I like covering the education beat around here because of the variety it affords; school stories can be anything from financial and political to little-kid cute (like one you’ll see in our Nov. 16 paper about Lamplighter’s on-campus animal farm), and some are so much fun that I don’t even bother telling my friends with more buttoned-up jobs what I’m doing.

Case in point? The Winston School is having a “car-jousting” showdown at 7 p.m. tonight to end its enormous annual science fair — one that draws thousands of people from all over Texas. Neighboring states too, as I recall.

I signed on to be there with the joyful but illogical assumption that the event would involve armored people playing chicken in full-sized cars or bumper cars while holding giant plastic swords. Nope. Turns out it’ll be model-car-jousting with Pitsco kits, which is actually far, far more realistic, liability-wise. Plus it involves, you know, science.

Page 12 of the event guide has the scoop.