Monday, April 12, 2004
When I was in junior high, I was on a Reach for the Top team. We competed against other nerds in one of the unused classrooms one lunch hour a week. Our team knew we were the best and we really cared about that. I think we liked the affirmation that we were smart. We were the best. I can say that because we won every game we played, except for one.
This is where it seems silly that I care about this event that transpired in grade nine and should be in the back of my mind now some 10 years later. Just chalk it up to my knack for remembering the trivial.
We competed in a playoffs against the second best team in the school. Whoever won the championship game would win the Reach for the Top championship for the year and would gain Reach for the Top bragging rights. Maybe you could say the victor had reached the top? Who knows?
I remember we had a pretty commanding lead that slipped due to our errors, calls that could have gone one way, but went the other etc. It all came down to one question...
"What animal is on the provincial emblem of Manitoba?"
The answer was Buffalo, but we didn't answer it.
We buzzed in too late and lost. We were mad at the other team and each other for weeks.
Right now the guy who did answer it right is seemingly having a breakdown in the upstairs reading room at the library. There have been 3-4 complaints about him in the last 10 minutes. People saying he's a freak, saying he's dribbling imaginary basketballs, walking around counting his steps, demanding to know what people are thinking, having conversations with himself. People are annoyed and they're laughing. I don't know what to do other than to feel sad.
One of the people on my team who was the most upset that we didn't win Reach for the Top supremacy committed suicide 3 years ago.
It's odd how recounting a story about losing a Reach for the Top game doesn't seem trivial anymore.
I haven't scratched the surface
This is where it seems silly that I care about this event that transpired in grade nine and should be in the back of my mind now some 10 years later. Just chalk it up to my knack for remembering the trivial.
We competed in a playoffs against the second best team in the school. Whoever won the championship game would win the Reach for the Top championship for the year and would gain Reach for the Top bragging rights. Maybe you could say the victor had reached the top? Who knows?
I remember we had a pretty commanding lead that slipped due to our errors, calls that could have gone one way, but went the other etc. It all came down to one question...
"What animal is on the provincial emblem of Manitoba?"
The answer was Buffalo, but we didn't answer it.
We buzzed in too late and lost. We were mad at the other team and each other for weeks.
Right now the guy who did answer it right is seemingly having a breakdown in the upstairs reading room at the library. There have been 3-4 complaints about him in the last 10 minutes. People saying he's a freak, saying he's dribbling imaginary basketballs, walking around counting his steps, demanding to know what people are thinking, having conversations with himself. People are annoyed and they're laughing. I don't know what to do other than to feel sad.
One of the people on my team who was the most upset that we didn't win Reach for the Top supremacy committed suicide 3 years ago.
It's odd how recounting a story about losing a Reach for the Top game doesn't seem trivial anymore.
I haven't scratched the surface
# posted by Die Brucke @ 10:55 PM 
