« Nerdcamp 2001 »
Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 23:59 | 2 Comments | Permalink | in Academics, Pictures, Travels | Email Article | Share Article Cleaning up my Safari favorites this evening, I came across an old link that no longer exists. First I felt anger, then confusion, and now it is that familiar feeling that always hits me the hardest: nostalgia. It is quite fitting that two days ago I came across two particular T-shirts, as well. . .
You see, I have this party anecdote that always gets people laughing, especially when I act it out using hand gestures and knee-bending, and the website that proves that it really did happen is gone. Forever.
So for posterity I would like to record the anecdote (in full account form) and the information that used to be on the website. (And maybe tomorrow I will wear one of the old T-shirts under my UCLA sweatshirt.)
In the summer of 2002, I went to the Virginia Governor’s School for Math, Science, and Technology, also known fondly as “Nerdcamp”. The institution still exists at the same old Lynchburg College, and every summer it still opens its doors to 200 or so close-minded, yet somehow diverse, Virginia high school students.
It was the same summer that I went on the Earthwatch Student Challenge Research Expedition to Corvallis, Oregon (which is another story altogether), and it was a big first for me – I lived away from home for an entire month! In college dorms! And, I got a huge crush on a boy named Ian Carleo, who ended up being my prom date, twice.
But the real story comes from the cow farm some hour’s drive away from the Christian college. I took a class on Genetics, which I thought would involve microscopes, but it ended up being a month long discussion on the ethics of artificial insemination. So one morning I woke up really early, got on a bus, and two miles before we arrived at our destination, I began to smell manure. That morning, knowing that I was going to be knee deep in feces, I had put on my bright yellow Colon Crazies T-shirt.
“The Colon Crazies” was the name of the Pep-squad that Hunter Dunlo, one of those “boyfriends” from high school that doesn’t count, had founded. The stadium where our football team played is named after Colon L. Hall, and Hunter gave me one of his screen-printed T-shirts so I could support the players. Until I figured out who Colon L. Hall was, I always associated the shirt with that organ of the human body, so it was appropriate that I wore it on this particular day.
So at dawn, my friend Lindsay Thompson and I arrived with our classmates at the farm. We were instructed to put on clear plastic boots up to our crotches, clear plastic gloves up to our armpits, and clear plastic aprons to tie it all together (actually, I don’t think the plastic arrived up to anyone else’s crotches or armpits, but I have a small stature). We took a tour of the place and learned lots of interesting trivia about manure. Then we watched a live presentation on the anatomy of cows and the expensive nature of cow semen.
After the farmer’s son was positive that we had all got the gist, we lined up, one by one, and mock-inseminated a heifer – the same heifer, over, and over, and over again, until she started backing up and grunting – then we switched cows.
The act of artificially inseminating large animals is actually quite complicated. You must form the fingers of your left hand into a cone shape and shove your arm up past your elbow into the anus of the cow so that you can wrap your fingers around its vagina, by means of the loose tissue of its colon, to hold it straight. Then, you clasp the insemination gun in your right hand and proceed to push it and your right arm into the vagina. Then you pull the trigger. At this point, you have both of your arms inside of a cow and your body is pressed up against its back side.
The really disgusting part of all of this is that the process induces the act of defecation from the cow; hence, the apron and boots.
It seems simple, but, of course, it wasn’t simple for me, and that is why the yearbook dude chose my video to put on the website.
I followed the directions, but when I stuck my hand into the cow, I was so shocked by the heat from the inside of its body – and the feces pouring out of the beast – that I screamed the whole time. It also didn’t help that the hot steaming feces slid all down my body. I remember feeling my eyes get wide as I realized that the hard, moving obstacle within the colon had enveloped my arm and was about to burst out. I also remember a distinct nausea feeling from the smell and having to turn my head away and do Lamaze breathing to survive.
So, obviously, I am sad for the loss of the video.
This is a picture of me and Lindsay Thompson in front of "The Manure Lake". I am wearing my Colon Crazies T-shirt. The farmer's son told us a story about the lake upon our arrival: Apparently, that morning, a cow had waded out into the lake, gotten in it up to its neck, and the farmer and his son had to use a canoe to paddle out into the middle of it to wrap a rope around the bewildered cow's head so they could drag it to safety.
T-shirt #2 that I found the other day is the actual Nerdcampt T-shirt. There are nerd caricatures drawn on the back.
Reader Comments (2)
bye!