Science Day!

Another Saturday, another morning devoted to the Columbia Science Honors Program. On this particular morning, I rode the train in with Mario, Sean, and Grandma Rose. It actually ended up being hardly awkward at all, since my wonderful Grandmother seems to have no problem talking to people. One interesting thing I discovered is that there is this program at MIT the weekend before Thanksgiving, where you basically get to take fun, but totally random classes, and I totally think that we should all sign up for it next year.

When we got on the train to go home, there were no three empty seats together, so, after canvassing the entire train, Mario and I sat together, and Sean sat nearby. Sean spent literally the entire ride on the phone with his friend, and it sounded like he was explaining the entire curriculum of calculus, or something, but regardless, he talked the entire time, and Mario and I settled down and listened to our ipods. I had rather a bit of difficulty getting comfortable because for the first time, I got stuck in the seat with the low back, and whenever I tipped my head back to far, I slammed into a useless metal bar.

There was an adorable small child seated in the row in front of us, and he spent a lot of the ride sending his beanie-baby giraffe on reconnaissance missions over the back of his seat before peering slowly up over it, grinning maniacally at me, and ducking back down. I smiled every time.

There were quite a few interesting conversations, so I'll share one a day for a few days. It'll give me something to write about, at least.

I was sitting quite contently in my seat, listening to some random spanish song I had gotten for free on itunes. I was slouched down so my head was leaning against the back of the seat below the weird metal bar, so the top of my head was about level with Mario's shoulders, when Mario started cracking his knuckles. I went, "Ughh!" and made a face before shivering.

He looked down at me, confused. "What?"

"That knuckle thing! It's just, like-" I shuddered.

"What, this?" He cracked his other hand.

"Ew, don't! My hands don't do that, it's so weird," I said.

"Seriously? You can't crack your knuckles? It's Co2 build up, or something, right? I don't see why that wouldn't happen to your hands."

I tried to crack them again, before giving up. "How do you?" I asked.

"you just, like-" He hooked the lowest segment of a finger on his left hand between the pointer and thumb of his right. "Pull in, then out."

I attempted it again, but still could not succeed. "Maybe it's cause my hands are stretchy."

"How?"

"Like, I can touch my thumbs to my wrists," I said, demonstrating.

"Hmm" He took his right hand and bent it forward, tugging the thumb towards the wrist. It stopped about a half and inch away. He frowned at it for a moment before hooking it between the pointer and thumb of his left hand and tugging, producing a series of loud cracks.

"ahh, god, that's so... ick!"

He grinned, producing the second true smile that I'd seen out of him today, and did the same to the other hand.

"Mario!"

"What?" he said, feigning innocence.

I gave a mocking glare, and we both returned to our ipods. During the next few minutes, he yawned repeatedly, rubbing his face.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

"I'm fine. I think the coffee's wearing off." (he had gotten a massive ice latte thing before class)

"Are you really that addicted to caffeine?"

"No, it's just, like, the crash afterwards. And the train, and everything. It's just, ach" He tilted his head left, like I do when I crack mine, and made an "ach" noise.

I didn't see what that had to do with the conversation. "Is that a tired noise, or a neck cracking noise?

"Tired, but-" he grinned, and tipped his head sideways, trying to gross me out again, but couldn't get his neck to crack.

"Oh, here," I said, and cracked my own.