Don't Call Me Ishmael by Michael Gerard Bauer

Author:Michael Gerard Bauer [Bauer, Michael Gerard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-921988-69-1
Publisher: Scholastic
Published: 2011-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Yes, everything seemed to be coming together nicely.

25.

EVERYONE’S ENTITLED TO THEIR OPINION

Somehow, thanks to Scobie, we managed to pull some kind of a case together and scramble to our first debate. Ignatius was first speaker, Orazio was second, Scobie was third and Bill Kingsley (when it was brought to his attention by a dig in the ribs from Razza) was chair. I was the cheer squad. The amazing thing was that we won.

Prindabel knew his speech quite well but delivered it with all the passion of a chemical equation, while every now and then pulling out some obscure fact in a way that was every bit as unexpected and pointless as yanking a rabbit from a hat. Orazio was far less prepared, adlibbing most of his speech and trusting (wrongly, as it turned out) that his wit and natural charm would gloss over any weaknesses. To say we were ordinary would be generous–we aspired to ordinary. Fortunately for us, our opposition from Bugner High School made ordinary look stupendous. They reminded me of three guys who’d been dragged off the street and thrown into a police line-up. The only thing that stopped the audience from rising as one and demanding a halt to proceedings on the grounds of unnatural cruelty was the presence of James Scobie.

When Scobie spoke, it was like someone turning on a light in a darkened room. Everything that up until then had been vague and confusing suddenly snapped into focus. You could almost see people rubbing their eyes with the surprise of it all. First Scobie explained the topic (I’m sure that most of the audience had no idea that all the speakers had, in fact, been discussing the same subject). Then he rebuilt the opposition’s case from the tangled wreckage they had left in order to systematically and thoroughly dismantle it so that it could never possibly be reassembled. Finally he reviewed our case while at the same time making Prindabel and Razza seem like learned men. ‘My second speaker Orazio showed with indisputable logic how … ‘ By the time he had finished there was really no need for an adjudicator’s decision.

After that first unexpected victory, the mood in our debating meetings changed. At last we started to get an inkling of what we were trying to do. In the next debate Bill Kingsley replaced Ignatius as first speaker. This was a tactical move by Scobie. We were affirmative for the second debate, and as first affirmative speaker Bill Kingsley wouldn’t have to rebut at all. This was crucial, since in our meetings we had discovered that Bill seemed incapable of coming up with a counterargument of any kind. His response to a possible opposition argument was invariably, ‘That’s quite a good point, actually’ or ‘Everyone’s entitled to their opinion’.

This time our opposition was St Phoebe’s Girls College, and another amazing thing happened–we won again. This was despite Bill Kingsley reading his speech from beginning to end and Razza as chair introducing one of

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