Not an academic competition question, but one of the most difficult queries Brian Rostron has ever faced. Allow him to explain:
Last summer I was working in a T-shirt factory. I pulled shirts for orders and then took them to be packed and shipped. Most of the packers were a surly bunch, but one of them liked to talk to me a lot. I assumed that he was just naturally friendly. One day I was climbing on some boxes to get some shirts. I knocked my pen to the floor, and the cheerful packer picked it up. He walked over to me, looking to make sure that no one else was around. Then he said, "I've been meaning to ask you this. Are you like me?" Somewhat taken aback, I decided at that moment that if anyone asked me that question, regardless of how similar they were to me, I would say no. I replied, "Uh, I don't think so." He shrugged and walked away, and then turned around and came back. "Maybe I should make myself a little clearer," he said. "I like guys." I responded, "Then you're definitely not like me." He took this well and said finally, "That's fine. It's just that I've been wondering for a couple of weeks and I had to know." After that, he never talked to me again. I told this story at our first team meeting of the year, and then later Mike Dershewitz talked about his job experience. When I asked him if any male co-workers had shown romantic interest in him over the summer, he looked puzzledly at me and said "No." Then I replied, "Hmm. That surprises me." Mike got this really hurt and confused look on his face. It was adorable.
John Edwards' emphatic reply to Phil O'Donoghue's lack of clarity in 70's blaxploitation film heroes. At CBI nationals in 1997, we were waiting around because of some unexplained delay before our match with Florida. Behind the room we were playing in, there was a partition and then another room set up with tables and a microphone. Phil and John went back there to screw around. Seeing the mike, Edwards took the opportunity to assume his best Isaac Hayes voice and say to Phil "Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks?", to which Phil confidently replied, "Superfly!!!" John then said, "Phil, you dumbass! It's John Shaft." Moments later, a shaken Phil O'Donoghue was only left to mutter, "You know I really thought that it was Superfly." Return to the current UVA lexicon.