The Electrical Engineering Curse, Part I: Fake ID and the Fun Guys

It's not exactly a curse. I just can't think of another way to phrase it. My college job was working in the analog circuits lab stockroom for the electrical engineering department. It was a super-cushy job, which my cousin handed off to me when she finished her master's, before I started school. And somehow, starting from my freshman year of college, I just keep meeting electrical engineers! Everywhere I go!

This job was a source of incredible amusement for me and my roommate Wendy, who would come to work with me and ask all the guys random questions about dating, kind of like a survey. It was actually a lot of fun, we'd make bets on what the answers would be beforehand. And the guys (this was the electrical engineering department, so of course the major, and the classes, were like 99% guys) would sometimes have fun with it, too, because of course talking to two really naive freshmen would beat putting together an analog circuit (I guess it doesn't say much for either Wendy or myself that most of the guys didn't want to talk to us and apparently DID prefer their circuit boards).

One of the questions was: Would you rather date a girl who's 4'6", or 6'4"? (No, Wendy and I did not do drugs). Surprisingly (since I was relying on the premise that guys don't like taller girls), most went with 6'4". The exception was this hot Middle Eastern guy (who by the next year was downgraded to just cute, because his friend was seriously worth swooning over) who said, "C'mon, guys, think about it: 4'6" ... there would be serious benefits, amIriiiiight?"

The Hot Middle Eastern Guy, or as we'll call him, Fake ID, became one of Wendy's favorites over the course of the year. He was part of this group of really attractive, funny EE and CS majors. All the guys in that group would take the time to talk and joke around with us. If they ever saw anyone of their friends talking to us, they'd rush over and the conversation would become one big party (until the professor noticed and sent them back). Fake ID, in addition to having an ID that looked TOTALLY fake, made fun of me for falling asleep in the stockroom once (SO embarrassing), totally flirted with a gay TA to raise his lab report score (while Wendy and I patiently waited to close up the lab for the night), and due to comments he made, made himself a source of speculation over his ambiguous sexuality.

Wendy and I were giving Fake ID shit about keeping us late the week before (when he was flirting with his TA), and his friend Great Hair stopped looking for wires to say, "Seriously? Don't you know by now that it's not worth the couple of extra points?"

"No, it totally is! Think about it," Fake ID began to argue, and then Vodka-Red Bull came by and said, "What's going on?" then "You're wasting your time, dude," to Fake ID.

I call him Vodka-Red Bull because the alternative was "Lightweight"--- he taught me and Wendy the term "lightweight" one day when he was hungover. He said he had had a few vodka-red bulls the night before and he was still suffering. We were like, "What's that?" Then he said, "Damn, you've never had vodka and Red Bull? Well, you two are probably lightweights, huh?" and we were like, "What's that?" (which is kind of hilarious now).

My favorite, favorite engineering student of all time was Pseudo-Herb, as my cousin called him. I was training my friend to work in the lab when I first saw him, and when I did, I was like, "WOW" [look up] "Thank you, God; he's perfect." He was GORGEOUS. Fake ID was making up a lab that he hadn't finished at the same time, so they saw each other in front of the stockroom and did that whole beat-each-other-up-affectionately thing that guys do. I was thinking, "INTRODUCE ME, FAKE ID! Introduce me to my future husband!" But of course he didn't; probably because Fake ID and I had never exchanged names, despite talking so much. Which is kind of weird, now that I think about it. Fake ID was from New York, according to his fake ID, perhaps that's why.  But, I ramble.

I was so into Pseudo-Herb, that I actually tried to flirt with him. Note: If you're as awkward as I am (which is, very awkward), then you should never try to flirt with anyone. But a sign of Pseudo-Herb's perfection was, he was able to work with my pathetic attempt at flirtation.  He returned his lab equipment, and it was in perfect order. So I was like, "ooh, you wrapped your DMM so perfectly-- you can be my best friend in this class!" Pseudo-Herb smiled at me and said, "Okay, see you next week, Best Friend." His hand lingered over mine and his ID card, then he took the card and winked at me. And I was in love for a LONG time after that.

 The funniest conversation at the EE stockroom involved Fake ID, Great Hair, and Vodka-Red Bull talking about how tough UCLA's engineering program was. Fake ID said, "I spend ALL my time in the library! It's so miserable." He pointed to Great Hair, who was Indian. "See him? My skin should look like his."

Great Hair snapped, "Oh, PLEASE! You know how much darker my skin should be? That's how much time studying engineering requires."

Vodka-Red Bull just laughed at them (and their expectant looks for his input) and said, "Yeah, I just don't study so I can get sun."

"Don't listen to him," Great Hair said to me. "He's a legendary curve-destroyer."

Let's Talk Nostalgia!

The first time I realized being a nerd was awesome, was senior year of high school- it was all because of my kick-ass English group. Now, apart from my English group, I hated high school, so don't think I'm one of those people who is still obsessed with high school, ok? thanks. It's just, this was a really awesome group of people. You know when you went to college and suddenly really clicked with people? This was like a preview of that. 

David, Brian, Ellen and I were kind of a ridiculous combination of people. I mean, we were all friends or acquaintances, so it's not that weird that we worked together, but our senses of humor all collided to form a hot mess. We laughed so much, I'm surprised none of us pulled stomach muscles.

We started our group work with Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. We'd take group tests and give presentations, and the four of us would breeze through the assignment, then spend the rest of the time joking around.

