Trying to Send Your Debate Partner Messages Via Mental Telepathy-Carey Vandewalle

(Carey is the awesomest person who has ever written a post about telepathy on my blog. Plus she's an excellent writer. Please welcome back... CAREY VANDEWALLE.)


I had an awesome and fantastic and all-around great debate partner. The fact that I only debated in TP for one year was not his fault. Not many guys would put up with all that he did. He dealt with my frustrated sarcasm, late night hysteria, insanely distractible mind, doodles of skull-and-crossbones on my flows, and bad habit of never eating at tournaments. He patiently restated countless clever strategies that had taken several minutes to explain only to get a blank stare and a “oh, sorry, I wasn’t listening” from me. He always laughed at my lame jokes about nuclear weapons. He never got mad when I refused to listen to him during debate rounds, and he faithfully made fun of me when I was being ridiculous. He never flaunted the fact that he got higher speaks about 85% of the time, or the harsh reality that he always got more compliments on his appearance than I ever did on our ballots. Add all this to the fact that he is a brilliant debater, very knowledgeable, and (obviously) an accomplished speaker, and I was certainly blessed to be his partner. Did I mention that he is still friends with me?!  This kid is great.

Now that I have spend a more than adequate time flattering him, I can now get on to my real post. Not that all that wasn’t real. It was! But acting as my ex-partner’s wingman was not my purpose. However, he is single, ladies. 

Anyway, despite how awesome he is, he and I didn’t always communicate very well at the most important times. Those most important times being that critical moment when he is standing at the podium and I am sitting at the table and he is talking at the judge and she looks confused but he doesn’t see because he’s looking at his flow and we’re about to have the other team in an amazing double bind if he can only craft the arguments carefully enough and he really really really needs to impact this crucial disadvantage or it won’t work and he’s not going far enough and he needs to add that one last sentence but he’s not and I’m sitting at the table dying of distress.  You know those most important times? Yea, those times. Anyway, it was at those important times that I resorted to mental telepathy to try and enter his brain and convince him to say that one essential sentence.

I’d casually tried it before, but never at such momentous occasions. It hadn’t ever worked. But I thought, if I’m ever going to make this thing work, it has GOT to be now. That “now” was not just one round. It was at least twice at every given tournament.  

I would sit there concentrating on his mind and repeating my message over and over in a desperate attempt to reach him before all would be lost.  

It never worked.

He would smoothly move on to another argument, little suspecting that he had just murdered his only debate partner. Cause of death? Strain due to malfunctioned mental telepathic communications equipment, and explosion due to distress. It’s a wonder I’m still alive.

You have probably tried this in some form or another, too. Sometimes it really feels like lightning bolts covered in flame throwers and tigers will fall from heaven and obliterate your chances of ever winning NITOC if your partner doesn’t make that all-important point. But you know, they’ve probably felt the same way about you. And despite the fact that you have just died a thousand deaths from the above causes, life goes on.  

But I did not attempt Inception. If I compete in Parliamentary debate, I most certainly shall have a go. So if you’re my partner, and your dreams get real bizarre, you’ll know why.

You’re homeschooled, and killing your partner is a bad idea. Moral of the story, kids.