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Wednesday, November 06, 2002

Andy Vs. Roger: the Showdown Continues—Now Adam is Involved

This really reminds of the time when we were little and Andy and I got into an ongoing fight about whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. Scientifically, it’s a fruit. But Russians, apparently, consider it a vegetable, presumably because it grows out of the ground. So I had grown up assuming that tomatoes were vegetables (for those of you who don’t know, I was born, and spent the first six years of my life in, Estonia), while Andy and all the other friends I would ultimately make in America grew up knowing that they were fruits. Needless to say, this was trouble waiting to happen. One day tomatoes somehow came up in conversation and everything went downhill from there. The debate must have lasted at least a couple of years. I’m not exaggerating here—we started arguing in elementary school and didn’t stop until the middle school science teachers finally settled the matter by proving to me that tomatoes are, scientifically speaking, fruits, because they have seeds. But before that happened, as Andy and I grew older, whenever we made new friends, such as Dan and Adrian, after the brief period of politeness was over the first thing Andy would ask everyone was: “Hey, [insert name here], is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?” And NOBODY agreed with me. As the years went on, opposition against me grew. I was a lone figure standing before a mountain of enemies, the underdog, the sole supporter of my views, a brave man standing up for his beliefs. I was also completely wrong, because, well, a tomato is a fruit, and to hell with what the Russians think.

Roger now finds himself in such a position. Nobody agrees with him that the soap would freeze. I had a short, but heated, argument with him about it in the lunch line today. Then I come up to Adam. He’s the cashier. Well, he’s one of two cashiers. The other one is Mr. Anderson. Mr. Anderson I do not like very much, because he doesn’t seem like a very cool man and I think that he is secretly the one responsible for raising the prices on all the food items. I mean, this year EVERYTHING has gone up by AT LEAST 15 cents or more from what it was last year! Now, I may not be as good at math as Adam is, but I know it well enough to understand that inflation doesn’t work THAT fast, people! Not to mention many food items, such as the rice crispy treats and the meatball subs, start out big and get progressively smaller as they year goes on. I refuse to believe that this is an accident. If it was all random, then they would fluctuate; maybe start out small and get big and then small again or something. But this is deliberate and it happens every year. The food item is BIG at the beginning of the year and SMALL by the end. It’s not the cooks. What do they care? No, it’s somebody with power. Somebody “up there.” Somebody who can say, “Hey, don’t make the rice crispy treats so big from now on, okay? And if you shrink them gradually enough, maybe people won’t notice.” Somebody like Mr. Anderson. So I always make it a point to get checked out by Adam, even if his line is longer (which it usually is—once again, I don’t think this is a coincidence) and even if Mr. Anderson is incessantly whining at everybody to “Come on around!”

Andy read my blog yesterday and says he doesn’t like it when I get off track and talk about things that have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the blog.

Boris [whilst handing over $2.00 to pay for his pretzel, which turned out to be rather disgusting, and his Flaming Hot Cheetos]: Hey, Adam, I got a question. If you put a wet bar of soap on the—
Adam: It would slide.
Boris: Whoa! How’d you hear about that?!
Adam [handing over $0.55 in change]: I read it last night.
Boris [happily surprised]: Dude! You read my blog? That’s sweet! So you’re against Roger on this one, and with me and Andy?
Adam [dropping his voice]: Well, Roger’s a dumbass. I don’t know what would make him say that [the soap would freeze].
Boris [getting ready to leave the cafeteria so that he can go to his locker and get his math book to finish the math homework he started in study hall during chess club]: Can I quote you on that in my blog?
Adam [taking some other poor sap’s money]: Sure.

***LATER***

Boris [whilst entering Mr. Minot’s room, where a small knot of people is already hanging around for chess club]: Hey guys! Can I ask you all a question?
Steven [Bouyack #2, not the trumpet player]: No.
Jay [could someone please tell me who the hell this kid is and where he came from?]: No.
Other People in Chess Club Whose Names Boris Isn’t All Too Clear On [in unison, or at least something close to unison]: No.
Steven [feeling guilty now]: Sure.
Boris [setting his stuff down]: Okay, if you put a wet bar of soap on the—
Adam: It would slide.
Boris: Hey! You’re not here yet! You’re still in the cafeteria, cashiering!
Adam: Oh, right. *disappears in a puff of smoke*
Everybody Else [kind of mumbling]: It would slide.
Boris: Why? Because some people think it’d freeze.
Jay: Because I know. It would slide.
Boris: So if you were at one end of a skating rink and pushed the soap, would it make it all the way across?
Jay: No, not all the way across, but it’d go pretty far, and it definitely wouldn’t freeze.

This is an interesting new perspective—the soap has friction, so the coefficient of friction between it and the ice is not 0, but it also would not freeze, because (I am using Roger’s own argument against him here) the heat generated by said friction would stop it from freezing. In this view, Andy and Roger are BOTH wrong! There is friction, and it doesn’t freeze. Now let me make it clear that I do not advocate any view—I’m just bringing them all out into the light. All I have to say is: I feel for ya, Roger!

.: posted by Boris 4:52 PM

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