I'm More Interesting than the Real Squirrel!

As usual, my Fringes of Chaos class at MIT with Zandra was full of amusing surprises and lots of craziness. But today's class was surprising and crazy even for Zandra's standards. I will focus this account on one episode, but keep in mind that this is just a glimpse into the absurdity that is a class with Zandra.

Zandra was talking about binary and information theory. In the middle of her lecture, someone peered out the window and said, "Look at the squirrel."

"What," said Zandra, insulted. "Is the squirrel really more interesting than me?" Soon she decided to act like a squirrel in the hopes of diverting attention away from the real squirrel. She also pushed a button, and the windowshades came down. Zandra held her arms in to her chest with her hands hanging squirrelishly, and said, "If I hop, it means 'yes.' If I don't hop it means 'no.'" So the binary and information theory lecture went on that way. I could hardly hold in my laughter as Zandra hopped around the room. Someone pointed out that not hopping is ambiguous because it is unclear whether she simply hadn't hopped yet, or if she wasn't going to hop. He suggested that she raise her tail for "no" instead. Zandra looked at herself and noticed that she didn't have a tail. "Oh, no," she said, "why did you have to point out that I don't have a tail? Now I'm embarrassed." And she stood against the wall, hiding her lack of tail.

Later she was the squirrel again, and she kept asking people if she could have their nuts. She would then steal their pencils and hide them in a cart in the corner of the room. When she got to me, I grabbed my pencil and held it tightly to my body. Squirrel Zandra just looked at me with big, sad eyes. I resisted for some time before I decided that it would be to everyone's advantage if I would just give her the "nut" and let class resume. So I did, and she took it and hid it with the rest.

When it was the end of the alotted time for class, Zandra had no intention of ending. At about fifteen minutes after class should have ended, a man burst into the room and said, "This is getting to be a habit, isn't it?"

Zandra responded: "Get out of my class." He didn't. "I'll give you three seconds," she warned. "One...two...three..." And then she started throwing chalk at him. He took some chalk and started throwing it at her. What a perfect distraction, I thought, hoping to retrieve the "nuts". So while Zandra was busy fighting the man, I ran over to the cart and took out the pencils. I then distributed them around the room to their rightful owners. When Zandra successfully expelled the intruder, she noticed that we had taken the "nuts" back. "It was all him," someone said, pointing at me.

Class resumed. Then, while Zandra was talking, there was a loud boom from outside of the classroom. We tried to ignore it, but a second, louder boom caused enough disturbance to disrupt the class slightly. "Oh no, they have a battering ram," someone said. "Pay no attention to the sounds from outside," said Zandra. Next came periodic clapping sounds, and then a pause of silence. When we finally finished and I exited the class, I saw to my surprise that nobody was there. I went back in and told Zandra, "It appears that your next class has mysteriously disappeared."

I later found out that they were all hiding, and that the sounds were part of their diabolical plan to disrupt the class. Apparently, they thought that they had had no effect at all. Then they decided to pretend to sleep, and eventually decided to hide on a stairwell.

-Philip