Cue "The Twilight Zone" Music

I was on the drill team during high school, and was an officer my senior year. For our officer tryouts (which took place junior year) we had to make these really elaborate binders that included planned parties, bulletin boards for the drill room, prizes for football season, and all sorts of stuff. I worked on mine for weeks, and it wasn't until I wrote my History senior seminar paper during my last semester at A&M that I worked harder on anything.

Drill team was a big deal at my high school. And I loved every minute of it.

Except maybe when we had to practice on the blacktop when it was over 100 degrees outside...and I had forgotten my gardening gloves and knee pads (to be worn on the blacktop) which meant that the palms of my hands and my knees were planted on that festering blacktop in my starting position while my team waited 5 minutes for the band to get their act together. My drill team was trained to not move an inch no matter what or else once we got in starting position or ending position until the band started playing. I didn't love that particular 5 minutes on the blacktop.

Anywho, while I was working on my officer tryout binder, I became very very well acquainted with PowerPoint and Clip Art. Of course the Clip Art I was using were the stars, dance shoes, curly ribbons, and star bursts. I noticed the other stuff that would randomly show up, but it was really corny looking stuff. Who would use this? I'd think.

Fast forward five years. Last week I took a training course at my job (oh, yeah, I'm employed! Yay!), and it included slide show presentations about teamwork, negotiations, procedures, and business ethics. As I was trying not to fall asleep at one point, I was thinking: That graphic (of indistinguishable faces sitting around a conference table clearly participating in some meaningful negotation that links teamwork with following procedures and business ethics) looks strangely familiar.

And then I realized: Oh, yes. It resembles those corny graphics I saw in high school while I was looking up sophisticated graphics like stars and curly ribbons. Apparently people do use them. I just had to laugh. Those graphics still look corny to me.

A few well placed stars and some glitter would have made a world of difference on those slide shows.