch a few weeks ago, and I guess there was some sort of FFA convention in town because the restaurant was overrun with them and the only thing I could think of the entire time was that part in Napoleon Dynamite where they are identifying what is wrong with the milk.

Anyway, I was a band geek for a semester in high school. I had played since 6th grade but just couldn't deal with the intensity in which the members of my high school band took their experience. For me, it was something fun to do that kept me in shape...for them, if you fell out of step just once, your life was over. Got smart, got out, was able to take other classes and graduate a year early and get the heck out of dodge...But you go with your badass speech and debate self :)

Forgot to mention...the only reason I knew they were all in FFA is because they were ALL wearing those horrid jackets like the ones in Napoleon Dynamite...60 of them, at least...

God, do you remember what the girls looked like? holy hell. Enough hair on their bodies to survive a winter in Greenland, naked, glasses the size of dinner plates and ALWAYS an overbite.

Not that I would know. I was a cheerleader. Rah Rah.

At least you nerds were smart. My crowning high school achievement was discovering a hallway behind the auditorium where they stowed extra theatre seating. If you crawled over half of them, there was an open space just big enough to sit down in, listen to your walkman and have no one find/bother you all day. Best day ever.

I ran cross country for 4 years, which is a sport for sadistic nerds. I lettered in sadism for 3 of those 4 years. I also was in the poetry club, and took 4 years of German - one of the least romantic languages ever. Somehow, I managed to come up with a date for almost every dance, mostly because girls don't want to show up alone either.

When you mentioned the hormones amongst you nerds, I started to set myself up to hear about a life changing experience with Mrs. Reese. Alas, I allowed my imagination to get ahead of myself yet again.

I wasn't on any teams, but my friends still remind me of how they would cringe when I would question my teachers. The teachers always manages to proclaim some fact that was so ludicrous than I just couldn't kep my mouth shut. I wouldn't call it debating so much as declaring Bullshit. Needless to say, I was in trouble a lot. Despite that, I managed to get laid reasonably often - go figure.

Probably a little late for some trash talk directed towards Crystal McKee, but I'll throw it out anyway.
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Skills learned as a Speech and Debate can be used in a career as an attorney. Skills learned as a cheerleader can be used in a career as a Hooters Girl.
What future do you want for your daughter?
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How many Presidents were cheerleaders in school? One, George W. Bush.... Enough said.

:)

I went to All State speech in high school.

Twice.

Ah, yeah. I was THAT cool.

You are friggin' hysterical! I read you and Sundry on my lunch hour. often get comments from the co-workers about, "what the hell are you laughing about now?!" I had braces and played bass clarinet...but was also a star of the swim team. Geek won out by far, but who cares.

(sundry fan who found you when she spoke of your book)

real nerds did CCX debate.

(i LOVED HI but never had the timing for it. did go to state for DI though!) good times, good times . . .

Same here. Speech team AND contest play. We went to state in contest play at the same time our basketball team did. Guess which team got all the pep rallies and glory? Yeah.

Those were some days. I wouldn't trade one speech tournament for a cheerleading uniform- ever.

Love live the nerds.
P.S. I'm 47 and still a nerd. So there.