After a long week of work, my husband, son and I spent the last four hours in the car going to Binghamton University for the New York State competition of Odyssey of the Mind (https://nysoma.org). His group, in Division I – The Muses, performed a play solving a problem.
The problem was to take a muse – one of nine – and include a historical person who made a positive contribution and an original team-created person who made a positive impact on society. The muse needed to inspire those two people in some way. Derek, my son, played the team created character, the mailman, who upon going to deliver mail would get attacked by dogs. At the end of the production, dogs everywhere would never attack mailmen again because the muse inspired the mailman and the dog that mainly attacked him!
This was the second time I saw the production. The first time was in Wantagh at BOCES. His team won first place from Long Island and made it up the state competition.
When I asked the Muse in Derek’s production how she got her inspiration. She held up a bobble head of Tim Gunn and said “I stared at him and said to myself, what would Tim Gunn do? He was my inspiration!” BTW, her father held up the bobble head of Mr. Gunn during the entire production.
Sitting in a lecture hall seating about two hundred people at Binghamton, I started to reflect back on the days that I went to college. I often wondered whether or not I missed out on the “college experience” by not attending a university with an on-site campus.
I went to Hunter College for my bachelor’s degree. It’s located on 68th Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City. Manhattan was my campus. Every time I walked around I would feel the energy and excitement of the city. I don’t regret going to a college in NYC. I even continued by graduating Baruch and getting my Master’s Degree.
“We got a 136!” said one of the parent coaches, interrupting my thoughts. “That’s a great score. I think we may have a chance for nationals in Maryland….”
Later that evening, the parents and the kids sat in a large gymnasium that held thousands of people. Almost every seat was taken and prior to the announcement of the winners, most of the contestants were on the gym floor dancing to the music of the DJ. It looked like a sea of colors, because each team wore their team colored shirts!
Although our team ended up coming in 7th place in the state, I was really proud of my son and his teammates for doing a great job and getting to the state finals!
On the way home, he said to me, “boy, that ruined my weekend!” I looked at him, looked at my husband and grinned. “This is what we do for our kids….”
