Chicken Dance

[Amanda Morrison]

Thank you for posting this! There's more of a story here than meets the eye...

In early 2003, Dave Lavery saw a post online about an item of mine being held for ransom from my team. He decided to bet me that I wouldn't do the Chicken Dance in front of the St. Louis Regional crowd - a bet that he lost.

I've since made a number of bets, including a doughnut-eating contest with Dave Lavery to determine who has better legs and an arm-wrestling contest with Woodie Flowers to determine who got to eat Isabelle Baker's leftover vanilla ice cream. I lost both, badly.

To regain my winning status, I decided another bet was in order. This time, fate had both Dave and myself in St. Louis, with me on a competing team. Dave bet me that I could not get our entire team - mostly very shy, very quiet kids - to do the Chicken Dance on stage at the regional. At stake? Four dozen doughnuts, enough for one breakfast for our team at the Bayou Regional later this year. Our stipulations were: 1. I could not use Dave in any way to make this happen (rally the troops, convince the announcers and DJ, etc.) and 2. It had to be the whole team of kids and teachers, except for the drivers and pit crew (who were prepping our robot and pick list for the finals, which were coming up shortly).

I couldn't tell the announcers that I had a bet with Dave, because that would be using his name to complete the bet. Instead, I told them the truth - our 148 teacher and coach of fifteen years was retiring, and her favorite time at the regional was the Chicken Dance. Needless to say, they gave in and we won the bet.

The postscript that should be noted is that Dave has agreed to fulfill the bet's clauses, but with an exception of our agreement: Team 148 has contacted a local New Orleans public school that had difficulties after the hurricane disaster and found out what supplies are needed most. They gave us the standard list of crayons and other necessities that the school is currently doing without. Our team has decided to raise funds and gather donations to give the school 750 of everything on their list - one set of supplies for each student that attends. Dave has agreed to pay our team the equivalent of four dozen doughnuts with that money going toward our school supply fundraiser.


Amanda 2, Dave 1.