Poodles never get referenced. I'm going to reference them in my title so that they don't feel left out.

Regionals is over. Wow. My goodness. What a trip. Just for me, they made all of the tournaments half a day longer this year. How nice of them. They knew I would want to spend as much time as possible in NCFCA before I graduated and they extended it.

What do you mean, dreaming? I'm awake, and I'm not Martin Luther King Jr. NCFCA loves me, get over it.

No, really, NCFCA has taught me well over 13,000 things, and I had only a few minutes to talk about them on Tuesday night when seniors were asked to give their speeches. What a bummer! I could talk for ages. Hence my blogability. Words are my water. I would say air, but that's not entirely true. Water is a better metaphor, and besides, it's alliterative. Can you tell I just had Mountain Dew?

Enough of that paragraph. Anyways, I had very little time to talk, and I'm not sure I communicated it to the best of my ability. But then again, I accomplished something huge in that short time. I got people to stop talking at their table and ignoring the people who were speaking from their hearts. I used humor to get their attention, and then I kept it so they could hear not only my message, but the messages that the people after me were trying share. For years I've used that idea as justification for doing only humorous speeches, but I've never been sure if I was actually doing it. In effect, that speech was justification for all of my five years in the league. I'm pretty sure if I hadn't given it, I would have felt like a mostly-failure in my NCFCA career. Never had much of an impact, never helped anybody. Thank you, God. You know I needed that. Thank you so much.

And thank you to Mrs. Rossi. Even if the NCFCA board didn't change the length of tournaments just for me, I know she at least changed the length of my speech. She said she would give hand signals (like in impromptu or debate) to keep us from going too long, because everyone wants to hear breaks. And because for the last two years I feel like I've been on her bad side, I was pretty sure she would cut me off right after I opened my mouth. But she just stood there, smiling. I realized it later: she was proud of me. Suddenly, I was sorry for all of the things I'd done that she disapproved of. I wished I could go back and un-disappoint her. But at least here, now, she was proud of me. It was really worth it now. Why did I ever tell myself that the people in charge of NCFCA were too stiff, too concerned with silly rules? They were just trying to help me, right?

Good glory, I'm going to break down in front of the computer. I'm not crying, I'm just... sweating through my eyes. Yeah, that's it. It's a scientific phenomenon known as ocular transpiration.

It may not be that significant to you, but to me it was like, "Yes! My life has meaning! It's not a lot, but it's something! My time in NCFCA touched somebody! YES!! SCORE!!! I was floating on air. That was probably the highlight of the tournament. Making Mrs. Rossi proud.

Is it wrong to want to make people proud? I'd say it isn't, if making them proud means doing what is right. I'd say she has very good principles, so in this case it was good. I'm sorry if I'm going on about this little thing too much, but it's the only reason I'm not unbearably sad today. I'm done competing in Region 10 for good, but I made someone proud of me. I've spent the day wondering about a billion things, but one thing I didn't wonder was whether or not it was worth it. It so was.