The Horror: Friday the 15th

Genius has been sharing tales of his Nerd Camp experience.

Did you see any other Frisbees?

Everyone had a Frisbee! We played it any free time we had. We took them in the pool after supper, and we played Ultimate Frisbee? Do you know what that is?

Uh, yeah. It's like golf with a Frisbee. 


No. It's like football with a Frisbee.


I guess I don't remember the seventies all that well. For some reason.

They fed us leftovers the entire time. The first night it was good. We had pasta. Then we had it the second night. And the third. And the fourth. I know it was the same stuff. Only they mixed something different with it every night. They fed us in the park. We had to walk there behind our RA. He's from Palestine, the West Bank, and is studying aerospace engineering.

Did you have to walk single file, and hold hands?

Heh, heh. 'Hold the belt loop of the person in front of you.' Like on Malcolm in the Middle, when Reese got put into special class. No. We did not have to walk in line. But we were not allowed to touch any water in the creek, because it was run-off from the pond where the dry cleaning business across from the park used to let their chemicals flow. They got shut down because of it.

Are you going to have three eyes like that fish on The Simpsons? Or a million eyes like the squirrel in the Simpsons movie?

No we didn't touch it. We watched LARPing in the park. Live Action Role Playing, like in the movie Role Models. Here. I've got pictures. Some of our counselors joined in. They were doing it when we went there for supper.

Oh. Dinner and a show. So it really, really WAS a Nerd Camp. 

Pretty much. About eighty or ninety of us were watching, and another twenty were playing.

Did you see any umbrellas? Or hoodies?

Just the one umbrella. One of the staff used one to keep the sun off her when she was outside.

Was she one of those sun people who have to stay in the house and only come out at night? From that sunlight disease?

I don't think so. If she was, I feel bad for making fun.

It wasn't your guy from the North Bank, was it?

What? There's no North Bank. The WEST Bank. No. It wasn't him but he made some cool nunchucks out of pieces of pool noodles. We played Ninja. But not with Anan, the RA. Do you even know what Ninja is?

No. 

The point is to slap each other's hands, and avoid getting your hands slapped. Normally, you play it out of water. We play it in choir a lot. But at camp, we played it in the pool. It was like slow-motion Ninja.

AquaNinja?

Yeah, I guess so. We had like a dozen people playing right next to the game of Ultimate Frisbee. In fact, a couple AquaNinjas got tackled by the Ultimate Fribee-ers, who were running backwards to get a pass. Which wasn't fair, because one team had an end zone in the four-foot water, and the other had their end zone in the twelve-foot water.

So they had to swim?

Yeah. Oh, I won a t-shirt. I'll go get it. See? "You Might Be An Engineering Major If...":

• "...you know vector calculus but you can't remember long division."
• "...when your professor asks you where your homework is, you claim to have actually determined its momentum so precisely that according to Heisenberg it could be anywhere in the universe"
• "...you consider any non-science course 'easy.'"
• "...you'll assume that a 'horse' is a 'sphere' in order to make the math easier."

How'd you win that?

I was the best in the Computer Engineering class.


How did they know you were the best?

I understood the lecture and answered his questions.

How many were in that class?

About eighteen people. Look what we made. Play Simon Says. Press a button.

That's too hard. Did you make that?

We got the board, but it didn't do anything. We had to edit and load the software to make it work. I was the first one done. Listen.

What's that, Love Story?

I don't even know what Love Story is.

A seventies movie. You must not remember the seventies, either.

It's the Halloween theme.

Did it tell you how to play that?

No. I can hear the tones, and I punched it in.

How many times have you watched that movie, once?

No, I learned to play it on piano in choir one day when nothing was going on.

Oh, you weren't playing Ninja?

No. Here, what's this?

Why are you playing God Save the Queen?

It's America the Beautiful. I think it plays the Mexican Hat Dance, too. Watch the light show. It's so mesmerizing.

I feel like I'm back in the seventies. 

I'm sure you had lots of drugs and light shows back then.

I paid $495 for this?