Toralei’s Campus Stroll Diary - July. Two. Five.
Ooh they’re telling math jokes now…
Q: What do you get if you divide the circumference of a jack-o-lantern by it's diameter?
A: Pumpkin Pi!
The math geeks I’m stuck on this bus with think that this is funny. So funny, in fact, that the harpy sitting in front of me shoots milk out of her nose when she hears the punch line. I don’t think it’s funny at all. I’d rather be listening to the music I have stored on my iCoffin, but two hours into our five-hour ride home, my iCoffin gave up the ghost. It should have lasted the whole trip and then some except that one of my math camp roomies “accidentally” unplugged my iCoffin charger last night when she plugged in her fright light. I don’t even know why a ghost needs a fright light. What? Was she afraid she would trip over something and go “bump in the night?” I realized what happened when we woke up this morning, but we had to leave first thing, so I didn’t have time to put a full charge on it. At least I got enough battery life to block out the two hours dedicated to the singing of “X number Bottles of Ghoul Juice on the Wall.” To add to the misery, the seats on this bus only have room for two monsters, and Meowlody and Purrsephone are, of course, sitting together, which left me stuck in a seat next to a troll named Teala who had never been away from her bridge for more than a day until she came to math camp. She cried herself to sleep every night. Not that any other monster but me noticed but then again, I notice everything. I also noticed that Teala wasn’t laughing at any of the math jokes either. In fact, she seemed to be more miserable than I was. Well, now, here I was thinking she was missing her bridge, but if that were the case, why didn’t she seem excited about going home? “Dish,” I said. She turned and looked at me for a moment and then stared back ahead. “Okay--suit yourself then,” I said and then tried to curl up in the seat to take a cat nap which I had almost accomplished when she said, “My boyfriend broke up with me…by text…the first night of math camp.” She still wasn’t looking at me, but she wasn’t crying either. “He was my first real boyfriend and…and I don’t know why I’m telling you this ‘cause you don’t seem to care about any other monster besides yourself, and you’ll probably figure out a way to use this to make me even more miserable.” I didn’t show it, but that really hurt. Just because I enjoy the chaos that a good practical joke brings doesn’t mean that I’m intentionally cruel, does it? I don’t think it does, and besides, where’s the fun in kicking some monster when they’re already down? It’s a lot more fun to see the surprise on a monster’s face when they think they’ve got it all together and you can “help them”. So I said, “Guess you better tell me the whole story then so I can do a thorough job.” That actually brought a ghost of a smile to her face. Teala told me that her ex-boyfriend was applying to colleges and that he decided he needed to keep his “options open” in case he might meet his “intellectual equal” at school. At first, I didn’t believe he actually wrote that, and then she showed me the text. “Does he really think he’s that smart?” I asked. She kind of shrugged and said, “He’s scary smart but not as good at math as I am, especially with differential equations.” She told me he really wanted to get into this one school because his favorite mad scientist taught here. I’d never heard of the school, but I knew who the mad scientist was because Mr. Hack made us watch a bunch of his videos in class. The videos were deadly boring, but the mad scientist had this odd accent and strange speech pattern. I used to mimic his voice in class to make Mr. Hack jump. I’d wait until Mr. Hack’s back was turned and then scream, “Huhhacckkk- theeese stuuudannts reeelease youuu wuh-ill ah-yat wa-unce!” It cost me several days in detention and a trip to Headless Headmistress Bloodgood’s office the last time I mimicked the mad scientist, but even Mr. Hack admitted he couldn’t tell the difference between the scientist’s voice and my imitation of it. We talked about a few more things, and then Teala finally fell asleep. I was able to finally fall asleep as well but not before having to hear another math joke followed by an explosion of milk from the seat in front of me.