You might wonder why does this guy stick out in my mind at all, when there were hundreds of kids like him in the 70's, and even if you're too young to remember the 70's, everyone knows hundreds of people who are like this even still now today; the only difference is that almost all of them are fat guys with beards who hang around comic books shops and talk about death stars and robots.

 

But there is a reason I remember this guy, and it's not because he was a Star Wars freak, even though he totally was, but because being a Star Wars freak led him to being a laser freak. He loved lasers. And when I say that he loved lasers, I'm sure there are smart asses out there right now who are thinking "He loved them? Did he want to marry them?!" But if I had to answer, I would probably say yes, he did, because he talked about lasers like most boys that age talk about girls.

 

Once I heard him talking for almost half an hour about how they made the ray guns shoot on Star Wars, like when you saw them fire and heard the "bee-yew, bee-yew", what it actually was was "sound with light passing through it". I simutaneously had three thoughts at the time:

 

But I also know, because I've seen the movie Real Genius like 100 times and there's this one part where Val Kilmer tells the other laser geeks that it is possible to synthesize excited bromide in an argon matrix, and then a few years ago I met a lady who really was a laser scientist and I asked her if it really was possible to synthesize excited bromide in an argon matrix, and she said not in any application she'd ever heard of, but she seemed impressed that I knew enough to ask the question. The truth, of course, is that I don't know what any of that means, but when I hear "bromide" I think of Alka-Seltzer and I love Alka Seltzer and I recommend it to everyone for whatever medical problem they have, and if it doesn't work then I tell them to take more Alka Seltzer. Naturally, by medical problems, I don't mean tumours, or Alzheimers, or genetic things like Cystic Fibrosis or Down's Syndrome, or mental things like Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or psychoses of any kind. Also please note that I'm not a doctor, and that this rant is in no way meant to serve as a diagnosis. If you are experiencing medical problems, please consult with your physician.

 

Anyway, this kid really really liked lasers, which I thought was really dorky. And even though I had absolutely no interest in lasers, I did kind of like Star Wars. To me, studying all about the special effects of how they did everything that they did in the movie, kind of takes away from the movie itself. Like, when I was about in the 4th grade someone gave me a Fonzie shirt. I don't know why, because I don't remember liking Happy Days or Fonzie all that much, although I guess like every other 9 year old in the mid-70s, I probably thought it was pretty cool. I remember wearing that shirt a couple times and having people ask me "Do you think you're Fonzie or something?" Which was totally stupid. Fonzie wouldn't wear a shirt with himself on it. I mean, if you want to be Batman, you wear a shirt with the bat symbol on it, not a picture of Batman. It's kind of the same thing, I just don't remember how.

 

I don't know whatever happened to laser boy. He used to live next door to this geek who hung around with my brother. But the geek moved away, so he didn't keep in touch with Laser Boy anymore, and my brother lost touch with the geek, and I don't really even talk to my brother much anymore, so even if you did that Kevin Bacon thing, all the links would be broken. But the thing is, I don't know whatever happened to him. I figure either he works for NASA or he's a fat guy with a beard hanging around comic book shops. Or maybe he's an evil genius plotting to take over the world. I don't really care what happened to him, well, except that third one. Because if that's true then I'll probably wind up in a concentration camp, wishing I'd never made fun of Laser Boy. Although he probably calls himself Laser Man now, or Dr. Laser or something stupid like that.

 

Like I said, I don't care about lasers, although they are kind of cool to look at, especially the ones that burn through stuff. So even though this kid was a total dork, and the slight coolness of lasers in no way detracts from his dorktitude, it's not like he was a dork about something completely uninteresting like, say, cheese.

 

Just the word "cheese" itself is kind of disgusting. Even real cheese is quite often runny or smelly or gooey or milky or any combination of those; but things that people call cheese that aren't cheese, like toe cheese, are really really gross. But the point is, it's not hard to imagine how much of a dork a kid would have to be to have people consider him a fan of cheese, like he studies cheese and talks about cheese, how many different kinds there are and how they're made. I don't know anyone like that, but if I did, I think he would easily be ten times the dork laser boy was.

 

It's really not the fact that he liked Star Wars, or lasers, that made him a dork. He just was a dork. It's like he had this dork gene. He would have been a dork even if he'd liked something cool, like, say, the Rolling Stones. He could have liked the Rolling Stones and gone on for an hour about how Mick Jagger's left ear was .002 centimeters lower than his right ear, and how the album Some Girls was recorded in 36 hours in King City Studios in Westberkfordshire, England, and that each kid in the choir at the beginning of "You Can't Always Get What You Want" was paid the equivalent of $124.00 US Dollars. And you'd be like, damn, he even makes the Rolling Stones boring.

 

But it kind of works both ways. Once I knew this kid in grade school who seemed to like two things: One was Star Trek, the original series, and this was before there was any Next Generation or Deep Space Nine or even any of the movies, and the other one was World War II. He knew all the battles and generals and stuff, which would be weird for a grown man but was extra super weird since we were only in fifth and sixth grade. But he would talk about it just enough to make it seem cool, and not all the time so you got sick of it. This is the guy from Lithuania who grew up and joined the FBI, which doesn't have anything to do with anything except that I like to mention it because to me the next coolest thing to being in the FBI is having a friend who's in the FBI even if you haven't seen him in 15 years, you can just kind of mention it like it's no big deal. Anyway, the point is, he wasn't a dork even if both of those subjects could have made him dork-like, or should I say that they lend themselves well to dorktitude.

 

I wonder sometimes if there really is a dork gene, and how we could go about proving it, which I'm certain at this point is the very least we'd be able to do, because it's far too late to prevent it from being passed on to the next generation. I know this to be true because I went to see the new Star Wars movie and this kid was sitting behind me talking about action figures and stupid crap like that. You know how sometimes people are born with extra chromosomes, like XYY or something, and they wind up weird or mutated? That's how I think this kid is, like not only does he have the dork gene, but he has an extra dork gene. In fact now that I think about it, I wonder if he was kin to laser boy. Or if he liked cheese.