Crime and Punishment gave us the gift of 2 long-running jokes: 1) Svidrigailov was/was not a pedophile, and 2) Some jerk who may have been "self-aggrandizing"---- to tell you the truth, I don't remember who the self-aggrandizing fuck was, but I do remember Brian and I got into a raging argument with Ellen and David about it during a group test. It was getting out of control--- it was the only question we missed on the test, and we got the highest score of all the groups, but we were too busy attacking each other with I-told-you-so's and The-answer-key-is-wrong's to bother noticing. I think at that point, the rest of the class started to hate us. And whenever we disagreed with each other after that, we'd say, "What was that? Self-aggrandizing?"

As for Svidrigailov, I still get shit about this. So, the English groupers had to do a character analysis on Svidrigailov as one of our projects. If you've read the book (and even if you haven't), Svidrigailov was the rich guy who tried to seduce Raskolnikov's sister, but couldn't, and represented everything that was wrong with the corrupt Russian aristocracy--- even though he married into it to pay off debts (that's what you call impressive gigolo action- when will women learn, you can't turn a ho into a house-husband?). But he was supposed to be a bad dude, or at least outwardly bad, conflicted on the inside.

Toward the end of the book, Sviddy has a nightmare about finding an orphaned child on a bed, and then when he tries to help the kid, the orphaned child tries to have sex with him, and he wakes up freaking out. As well he fucking should, right?

We got into an argument over whether he was a pedophile. I argued, "He's not a pedophile! That dream is supposed to represent how he corrupts everything he touches, whatever his intentions!" I argued so valiantly, that Brian and David accused me of being in love with Svidrigailov. No joke. Brian "outed" me at the end of our presentation, when our teacher asked how many students liked Sviddy (as we called him). A bunch of us raised our hands. Then Brian turned to me and said, "Wait, didn't you like Sviddy, like, big-time?" 

Guess who was accused of being in love with a pedophile (by the entire class) for the rest of the year?

Right here and now, let me clarify something: if I'm going to hit it with a character from a Russian novel, I'm going with Misha Gordon from Doctor Zhivago, and that's primarily because he was played by a hot Italian man in the BBC mini-series. Or Andrei from War & Peace, who was also played by a hot man in the old Russian movie. Am I a superficial, borderline-illiterate asshole? Yes, I am. To tell you the truth, I only read about a quarter of Crime and Punishment. It just so happens that it was the quarter about Svidrigailov, so I can assure you--- homeboy was NOT a pedophile. 

Then again... the internet seems to disagree with me. So I'm going to go with this rationalization: I was 16 when we read this book. What the fuck did I know about anything, let alone psychology? I'd have to read it again to know for sure. But after spending 10 years thinking it wasn't so, I'm reluctant too stubborn to change my mind. Also, I'm realizing--- my description of Svidrigailov makes him sound like a bad boy with a heart of gold. Just my type. Fuck. Apparently I did like Sviddy big-time!

Anyway, before we graduated (we all went to different schools), we made an "English Group promise" to stay in touch with each other and keep up the English Group magic/sarcasm-fests.  We kept up the e-mails for, like, a few months. This was, by far, the best one (and probably the only funny part of this entry)- Brian sent us his AIM (remember, in the days before g-chat) conversation with a college friend:

Brian: Yeah, so we had this group in English.

Random Friend: Oh yeah?

Brian: yeah. smoking hot chicks, some footballphiles, and oh yeah, a gay guy, too

Random Friend: A gay guy. ooh, was he hot? can you hook me up with
him? how flexible is he with his legs?
Brian: dude, stop thinking with your gay dick. i m trying to tell you
about my english group here.
Random Friend: oh all right.
Brian: anyway, yeah i did ALL the work. no one in that group ever
worked. i read and read and read, and those people would just start doing other things.
Random Friend: other things. like what?
Brian: well, this nims dude would never shut up about his beloved broncos. it s some football team in denver. it s some loser team that s lost more super bowls than they won. when he wasnt talking about the football team, he was talking about some girly tv show. woodever or something.
Random Friend: Woodpecker?
Brian: no, man. that s you. i m talking about a tv show.
Random Friend: oh right.
Brian: anyway, yeah, he talked about that show with this one girl named pareesa. now, pareesa s the biggest gossip in the entire persian american population. she would also just start uncontrollably laughing for no apparent reason. oh, and, she had a thing for this old russian pedophile. man, was she into pedophiles.
Random Friend: so am i.
Brian: yeah, but you go for anyone with three legs. moving on, then she talked about french with this other girl, ellen. now, ellen talked about the weirdest things. once, she was telling us about a jewish guy who shat in a bag so that he could chuck it at a house or something*. and oh yeah, one time, the name "billy" came up. man, her face got ultrared. she apparently had the hots for him. but she wouldnt tell me who it was**.
Random Friend: i wonder if it was my billy.
Brian: no, it wasnt. anyway, and another girl, sharon. she s chrisitan. So she totally freaked out this one time i said "shit". that was not a good day for me. that  was the day i got rejected by nims's dad when i asked him to prom.
Random Friend: oh i remember. you had to take nims' mom to prom.
Brian: yeah. anywho, it s late. go to bed, kid.

*Actually, David was telling that story, and Ellen and I were begging him not to. It was pretty gross. Ellen and I were covering each other's ears and screaming "NOOOOOOOO STOP! DAAAAAAAAAAAAAVID!" This only encouraged David to tell the story frequently, to provoke us. Ellen and I would do this funny thing every time David would start to tell that story: we would scream and beg him to shut up, and then we'd cover our mouths (to prevent gagging), and then cover each other's ears with the other hand, and then push our heads against each other so the other ear would be taken care of, while going, "ewwwwwww ew ew ew"

** Dude, who wasn't in love with Billy after meeting him?