Writing Prompt: Costume Contest Bribery
16
October 2009
Sorry about the silence, I had to work on my taxes the past week and a half to get them finished off and in by the October 15th deadline.
I’m snaring my writing prompt for today from Writer’s Digest where they have:
You’re 12 years old and have entered a school Halloween costume contest. There’s stiff competition, though you’re confident you’ll win—until you find out someone has bribed the judge. Write this scene.
I actually think I encountered a situation like this one, but I was not 12, I was 11. Let me go over it for you here, shall I?
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At just shy of twelve I did not know much about contest bribery, but I did have a strong suspicion that something was not quite on the level with the panel that had been set up to judge the class costume contest. There we stood, lined up along the front of the classroom waiting to be judged for our costumes. Now, I admit, I was not the traditional witch that had come to be my trademark costume for every Halloween since I had first dressed up, but I was not to feeling too bad about my scarecrow outfit. Burlap bag over my shirt, straw tucked into my sleeves, collar, pockets, and cuffs, a hat… I was a rather decent, if cobbled together from old clothes and odds and ends, scarecrow – even if I do say so myself.
I was, therefore, feeling pretty good about my chances of winning something in the class costume contest. Slowly but surely prizes were awarded for this or that. Scariest, prettiest, most original… all the usual awards for a class costume contest. Finally they came to the last one, the best overall. I knew I had to be a shoo in for it, since my only real competition at that point were all wearing store-bought costumes.
Then came the moment, the moment in my life when I first realized that there was no such thing as a fair judgment when the judges could be bribed or perhaps best friends of the parents of a contestant. For all I knew one of them could have been a parent of the kid that stood near me and was suddenly the center of their attention. I remember hearing someone say how difficult the inflatable bug head had to be to wear all day. That swayed the other judges and ignoring the scratchy straw and burlap I wore that was so much more irritable to wear than a inflatable cockroach head, they awarded the prize for best overall to a kid dressed up in a store bought costume with an inflatable bug head hat. Because it had to be uncomfortable to wear.
To this day I am fairly certain there had to be some kind of bribery or favoritism going on in the judge pool for that contest.
