The Great Debate Debate

The 14-year-old had fresman orientation last night, and I was excited by the fact that he's taking my advice about signing up for debate. We've had the Debate-Debate for about 2 years now. It usually goes something like this:
Me: You should sign up for debate.
14yo: No I shouldn't.
Me: You should. You'd be good at it.
14yo: mmm..no I wouldn't.
Me: Yes, you would.
14yo: I wouldn't. I'm a bad debater.
Me: You would. You could argue with people for an hour a day. Look, you're debating me now.
14yo: No I couldn't. And I am not. Besides, I get to do that already.
Me: But you could fine-tune your arguing skill...you could actually make it into an art.
14yo: I don't need to "fine-tune" my skill. It is perfected already.
Me:(not giving up so easily.) Ummm...learn to argue and remove emotion from your argument, and debate logically!
14yo: You detect any emotion from me right now?
Me: None that anyone else could detect, but I think you're facade is belying your true feelings about this issue. (Evil grin.)
14yo: I have no facade.What you see is what you get. I'm not going to join debate. Besides, I don't like smarty-parties.
Me: You're a walking smarty-party.
14yo:I am not.
Me:ARRRGHHHH! OK, You're not a walking smarty-party, but you have the natural gift to turn people into blithering-idiots.
14yo:I do not.

Last night at the orientation meeting, I went to the debate teacher. I told her that my son has this "gift/curse." I told her that he was not convinced and thatin MHO he should join debate. She agreed to talk to him. She must be good at what she teaches herself, because in a matter of a 20 second meeting with him, he came back to where I was sitting and carefully watching, and said, "I'm signing up for debate."
"Alright," I said, (VERY surprised.) "What did SHE say that convinced you?"
"One word," he replied, "...'research.' "
At that point, I realized...14yo truly IS my son. To this point I've wondered if he wasn't switched at birth. Nope.

I don't know if I'm more excited about the fact that he's decided to join, or the fact that I finally won this 2-year-long debate. (Albeit with the assistance of the debate teacher.)