2004 National Storytelling Championship

Thanks for watching! I've never been a particularly good storyteller. Yeah, I did it my first year of forensics, but I never really excelled at it. I came into my own in debate - not that LD/Policy nonsense that has no application to real life - no, I excelled in Public Forum (aka Ted Turner, aka Crossfire, aka Who Knows What the Hell They Call It Now). My partner and I qualified for the 2004 National Tournament in Salt Lake City in PFD. So, of course, we went. We did pretty well (if memory serves), but we were disqualified due to missing an entire round because of a miscommunication regarding postings. As a result, I was forced into the secondary event category. Now....I used to be quite the confident little prick, so I hadn't planned on this contingency. Because, in my mind, there was no way I'd ever have to use my secondary event material. Cut to the night before. I've never rehearsed the story. Ever. Not even once. I had to make it up based on a loose outline of the book that I had in my memory. Unfortunately, that's painfully obvious in this performance. I can't, in good conscience, claim that this is my best (or even a good) performance, but, hey, it won me the National Championship, so....I guess that's that. Moral of the story: make sure you know when and where your pairings will be posted.