adrian is rad

[note 1: I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a memoir of my time at MIT. I’m going to start posting some stories here as sort of a test bed. I don’t have a writing voice, much like I don’t have a singing voice, but I hope to find one.]

[note 2: What follows is, admittedly, a bit creepy, but it is not stalking nor was it ill-received by the parties involved.]

It was the Fall of 2001 and I was freshly a junior. A number of my friends had left MIT to live in and go to the other Cambridge across the pond. September 11 obviously hung heavily over that semester. I was taking a class in world music with the incredible George Ruckert along with the normal engineering classes and an incredibly hard German class (“Read this scene and memorize this speach from Faust by Thursday…”) with a woman named Dagmar which I eventually dropped after a month of struggle. I was living in 52 with Jesse which has a whole host of separate stories associated with it, but for now I’ll recount the story of the Lia Incident.

Jesse, Mim and Jason were taking 6.002, a class in electricity and electronics. As was not uncommon, the cute girls in the class would come up in conversation. Jesse brought up a girl he thought was really hot, Lia. He brought her up repeatedly. The conversation between Jesse, Mim, Jason, Andy and myself at some point degenerated into a well-you’re-not-going-to-talk-to-her-like-a-normal-person-(for teps do not talk to girls like normal people)-so-how-else-can-you-get-her-attention. At some point we were probably joking about passing her a note (like in elementary school) and I suggested a cut-each-letter-out-of-a-newspaper-ransom-style note. Someone else came up with the idea of giving her a key to tep (undoubtedly that was someone very safety conscious).

So a middle-school-like craft day ensued, with many people brandishing scissors and glue and having opinions on which letter to place where and in which positions.

The note read as follows: We’ve noticed you’re a person of worth. As such here is a key.

Haha, that’s funny, I thought and put it to rest. However, someone else (with fewer qualms about total embarrassement) thought it’d actually be appropriate to give her the note and the key. Jason was this person.

And then we waited. Nothing. No Lia coming into our house with the key we gave her. No Lia coming to our house and talking to us and laughing at our jokes because we’re so smart and clever.

Clearly she needed more encouragement, so a second, much more cleverly worded note was fashioned, in the same style, that said:
Embrace the myth; play the game; use the key; 253.

(253 being the house’s number on our street.)

Again, we waited.

I heard a bunch of commotion one day. Jesse was so giddy that he could hardly talk. He whispered far softer than the situation required that she was actually here! I looked down the stairwell to the landing below and saw a group of girls. She had come and brought girls; we would all be popular and have girlfriends and people would envy us!

The girls (sorority sisters of Lia’s) took a house tour, which I tagged along with at some point, ending up on tep’s roofdeck. We all chatted for a while and then they left. Our heads swam with possibilities.

One would hope that this would be the beginning of the story and perhaps in a different house, a different world, a movie, this would be a beginning, but at tEp, this is the end.