Robotics!

LORD of the LEGOS, what a day! As some of you know (and now for those that do not), Thomas decided that his days were NOT BUSY ENOUGH and joined his school's first ever LEGO LEAGUE! This has long been a dream of his; you may or may not remember that he tried to start up a LEGO League of his own some years ago to meet after school that had a constitution of sorts. It lasted for several months and then sort of fizzled when only a few kids had any real interest and all the rest just sort of got high on sugary snacks and red-dyed filled drinks and ran around the place, wrecking things. The whole experience was a bit disheartening. So this year, when another kid's dad threw himself on the ultimate grenade and promised to be the Team Coach (which would require registering the team, acquiring the almost $1000 LEGO equipment kit, finding team sponsors, designing and creating team t-shirts, and mentoring/tutoring this rag-tag gang of mutton-heads to whip them into shape in about 10 weeks so they are ready to compete in a state-wide competition. The dad, who works as an engineer at Delphi, was pretty geeked at the start, gave a pretty rousing speech in September and easily convinced about 12 kids to leap at the chance--Thomas among them. I inwardly groaned--2 1/2 hours after school every Thursday, plus 3 hours on Saturday--and this is on top of 3 hour rehearsal for Wind ensemble, 3 hour rehearsals for orchestra, private lessons for both percussion and bassoon AND all his regular school work!

The deal is this: every year LEGO announces a challenge across the nation and every team has to buy a very expensive kit (pretty good racket for LEGO, eh?) in order to complete the challenge. This year the theme was preventing food spoilage and they had to use a Mindstorms kit (which is a programmable technics LEGO kit) along with a specialty LEGO kit that you buy (that was mostly shaped like food, a truck, a giant sink, and a bunch of things that were supposed to be germs and bacteria). Luckily, about 3 years ago we had gotten Thomas the Mindstorms kit for either a birthday or Christmas but we could never figure out how to use it (not smart enough) and so it just sat, getting dusty. So we donated that to the cause. Someone else apparently bought the kids the other kit so they were on their way. So, the kids met twice a week for weeks and weeks, trying to put together a programmed robot that would scoop plastic germs and bacteria, shift plastic fish and food into baskets and into trucks, move a tiny plastic combine harvester and shoppping cart about and finally drop plastic food onto a kitchen table--all in under 2 1/2 minutes. They also had to answer questions about "Core LEGO Values": team work, gracious competitiveness, integrity and whatnot as well as do a short presentation about the assignment.
This week, the team started to panic about being underprepared, and doubled their practices, meeting every frickin' day. Their team t-shirts arrived Friday, about 5 p.m., a mere 13.5 hours before they were set to depart for the competition. Here is the back of Thomas' shirt. I can't remember what the F stands for (not Flint), but LL is LEGO League. (Gators is their school mascot.)

This morning we met at his school at 6:30 a.m., readied to depart for the day-long competition. Thomas dozed on the seat next to me, and I dozed slightly as I followed the other parents in the dark on the interstate as we headed straight north past Saginaw to Delta College for the competition.

I really had no idea what to expect. I knew it would be madness, but I had no idea the level or kinds of insanity we would encounter. The kids were excited when we got there. They knew they were beginners and did not believe they would win (the coach did a good job of keeping their expectations realistic) but they were eager to do their best and put on a good show. And then they saw the competition....Some of those teams arrived in coaches, some were being escorted with a full entourage of support staff (coach, several assistant coaches, dozens of assisting assisting coaches, cheerleaders roaming through the building shouting out their team names) fully designed outfits--some even had their own food stuffs designed in the likeness of their teams.

While our team is a mix of kids ranging in age from 13 (Thomas, the only 8th grader) to 8 (half the team is 8 or 9 years old) many of the other teams were made up of kids that looked well into puberty. Team Gator was visibly shaken. Fortunately, the first event, answering questions about core values is right up their alley. I was coaching one kid, Kean, (pronounced "Kee-On"), and said, "Rather than say, "There is no 'I' in 'Team,' you should say something less sloganistic." and he said, "I thought about that, but then it would not be true." "What about 'Everyone contributed something valuable'?" "Not true," he replied. "What about, "Everyone had their own talents'?" I offered instead. "That," he said thoughtfully for a rather pudgy 7th grader, "would be stretching the meaning of talent, beyond recognition." They finished the "Core Values" questions about 9 and went on to the presentation at 9:30. This was their moment to shine. Most schools do a boring research-type presentation, in which kids stand up and just recite facts about food rot or whatever. But Valley requires that all kids from age 3 onward participate in an annual musical event in which they have to sing and dance so these kids have no shame about performing skits in public. So they wrote up their research into a Platonic Dialogue form and performed it dramatically. I didn't get to see this piece as one parent always had to sit back with our stuff to prevent other teams from sabotaging it (I tell you, these kids are brutal!) but I hear that Logan, as a farmer who swears that he keeps his cow pens clean but nonetheless is wracked with bacterial infection that is causing a plague of stomach infections and loose bowels. The kids were very pleased with this part of their day, too. But the fun was over because the real work was just beginning...

