Great Gatsby Creative Writing

Creative Writing: My Summer Off

Memory can be so fickle. Like some great book that is slowly loosing its pages, you begin with an entire novel full of details and descriptions and, if you're not careful, you end up with nothing more than the cover and the brief synopsis on the back page. My novel on the subject of the end of summer school debate has lost its share of pages but the back-cover synopsis, the essence of the entire experience, is still with me. "We are about to begin our annual debating tournament," the instructor beamed with an enthusiasm that let each of us know how happy he was that we had made it this far. "It will be the culmination of your six weeks of learning and will count as a considerable part of your grade for
I was dumbfounded but I concealed my disbelief so the judge would think me deserving of his accolade.
When I shook hands with my opponent, it felt different than it had previously, maybe it is because this time I was giving the hand shake rather than receiving it. I had taken the grand prize and that hand shake was merely his consolation gift. I erased each of the points I had added to the list, I was becoming better at debate, but I was not ready to argue with success. Maybe the list now covered every possible pitfall, making loss an impossibility, but I doubted it. I am proud to say that I was giving the hand shake at the end of each of the next four rounds, placing myself in the semi-finals. I never assumed that a debate was going to be easy, but when the politician walked into the room and shook my hand, I knew this match would be a challenge. He won the coin toss and chose the affirmative side, which gave him the power to define the terms of the debate. The resolution given to him was "be it resolved that two heads are better than one." With all the shrewdness he had employed in our
My words flowed cleanly a smoothly, the speech was well organized and the logic made sense. I knew I had won and the judge confirmed this assertion. So out of 50 people, myself being the youngest and least experienced, I had made it to the final round of a double elimination tournament without a single loss. I shook his hand and sped home in an elated state. The following day the final match occurred. It was held in outdoors in the amphitheater and a crowd of thirty people had gathered to watch. I was so confidant from the last match that I had not even looked over my sacred list of debate follies. The sun was shinning and it was going to be a hot day but a pleasant breeze kept the weather pleasant. I stepped up to the same ornate podium that was in the photograph and tried to look as convincing and composed as the boy in the catalogue. As I read the definitions and began to argue,the breeze, like some malicious hand, snatched my notes from the podium and hurled them to the ground. I paused and picked them up but the mood was broken