Visitation with Rickling

Gunnar came to visit today. I've been, of late, focusing on (in Gunnar's words) firming my social ties, or something along the lines of that, with my high school friends. This means that Gunnar got hauled over to Cammie's house (he declared that Cammie is "interesting," and it sounded like he meant "in a good way" and not "ummm") to watch her pack. Cammie, after all, is leaving town to go to college on Friday, which is, as you might be aware, very, very soon.

The three of us eventually became hungry, and as Cammie is not in the possession of particularly much food (this is a side effect of getting home from Europe less than three days ago), we decided to go out for lunch. This was my first (and, in all likelihood, last) visit to the Shake Shack. Not that there's anything wrong with the place--the food was delicious, and there was an absolutely perfect quantity of it--but I don't go out to eat much, and I'm not going to be here for very many more days anyways. But I did eat a relatively guilt-free meal (I seem to have dropped half of what I gained this summer, which means that most of it was medication-induced bloat, which makes me extremely happy).

Gunnar's family also showed up at the Shake Shack, so I got to see his adorable younger brother again. As we were leaving, we also saw Lucas and Tamir. Cammie stopped to talk to them for a while--well, mostly to talk to Lucas. Gunnar and I stood awkwardly behind Cammie for a minute, uncertain of how the whole 'conversation' thing ought to proceed. Though Tamir's conversation was also limited, I believe that he's less cognizant of a need to avoid social situations in which one is unwanted, so he more or less ignored the awkwardness. Anyways, I said I wanted to call Yuma, so Gunnar and I went outside. I sat on the ledge of the truck's bed and he stood nearby while I scrolled through my phone.

Although I wasn't in possession of Yuma's phone number (Yuma, as it turns out, is not in possession of a phone), we decided to crash his house anyways, despite the fact that none of us, least of all Gunnar, knew its precise location. We drove around Paperclip on our way there, and Gunnar, funnily enough, was extremely impressed by the amount of lab space and the number of AP courses offered--despite the fact that I've always been very jealous of the kids I know who attended magnet schools. I think perhaps the moral of that is that high school sucks for everyone, so the grass is always greener...or something like that.

Anyways, then Cammie and I spent a good amount of time trying to explain to Gunnar what it's like to go to school with stupid people. One of his most significant questions was "how many of them are there?" to which we more or less said "normal distribution." We then started relating the antics of Umber's younger sisters and various other misdeeds. When I apologized to Gunnar later for dragging him along on these trips, he said he was glad to meet my friends because they "showed [him] what going to school with stupid people is like."

"Are you implying my friends are stupid?" I asked.

"No, but Cammie had lots of good stories."

I ended up driving to the approximate location where I used to let Yuma out of the car, then we went to the nearest house and rang the doorbell. No one answered, so Gunnar suggested I take out my laptop and try to get onto someone's wifi and start gchatting Yuma, which I did, but then Yuma came walking up the street with his dog.

As it turns out, Yuma's house is located rather farther back. We sat around there for a while, chattering about randomness--it was good to see Yuma after two months, and it's fun to talk about college with someone who is actually going to be at college with me.

We'd been there for about ten minutes when Yuma mentioned that Peter was supposed to be picking him up to take him to Brian's house in five minutes. I more or less flipped out--this would poke a huge hole in the "avoid Peter" plan of action--and Yuma ended up canceling on Brian to chill with the rest of us (apparently after an entire summer of Brian and Peter time, a change was appreciated), which meant that I drove over to Cammie's house sitting four-across in my pickup truck (le gasp). Julie arrived soon thereafter, and not to long after that I had to bring Gunnar over to Lucas's house and head home for dinner.

All in all, it was a fun day, and it was definitely good to see Gunnar. Now, one more day with Cammie, then a few days of hanging out, then packing while hanging out, and then...college. Holy shiznit.

Electrocution

is really, really fun. I know I've told all of you about it already, but, really, I want to record this for posterity, seeing as it was, you know, completely f**king awesome.

Yes, the two asterisks are necessary. Just as necessary as they were last week when somebody modified my science research paper to say some very rude things about my mother. Then again, they said f***e. I'm still not sure what the "e" is for.

So, today in physics, Mr. Mubble comes in with a giant metal ball on a big plexiglass stick ("Oh," said Kathrya, when I told her this. "Was it...big?"). "This," said Mubbs, "is a Van de Graaff generator."

Mr. Mubble poked at the generator and asked, "has anybody ever been electrocuted?"

"On a lamp," I said. "It hurt."

"Me too!" said Umber. "Well, it was basically a lamp, but it, like, wasn't making light, and I was going to change the bulb, so I put my thumb in the socket, but there wasn't a bulb."

"Did you get shocked?" probed Mubbs.

"Well it hurt a lot, so, like, yeah."

