Yesterday was underclassman awards night. You get invited to the Williams Center with your family, and you dress nice, and they give you an award for Excellence in Something, or tell you that you won some contest, or give you a book award, if you're really amazing. A lot of people get awards. Some people get more than one. There were maybe about a hundred kids there. Maybe less. I'm bad at estimating.
I ended up sitting with Bonnie, Dave, Jenna the kind of awkward clarinetist, and some other sophomore bandies. The principal of our school (a deadpan, no nonsense kind of person who radiates authority but never the less seems to love and firmly believe in the libertarian chaos that is the Highschool) gave a speech about how awesome we all were which was very similar to most of the speeches I have heard him give. Then came the awards. I got an Excellence in English award, along with maybe thirty other kids. (I walked onstage with my rather kickass but very loud and awkward shoes and shook the principal's hand and got my peice of paper backstage.) Then came the foreign language awards, which were less ridiculous. A few kids got excellence in each language. All the suckups got excellence in French. Then they announced the winners of the Grand Concours. A few kids qualified on the state level. Five kids, including me, qualified nationally and got a bronze medal. (I walked onstage with my shoes and shook the principal's hand and got my peice of paper backstage.) One kid (Julian) got a silver medal. I thought, "damnit." Because I am a little competitive. And we've tied for the last three years. And he beat me. And four other kids tied with me.
They announced the math and science awards, which mostly consisted of this one quiet, possibly autistic kid walking around in circles onstage, shaking the principal's hand, and getting award after award, all while staring at his shoes. It got to the point where the department head would just say "Excellence in BC calc goes to..." and the whole audience would just say, "Mike Chin!" and Mike Chin would turn around and get another award. Dave got his AP stat award, and Molly, Eric and Julian got awards for that scary contest thing. Performing arts. Excellence in musical theartre. Excellence in drama. Excellence in "the art of thearte." Excellence in improvisational theartre. The drama kids went up again and again. Dave leaned over to me. "Is there an excellence in jazz band award?"
"Yeah, Jay got it last year."
"Who do you think's getting it this year? Julian?"
"Must be."
"Maybe Mike?" I shrugged.
Hopeful Internal Voice: Maybe it's...
Rational Internal Voice: Shut up.
Excellence in tech theatre. (Kevin) Excellence in concert band. (Bonnie) "Excellence in jazz band goes to... Julian Miller and..." squint "Aidan O'Connor."
Holy crap. I actually got it.
I beamed a little. I went onstage with my loud shoes and shook the principal's hand, after a slight collision with Julian, who had tried to shake the principal's hand at the same time. We went backstage and got our peices of paper, and then we kind of slowly wandered back onto the stage, and I looked at him and tried to think of something appropriate to say in this situation. I decided against "congratulations" and just looked at his award and looked at my award and said, "sweet," to which he responded, "The 'only one who hates the chicken' award goes to... Eric Berlin!" which wasn't in any way a response to what I said.
I continued to beam after I sat down. I guess it makes sense. I guess I work hard at it. And... I guess I'm pretty good. Woah.
Then came the book awards. The book awards were ridiculous. Some part of me was kind of sort of hoping that someone would think to give me one, but almost every single one ended up going something like this:
"This student is a passionate, motivated learner. (S)he has received all As for the past four years in all honors and AP classes, is the captain of three varsity sports, has written several local newspaper articles and a novel, is trilingual, singlehandedly saved the lives of four hundred starving people on a trip to Indonesia while studying areonautics and working as a government intern, and is a friendly, easygoing peer leader."
Seriously. I don't understand how it is physically possible for most of the people who got book awards to exist. To amuse myself while I was sitting there, I tried to think of how mine would go. "This student is occasionaly passionate about learning, until it gets too hard. She has received mostly Bs for the past four years in all honors and one AP class, cannot run a lap or stand on one foot, has written three halves of novels and never shown them to anyone, went to France this one time, but did not manage to feed any starving people or make any friends, and is a socially withdrawn, intellectually agressive, kind of strange but occasionally funny peer follower. She rarely cares about anything besides various musical extracurriculars and some boy. But she does rock the jazz flute fairly hard, and she does have an internet fan base, so we're giving the Mediocrity State College Book Award for Being Pretty Good to Aidan O'Connor."
Heh. There should definately be an official "Award for Being Pretty Good" somewhere.
After we stood up to leave, Dave looked at my three awards and said, "Well, I'm jealous." I'm not sure whether he was refering to the number, or just to the jazz band one. But there really wasn't any sarcasm in his voice.
I talked to Mr. Wells while walking into the thing about possibly taking Chinese (new course) next year. He said I should. He seemed excited. He seems to like me, and he is a cool guy. Julian went right up onto the stage to talk to him after it ended. I saw them making observational jokes and gesturing the same way and laughing their tall-skinny-awkward-guy laughs, both seeming pretty ecstatic to see each other because of the slighty amusing, pretty adorable but also somewhat bizarre affinity they have for each other.
Sitting through a whole two hours of compliments puts you in a weird mood. It's like two hours of "Everyone's awesome! Let's all be happy and celebrate each other's awesome acheivements!" But then you have to go back to the real world, where you may still be good at English and jazz band and French, (sort of) but where you also have to face the reality that you're probably getting a C in precalc, you don't get along with your parents, you tell bad stories and your social life sucks pretty bad.
I'm still kind of beaming about jazz band though.
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