I can be your long lost pal

I just flipped on the telly (which is something I should quit doing so often), and MASH is on. I don't particularly love MASH, while I don't particularly hate MASH either.

By the way, we are not talking about the elementary school game, also called MASH, here, because my opinion on that is that I definitely love that MASH.

So while I don't particularly love MASH, I do particularly love Alan Alda. I'm not even sure why. I just really do. He's just so darn lovable. Tall, lanky, little bit of a geek--yep, that's probably it. Maybe some of you fellow psychology students/grads have shared the following experience with me, and that would be the experience of watching the educational psychology videos hosted by Alan Alda.

There is a whole series of these, and we watched individual videos from the series during my high school psychology course. In one video Alan discussed sensation and perception, and tasted hot peppers. In another, I believe, he tagged along for a virtual reality session designed to conquer phobias such as height and spiders. In a psychology class my senior year of college I think we watched one quick snippet of Alan, and I got very excited. There wasn't a lot of camaraderie in that course, however, so I think I contained most of my Alda fever. This is me, though, so not being able to completely hold it in, I probably gave an aside to my friend next to me. This in turn most likely elicited a confused, "Ohh..." in response, followed by her turning quickly to the video with feigned academic interest, while really she was trying to get away from the nerd who was actually interested in the video next to her.

Well I was--am--such a nerd that not only would I get so excited about these videos when we watched them in my high school class, but when I discovered there were more that we weren't going to watch as a part of our curriculum, I asked my teacher if I could stay after school and watch the rest of the series. She loved me and my quirkiness (illustrated by the time we went on a class field trip, I revealed my love for dandelions, and she got back on the bus with a dandelion for me), so she said yes. I didn't want to exclude others from the excitement, so I wrote something on the board like, "Want to watch Alan Alda videos after school on Thursday?" One classmate, Joel, watched with me. I believe we even brought popcorn, which, to pop the corn, earned us a trip behind the scenes to the teachers' lounge where the microwave was--I'm telling you, being weird pays off. How many of you got to see the teachers' lounge in high school? This was my only trip, and had it not been for the Alan Alda-viewing-corn, I would have left high school with a diploma, but no trip to the teachers' lounge.

I bet a few of you are wondering right now what your teachers' lounge looks like...

Joel and I had a fantastic time. Looking at that statement, can I count this as a date on my record? I believe Mrs. Forbes worked on her computer in the corner (so it was a supervised date, like having your mom drive you to the movies), occasionally piping in a sarcastic comment and offering suggestions between videos on which one to watch next.

At the end of the school year when I was snapping pictures of my friends and classmates, Joel and I posed for a geeky photo in front of my note on the board, with videos in hand, like the champs that we are. And that right there is the whole, awesome, story. Which comes to mind every time I am channel surfing and hear the plunky notes of the opening theme to MASH.