Spar Me Matey, ARGH!!!

It's called spar. It's a form of competitive debate where one person takes an affirmative stance and the other the negative to a random topic. They are only given a minute to prepare to become experts on subjects they may have never thought about in their life. They might have had strong opinions to the contrary but now have to defend their opposing view to the death. You have to be quick on your feet to counter the arguments of your opponent even if you actually, in reality, agree with them. Rumor has it that this is the type of debate that married couples excel at.

I recently got to experience some Jr. and Sr. High School students competing in Spar at a debate tournament that my daughter was competing in. One particular spar debate peaked my interest. It was because of the topic that was chosen for the two fine young men who were anxious to show off their reasoning skills. The topic wasn't like a lot of the other one's; such as the need for math to be taught in every grade, state's rights vs. federal power, etc. No, this one, I thought, was rather unique: flying ability vs. super human strength.

You would have thought that these kids had died and gone to heaven. It was a nerd's paradise dream come true. No offense to these kids mothers, but they were the ultimate nerds. The stars must have aligned because I don't know how they got paired and how they just happened to catch this topic, but I knew I was in for a treat.

To even make things better (as if that could really happen), These two boys literally looked like Kip and Napoleon Dynamite. Here's how part of the debate went from the best that I can recollect:

Napoleon: I would chose flying ability because of it's versatility. You can go short distances or longer distances, say like if you need to fly halfway around the world.

Kip: Flying doesn't have versatility. Like all you can do is fly. With super human strength you can run real fast. So, getting places really isn't a problem.

Napoleon: What if obstacles were in your way? With flying ability, if something got in your way you could just...you could just fly around it.

Kip: With super human strength if you had a mountain in your way, you could just pick it up and move it.

Napoleon: (Sensing a fatal flaw in Kip's reasoning, Napoleon jumps in for some major point scoring) Hey, if you picked up a mountain, you could cause a rock slide or something. What if someone was living on that mountain, did you think about that? Flying is eco-friendly. With super human strength you're going to cause environmental disasters. Plus flying ability is good for every day stuff, like if there was something on a top shelf that you needed you could...you could just fly up and get it.

Kip: That's nothing, with super human strength I would just jump and get it.

Napoleon: Well, commonly when people refer to super human strength, they are talking about upper body. No one thinks legs as being part of super human strength. It's all over the D.C. Comics.

Kip: So you're saying that you get all of your information from D.C. Comics? Everyone knows that if you want information about super human strength you have to consult Marvel Comics. It says that you can run fast, swim fast, that's a whole lot more than you can do. You can only fly.


Well, you get the gist of it. This is how they went on non-stop for the entire debate. It took all of my super human skills to not bust a gut. To be honest, I don't know who won the debate. I am sure that it will be a topic that will be discussed for many more years to come. Forget about Roe Vs. Wade, maybe some day this discussion will be raised to the supreme court and all of our future ethical decisions will be based off of FA Vs. SHS. (pronounced faw vee shiz)