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Getting Started (4 of 5): Debate
My Freshman year of high school, my friend E– and I joined the High School Debate Team. We were two weird kids that understood each other, so we had already started spending hours on the phone together every night before high school even started. Shortly after we joined the squad, we got to hang out with the older debaters of our school because we were beating the older debaters of other schools.
It went to our heads.
Pretty soon, we started having these discussions via telephone about who the real leaders on the squad were, who listened to whom and what earned you social status on the team. Underneath it all, we tried to get the other one to admit that s/he didn’t have quite as much clout on the squad as the other one.
As two sci-fi fans, the question inevitably got framed in this way: “What would happen if the whole squad were trapped on a desert island?” Which became, “What if the whole squad were mysteriously transported to an uninhabited alien world?” Emily had a computer and she could type fast, so pretty soon we were writing. We’d talk about a storyline over the phone, and then Emily would write it up. As soon as we were writing, the frame became, “What if the whole squad were mysteriously transported to an uninhabited alien world that mysteriously gave us superpowers?”
Since E– did the heavy lifting, she retained the majority stake in our operation. If we disagreed over a plot twist or characterization, she always won. I reserved the right, though, to insert Co-Author Notes to explain my side of any unflattering representations. She honored that right, but reserved a corollary right to insert snarky comments into any Co-Author Note I might insist she make. I think this whole experience might explain my ongoing fixation on collaborative projects.
If “The Debate Story” had been published as a book, it would have run to hundreds of pages. I know that sounds like a lot of discipline for high school kids, but we didn’t have a lot going on. Neither of us had cars yet. More importantly, we were writing funny stories featuring our friends. E– would bring printouts to class every few days so our teammates could pass them around while other members practiced in front of the coach. They gave us a lot of encouragement to keep it going, as if we’d made up our own soap opera and everyone in it was into it.
Eventually, though, it would get to be too much. So we blew the Debate World up and ended the story abruptly. Surprise, surprpise: by the end, E– and I had both risen pretty high in our planet’s social hierarchy.