Let's Meet Our Judges

During our college years, my good buddy Aaron and I often found ourselves in some crazy situations. One such time was when we ended up being judges in a beauty pageant. The story of how we came to be judges isn't too crazy. The pageant organizers had sent a letter to our college asking if two representatives from the student government would be able to serve as judges. The SGA president and vice-president already had plans made for the date of the pageant so they turned to Aaron and I who just happen to be sitting in the SGA office at the time. Of course we jumped at the chance to be judges of a beauty competition. We were especially looking forward to judging the swimsuit portion of the progam. However, as it turned out there would be no swimsuits to be found as this particular pageant.

In a world before Jon-Bennet nobody really knew that there were pageants for little girls, alas this was such a pageant. The picture above is us standing with the winner of the older teenage division. But we were assigned to judge the smallest group of kids. Disapointed at first, we later ended up having a great time with the younger contestants. They were all so adorable and so sweet.

Our first duty as judges was to conduct interviews with all the girls. We spent the better part of a Saturday held up in a hotel conference room having the girls ushered in one after the other and asking them all sorts of questions like "What's your favorite TV show?" and "How is your family important to you?". We could tell that most of the girls had already had their answers fed to them by their parents.

We spent the next day at a high school auditorium where the actual pageant was held. The funny part was that the audience for the show was made up of only parents of the contestants. Here on the left is Aaron and I with the winner in our age group. I can't remember her name or pretty much anything else from the afternoon except that the little girl's question was "Where is your favorite place in the whole world" and her answer that sealed her victory was "Walt Disney World". Obviously a child with good taste.