Nobody bothered to ask why she bothered to put her thumb in it anyways.

Then Dino went into his bit about sticking a paperclip into a socket in eighth grade (I always knew he was daft), but Caroline started telling me her electrocution story, about a live wire she had to plug into a high voltage lamp for Les Mis, at the same time.

Mr. Mubble wanted a demonstration of what happens when people get charged up. I was selected as the participant because my hair is relatively thin and of a good length. Sergio tried to get a chant going of "Tea, Tea, Tea," but he was, per usual, unsuccessful, and it didn't take much persuasion anyways.

Becca brought over a bunch of textbooks for me to stand on so that I couldn't discharge into the ground. Apparently, that's really uncomfortable, although it seems doubtful that something could be more uncomfortable than getting charged up. I stood on the stack of books, making Mr. Mubbles, who is already shorter than me, look diminutive.

"Put your hands on it," he said.

I slowly extended my hands and touched my fingertips to the metal surface.

"It'll go faster if you add your palms."

I flattened my hands. I stood still for a few seconds, the entire class watching. "Oh my god, my arms are tingling," I said.

Mubbs laughed. "Do you want to stop?"

"No, I'm good, it's just kind of....weird."

Mr. Mubble said some stuff about the science behind it, with me interrupting every few seconds with relevant statements such as "I think my shirt is sticking to me."

"That's supposed to happen." He looked over the progress of the charge. "A few more seconds and your hair should start to stand up. I wonder if we'll get it all the way over your head."

"Wonderful," I responded with a grimace. Predictable, I could see my hair starting to curl up at the edge of my vision a few moments later.

The class started laughing. I stayed there for a while longer, my hair on end, until Mr. Mubble declared me fully charged.

"Anyone want to discharge her?"

Dino, who'd been inching further away from the generator with every minute, scooted backwards another half a foot.

"I'll do it," said Tybalt.

I reached towards him a bit, but I was afraid to touch anything, so he ended up standing and reaching out. I touched his knuckle with the tip of my pointer finger and yelped.

The class laughed.

"Ow!"

"Do it again," said Mr. Mubbles. "She might not be fully discharged."

It hurt more the second time. I squeaked and moved backwards, falling off the books. "That hurt!"

"You might want to touch something metal to get rid of the rest," said Mubbles.

I reached cautiously towards the board and squealed again when I heard the zapping noise and lost some more electrons. I still hurt. I was afraid to do it again, so I went back to my desk. When I sat down, I got shocked again, eliciting another yelp followed by another laugh.

Found Objects

in my A.P. English pocket divider that literally exploded last week:

• R-rated movie permission slip for Spanish class
• A New York Times Op-Ed article we analyzed about 4 months ago
• 1 sheet unreinforced blank notepaper
• 3 sheets reinforced blank notepaper
• 8 pages of museum synthesis prompt
• registration details for a science fair I'm not participating in
• 2 scoring commentaries written in incomprehensible handwriting (even worse than Peter's)
• Leo Africanus's description of Africans from Shakespearian times
• 4 pages of synthesis essay prompts
• The first page of Umber's research paper from last year about plastic bags
• an exemplar photocopy of my essay about pennies
• my actual essay about pennies
• the first chapter of Sarah Palin's book
• an 8 page packet on invasive species
• 2 more sheets of unreinforced notepaper
• a full transcript of Obama's speech on race
• 6 page packet on space exploration
• Othello 4.2.52-80
• the actual penny essay exemplar
• 10 page packet on pennies
• my entire A.P. English midterm

Time Travel

"Mr. Mubble?"

"Yes, Umber?"

"Does the Hubble telescope see back in time?"

"What?"

"Is it like a time machine? Cause you said it can see all the way back to the big bang."

"No, it's not a time machine."

"But, like, if you turned it on Earth, wouldn't you see stuff that already happened."

"No. Well, yes, but not very long ago."

"So, could you use it to look at historical events and see what actually happened?"

"No. The delay is whatever the speed of light is, so you'd only see back a few milliseconds. For instance, right now you're, what, ten feet away from me. Now, let's say you pass out riiiiigggghhht NOW."

"Huh?"

"Now, you're passed out, but I don't see it right away."

"Yes, you do."

"No, I don't."

"You're not going to just stand there while I'm on the floor."

"Well, not for very long. It takes something like three nanoseconds for the image of you falling to reach me, so there's a delay. If you pass out on the moon, the delay is longer. If you pass out on the sun, it's 7 minutes."

"Because if she's on the sun, all she's going to do is pass out," I muttered, forgetting momentarily that the sun is gaseous and you can't truly be 'on' it.

"Wait, so if I took Hubble to, like, Pluto, then would I see stuff that already happened?"

"Yes, but you won't see anything from before your telescope took off."

"Oh. Okay."