Cultural Attendance: A Late Night in the Zone

For some reason I thought I’d have to just collect tokens of going to these events and then bring them with me to some post-showing meeting to exchange for a grade. I still have the torn-up wristbands and promotional fliers, but I only recently realized that the writing was the important thing.

I remember, and it now feels pretty distant as I stand poised to jump into the world-at-large, that I was frustrated by how few of these events I could get to. My school schedule, my newfound apartment and my twenty hours of frycook duty were all constantly conspiring to keep me out anything interesting, especially really cool stuff like the New York trip. So these aren’t the most exciting uses of my time, but my time was on a very strict budget, and they’re the best I could manage.

The first was a Late Night in the Zone, although they’ve started calling them “Rampages” this year, and it was during a bingo game. My roommate and I crashed it to get some protein - Chick-fil-A was catering - and watch the proceedings. It was pretty straightforward as Bingo went, although they had some of those exotic challenges that always impressed me with how much fun they could wring out of a grid of randomized numbers. I’m not sure I stuck around long enough to see people win any of the really huge prizes, but I think somebody got a basket full of popcorn and DVDs.

At one point, a young, lost-looking teenager in an Undertale shirt hovered around me and my companion. I still remember him, although I never saw him again. I think he wanted to approach us, but he didn’t know how.

And to be honest, the part of the whole night I remember most is when I was about to leave and I came across a Freshman who was looking to make friends with people. He seemed like the sort of person you’d find hanging out in a comic shop, and he complained that when his dad came to visit earlier that day they’d run out of space in his minifridge for the leftover pizza. I felt an impulse, then, to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and impart all of my knowledge, to reveal that no, really, I know I might look like I just got out of high school but I’m a Senior and you should heed my advice, but I just nodded, and left feeling old.

He’s finishing his first semester now, which probably taught him most of what I was going to say anyway. Let the young come of age on their own time.