Pregnant Women Can Be Frightening

Literary was yesterday. It went surprisingly well! I won first place in oral interpretation (My cause and effect monologue) which is awesome and means I'm going to state. I guess the weird part of the day was that my quartet also won first place in competition. We've won region every year I've been in high school, so I'm more than happy to finish strong, but this may have been the saddest I have ever been to win something.

Some back story: We switched regions this year. Everyone got rearranged, really, it wasn't just us, but we were put up against Columbus. Usually, Columbus was the school we were afraid of when we ran into them at state-- now, we're hitting them at region competitions. They're a magnet school for the arts, and beat us at one act this year. Their coaches are brilliant and every student in their program is fantastic. Basically, they're the big arts monster of literary and beating them in any way feels like slaying a dragon while armed with only a wooden shield and a spork for protection. Last year, we lost to their quartet at state. They got first, we were runners up. I like to think it was a close fight, but we didn't get to see them perform.

On the other hand, Central was in our previous region and was moved to our current one with us as well. Usually we're not as worried about them, but this year they surprised us with an amazing high tenor and some adorable choreography. By the end of their and Columbus's performances, we were almost sure we only had a chance for third place.

We were all extra tense about it because, with every event finished and scored other than quartet, we were one point behind Columbus for overall region-winning awesomeocity. If we got anything but first, we would get second.

After waiting for forever (because of some mixup with the judges and the way they scored versus the way they ranked) it was finally announced that we had won quartet, and therefore our school had won the competition. I was excited, but also felt rather sick to my stomach because everyone could have agreed that Columbus did better than we did. It didn't feel like winning, it felt like we had cheated them.

But the negative feelings didn't stop there! We then got to observe the crazy drama and chorus teachers in their natural habitat, duking it out. Central's coach and entire team had a hissy about the results, demanding that something was wrong and presumably believing that we had cheated and stolen away the vast hoard of gold they should have gotten for slaying the Columbus-dragon.

On top of that, they weakly contested my win in Oral Interp earlier on in the day by saying that while their student was performing someone had a phone out. Apparently, one kid in that room having a phone out is a terrible distraction that caused him to get (No, not second. No, not third.) fourth place. So basically, they were saying that a single phone being out during a round in a room full of people caused their student to drop three places.

I was getting frustrated and irritated and angry and just in general sick of all the drama, when I happened to ask who Central's coach was.

"That lady over there. The pregnant one."

"Ohhhh. Now I understand."