The story of Joel Phillippe

Inside jokes are really one of the sweetest rewards for life's enduring relationships, at least among my friends. As fringe benefits for the job of friendship, they're right up there with free dry-cleaning. Because when you can turn a conversation on a dime or enhance an shared experience just by dropping some relic piece of dialogue from ten years ago on someone, then you know you have something really special.

These things are usually lost in the translation when imparted to another outside the circle, and yet I feel compelled to forge ahead with a retelling of one such instance of inspired inside-joke-i-tude.

During the summer between seventh and eighth grade, I was fortunate enough to spend a two-week stint attending an "honors" camp at local university with a life-long friend and big proponent of the inside-joke. It was designed to be a sort of test-drive for college -- you live in the dorm, get to class on your own accord, etc. Not "camp" by definition, but the same sorta model of autonomy amidst learning/socializing/beerbonging.

Having never had the adolescent experience of camp, we were both stoked by this new-found freedom and the golden opportunity this afforded us to exact our worldview on a bizarre subset of Omaha's talented middle-schoolers. As kids from the blue-collar neighborhood of South Omaha and not your traditional "honors" students, we felt very little in common with the other attendees, and thus saw the situation as ripe for our unique brand of juvenile-but-satirical commentary. And brother, there was no shortage of material.

In fact, it really started to get a little out-of-hand. More than a few of our "professors" had to intervene in our mid-lecture fits of jiggling. Counselors threatened to separate us during field trip events. We often lost sleep recounting the details of the day's biggest laughs. Our elaborate running-jokes even crossed generational lines and veered into a study of funny-bone genetics during the closing "Parent's Day" ceremonies when our spot-on impressions of some of the students performing on-stage left our dads helpless with belly-laughs. That's right, grown men who should know better were helpless to resist the tragi-comedy. And for us, that was the ultimate reward, because really there's no better validation for a smart-ass kid than seeing your dad (or someone else's dad, for that matter) reduced to the same level of disruptive, juvenile snickering.

But I digress.

Although there were a lot of jokes forged during that two-week episode, there's really only one nugget that remains in our shared vernacular after all these years. It was something gleaned during our first field trip, just hours after orientation. The event was my first "Shakespeare on the Green" and, although I would learn to appreciate the Bard's writing later in life, I was, and continue to be, bored by the performance of his plays. And it was not a good opportunity for a get-to-know-ya. Fourteen year old's hanging out in the summer sun, suffering through a three-hour play about teenage sex and clan rivalry are not-yet equipped to navigate those glacier-filled waters.

["It seems like these star-crossed lovers were really playing with the idea of sex, love and death right from the beginning of their courtship. I wonder if that's a device of poetic conceit borrowed from his contempories, like Ben Jonson, or his classical influences. I'm Matt, by the way, a thirteen-year-old PhD-candidate who's just starting to get "hair down there."]

Instead it's like a carnival of random first impressions:

That kid has the same Batman t-shirt as me.
She's hot in a slutty-way.
The "Green" is lumpy.
Oh, there's the other poor kid.
That one kid = gay.
Am I this dorky?
Why are they passing around a garbage bag full of popcorn?
My back hurts.
Counselors are dicks.
Peeing is not an option.
More of the same Batman t-shirts.
Bearded lady?
Who is this in front of me?

And although the group had been relatively subdued for most of the performance, the introduction of the communal popcorn had forced most to abandon whatever isolationist strategies they were pursuing and enter into the fold. I think my friend and I were a little too weirded-out to partake of much popcorn or conversation.* We weren't really that psyched to begin with, and then there's the popcorn that you really don't want... so...

We certainly weren't as psyched as Joel Phillippe.

Joel was sitting in front of me. I watched him nervously fidget for most of the show while marveling at his near-perfect sphere of a head. In general, Joel looked like he had been sold on fake, healthy, Mom-approved, activity treats long ago. He looked like a baby-fat Bill Gates. Gold-rimmed glasses and a bad polo and a suburban dim-wittedness specific to the Midwest. He was a blonde, Alan Eakian-certified dork, who, up until the popcorn, was boy-in-a-bubble withdrawn.

But once he got a few hits of some fresh kernels, he started to get a little loose. Chatting it up when possible, talking to himself when it wasn't, and laughing in the awkward silences that followed -- all the while monopolizing the popcorn, taking it by the fistfuls. It became quickly apparent that not only was Joel sold on fake-y treats, but he was also not acquainted with the concept of adult self-control. Joel was feeling his oates, so to speak.

And we were in stitches, because his Bacchanalian musings over his popped corn were starting to get noticed by everyone else. The whole episode played out with the rising action of a two-pump chump's first organism as Joel turned to us, with our mouths agape, and declared:

"These are good snacks!"

Yes Joel, good snacks indeed.

* Something about food in bulkier sizes. This same friend and I dissected the whole bulk-food theory years later in college. Basically, it's size makes it a formidable opponent and a natural threat. Said friend also postulated that the threat was instinctively understood amongst the species such that you could rob a bank armed with only a 6 gallon "milk bladder" from your local dorm's dining hall.