Watching What I Say

I want to be brilliant and pithy and clever, but I am at a loss.

I want to comment on young Miss Lauren Upton's answer during the 2007 Miss Teen USA Pageant. I do. However, I find myself covering my face when I hear her speak, and it's impossible to type in that position.

We all have our bad days. (Mine was Monday.) Some days we are the windshield, some days we are the bug. However, I'm horrified about two things:

1. For a pageant contestant, this kind of question is what she does.
2. Despite throwing South Africa and "the Iraq" in her answer about why one-fifth of Americans cannot find our own country on a map, she still came in third.

I bet, at times, my attempts to do my job come out sounding like "the Iraq." My job involves answering a barrage of questions with non sequiturs and weird setups, most of which have literally nothing to do with my job or my responsibilities. However, after this long, I should be able to think on my feet, right? Those who win the Stump Chris Contest deserve their one-year supply of Rice-a-Roni (the San Franciso treat) and are enshrined in a booklet I read from time to time to humble and amuse myself.

May I always listen to the questions and may my audience never record my faux pas.