To the Editor: I read in these pages that the first official boat parade would have no judging, and I have since heard the committee chairwoman’s explanation that judging leads to feelings. I write to report that so does everything else worth doing.

I decorated a pontoon for three days. Crepe paper, bunting, and a flag arrangement I would modestly call architectural. Twenty-four boats made that lap Saturday, and somewhere on that shore every last spectator privately ranked us — you cannot stop them; it is what a shore is for — and I will never know where I placed, or to whom I lost, or what the lead boat did with her transom that I didn’t. That is not friendliness. That is suspense without an ending.

We judge everything else in this town. We judge pies at the fair. We judge pickles, livestock, quilts, and 4-H posters. We judge pumpkins — I am told the scale has been recertified — and nobody has yet drowned in a feeling at the fairgrounds. There was, yes, the appeal last August, which I mention strictly as history, and not because my family was involved in it in any way the record would support.

This week’s editorial worries about making the spontaneous official. Fine. But if we are going to be official, let us be official all the way: categories, ribbons, a clipboard. Best Use of Bunting. Most Improved Vessel. Sportiest Wave From a Grand Marshal. The committee may keep Grand Champion vague if it needs to, for the peace.

Judging leads to feelings. So does losing by nine pounds. We survived that, too, and came back with a bigger tarp over the garden and no hard feelings that anyone can prove.

I will decorate again next year regardless; it is not about the ribbon. But somebody in this town ought to have the nerve to tell me where I stand.