At 11:15 Team A (which included Noah, Kean and Thomas--these were their power hitters) were sent to The Pit. ("The Pit" is the massive room in which 6 tables are set up in the middle--think Fight Club--around which is a giant fence so no parents or stray team members can help or hinder the Robotics Team. [I forgot the mention that the very first thing the team had to do was subject their robot to inspection to make sure they hadn't "rigged" it in any way--as with horse and dog racing, this is serious business and they want to make sure no one illegally alters the pieces or "fixes" them with glues or magnets and therefore unfairly advantages their team. Can you imagine? Who really gives a shit that much?] Outside that fence is a massive throng of people shouting and jeering. Within the fence are the 6 teams competing, all at the same time, along with one judge each who is watching them like a hawk, looking for errors, and an announcer with a microphone who is making top-volume remarks that are supposed to cheer people but in fact only make everyone nervous as hell. Add to all this air horns and vuvuzelas and a blaring sound track loop of Gary Glitter, the chicken polka, YMCA and all the other NBA/NHL shite and you can just imagine what it is like to try to concentrate in this sort of environment.

BUT, amazingly, Team Gator did not too badly and placed fair to middlin' and ranked 19th at the end of Round 1. They were happy they were not last, and pleased that they caught all the germs and got all the food on the table. And they were very excited about some ideas about how to "tweek" their robot for Round 2, which was going to start in about 90 minutes.

After lunch (which Thomas said he didn't want but after I bought and put in front of him he ate heartily) the team practiced and practiced and were well prepped. They headed back to The Pit. Team A had Plenty of encouraging words for Team B (this group was their least strong group, the logic being that they would finish up with another round of ringers in Round 3). But it was not looking good. Team B had a 5th grader, Serena, who was looking shakier and shakier the closer it got to our time and, by the time they had to sit "along the line" (in the special row of seats next to the pit where your family and team mates can no longer be with you), she was red-faced and brushing away tears. By the time she was IN The Pit she was shaking like a leaf. We were allowed to stand next to the fence, about 10 feet away from her, and her parents were desperately trying to reassure her but we could see her legs shaking within her pants. When the START buzzer sounded she actually lifted off the ground a bit. She did initiate the robot and it started great and things went smoothly. But her partners were not agile switching out the accessories to the robot so, when it returned to homebase, Serena was flustered when it was her job to reprogram the robot to send it on a new task. It did most of the tasks adequately, but about half-way through the fork-lift (which would get the food onto the table) it jammed and quit. But, instead of reprogramming it (which she could do) or commmanding it to return to base (where they can check the machine for loose parts or whatever) Serena got flustered and picked up the robot, which is a huge 'no no,' and that instantly disqualified the team for that round. She knew immediately what she had done and fell apart. The other kids were really nice about it and, in a way, it didn't matter, because it's only the highest score out of three rounds that matter but she just felt so awful...it's one of those moments you fear you are going relive forever and ever.

Suddenly the news came through and the top 20 scores were released: Valley's Team A were back within the top 20 still and so were part of the final Round 3 so their Team C would NOT be competing, but Team A would recompete. Strange rule, but true. (There are so many flipping rules to this competition; I don't think anyone really knows all of them.) So Thomas was higher than a kite to get a second crack at the prize. So Team A practiced and practiced, working their little fingers to the bone, getting faster and faster, switching out accessories for their robot to lift, pull, push and slide germs and fish hither and yon on that 8' x 4' board. And then...IT WAS TIME. It was the last event of the day so once they were done the truly final scores would be posted. Thomas was the programmer and his fingers flew--all those years of piano lessons paid off. That robot worked like demon--the judge really liked an especially tight hairpin turn they came up with that got all the pink germ balls out of sight and away from a stack of baguettes in no time flat. After 2 1/2 minutes they announced the score--a total of 109 points, 1 point more than their score in Round 1.

This was a bit of a double disappointment as they were certain they would boost their score by much more and because it was not enough to rank them on the score board as 110 was the score of the 20th best team. But, to give you some idea of how competitive it was, teams 10 through 20 had scores from 112 to 110. If Team Gator had collected just one more germ, for example, (which was worth a whopping 6 points) that would have given them a score of 115 and would have propelled them to 8th place. So, in a way, for a team that was competing against teams that had Mindstorm sets that were this year's top model (not one from 3 years ago) and were taught by a science teacher during school hours (not someone's dad who volunteered his spare evenings for fun), I thought they did pretty well. And I thought some of the kids on the other teams were real assholes.

I wanted a picture of Thomas and here he is, saying, "All right already, now get the hell out of my room." Yessiree, I'm glad he's not like those other kids at all...