How I Would Make the Activities Fair More Accessible to the Gloriously Unambitious

     I still think all the ideas contained in this column are great.  Well, not misusing power tools.  Or being apathetic about endangered species.  You all should totally care about endangered species.  Do as I say kids, not as I do.  

September 10, 2007

By Tom Ackerman

            As most of you hopefully know, the Willamette activities fair occurred last Wednesday.  By all accounts it was a rousing success and I commend each and every student who joined one of Willamette’s fine organizations.  Unfortunately, I am not among you.  I spent the better part of an hour wandering from booth to booth reciting painfully insincere claims to organization members, (“Of course I want to help save the endangered freshwater manatees. No you can’t have my email address.”), but I found nothing that really piqued my interest.

            Laying in bed that night, I thought about the clubs I had been active in during high school.  There was the Video Game Club, which really would have better been called the “sit around and play Tekken during lunch club”.  There was the Computer Animation Club which ought to have been called the “sit around and watch that one kid play Starcraft while we wait for Macromedia Flash to install club”.  I was also in the Anime Club or the “sit around and make fun of the white kids who wish they were Japanese club”.  Finally I was an officer in the Robotics Club or the “sit around while eating junk food and misusing power tools club”.  I still have fond memories of sitting in camping chairs in my friend’s driveway, eating Dunkin Donuts and occasionally helping dismantle a jetski with a reciprocating saw and a prybar.  One time we covered a perfectly good brownie in gold spray-paint then repeatedly assailed it with a cordless drill.  Good times, good times.

            Anyhow, hopefully you can see the unifying theme here.  No, it’s not geekery, it’s sitting around.  I realized that I was somewhat intimidated by the activities at the Activities Fair. 

Activityman:  “Hey kid, you wanna run fifteen miles uphill and then do some community service and then speak out against injustice?!?!?”

Me: “Wha? No, I…I mean those things are great and all, I ought to do them, but I really just want to find some people who like the same things I like, and we’ll meet occasionally and talk about the things we like.”

            That’s not to say that all the clubs at the Activities Fair were that…intense.  Nobody would accuse the Bowling Club of being overly serious.  Nor is the Boffer Club attempting to “change the world” (At least not that I know of.  I went to a few meetings last year in the hopes of meeting women, but that didn’t work out.  Turns out I don’t have the lungs or the reflexes of the Highlander.  Apparently things are different this year though.  Regarding the women, not my lungs.).

            Anyhow, I was lying in bed and I decided to make my own club for the Activities Fair.  It would be the Make Your Own Club Club.  Basically it would just be me, at a table with lots of blue tape, sharpies and printer paper.  People would come up, write down a club they wish existed, tape the paper to their body, and continue to wander around the Activities Fair looking for people who might want to join their club.  For instance I might have a piece of paper on me that says “The People Who Like Airplanes A Lot Club”, or maybe “The Club for People Who Have Huge Crushes on Kari Byron from Mythbusters”, or perhaps “The Sit Around and Throw Stuff at Other Stuff Club”.  Then through the course of the day, people will come up and say “Oh wow I like airplanes”, or “Hey I didn’t know other people liked to throw stuff at other stuff in a purely fun and non-malicious manner” and then we’d be friends forever. It’s not just about meeting like-minded people either.  The “Nickelback Rules Club” would spawn an equally boisterous “Nickelback Sucks Club” and they would have enlightening debates together.

            Pretty soon, everyone involved would have more new friends then they could have reasonably hoped for and none of these clubs that were created ever have to have an actual meeting unless everyone involved decides they want to.  Also I would be a hero.

     I was at Willamette for four years but I never did found the Make Your Own Club Club.  I guess I was too busy being treasurer for the League of Extremely Idle Youths.