November 8, 1998.  Watching The X-Files from the red chair. (#198)

I sat at my desk, the built-in one under the loft bed I bought from Claire Seaver two years ago, grading papers.  Mrs. Tracy had entrusted me with grading the homework collected in her class Friday, and I was looking through students’ answers, and whether or not they had completed it in the first place.  I was working kind of slowly, because the computer was on, and I had an IRC chat open, where I was talking on IRC to some 19-year-old girl in Michigan named Michelle.

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Michelle923: That’s so cool that you’re going to be a teacher! Do the students in your class misbehave often?
gjd76: sometimes, it depends on the kid and the day
Michelle923: That makes sense. I had a student teacher once when I was in high school.  My best friend and I thought he was really cute ;-)
gjd76: haha
Michelle923: Any big plans for the week?
gjd76: just school.  what about you? isn’t it pretty late for you?

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I looked at the clock: it was 10:02.  That meant it was 1:02 in the morning for Michelle.   But more importantly, it meant I was late.  I typed, “oh crap i have to go, i’ll e-mail you tomorrow.”

I grabbed my car keys and ran to the car, not bothering to tell any of my roommates where I was going.  Jed was not home, he was swing dancing at the University Bar & Grill, but as far as I knew, Sean and Brody were each in their rooms.  I thought about running back inside for a sweatshirt, since the weather had cooled over the last few days, bringing an end to Jeromeville’s prolonged summer-like season, but I decided against it, not wanting to be any more late than I already was.  Hopefully Michelle was not too upset that I left so abruptly; she seemed really nice, and she sounded cute.

I arrived a few minutes later at the familiar house on De Anza Drive where Eddie Baker and John Harvey and four others lived, after having to drive another four houses down to find a place to park.  Either someone else on this street was having a party, or it was going to be a busy night here at the X-Files watch party.  One look inside the living room told me it was the latter.  One of the couches in the living room was meant to hold three people but now held four, and the other one had an open seat next to Tabitha Sasaki, but she had put her hoodie on that seat, presumably saving it for Eddie since they were dating and he lived here.  About a dozen more people sat on the floor, and I could hear others in the kitchen and dining room in the back of the house.  The only open seat I could find was a red fabric chair that was lower to the ground than a standard recliner, positioned just next to the television and facing away from it so that its occupant would have to lean forward and turn to the left in order to see the screen.  This was probably why no one was sitting there, but that position still seemed more desirable than standing, so I sat in the red chair, turned the whole chair slightly to the left, and leaned forward.

Most of the regulars from last year’s watch parties who had not graduated and moved away were here.  Tim Walton, Blake Lowry, Marlene Fallon, and Robert A. Silver III, who went by the humorous nickname “3.”  Kieran Ziegler.  Colin Bowman.  Seth Huang and Ellie Jo Raymond.  Todd Chevallier, Darren Ng, and Ajeet Tripathi.  Brianna Johns, Chelsea Robbins, and Morgan King.  A few people I did not know.  And of course all of the guys who lived here, although I had not seen Eddie yet.  Marlene and 3 sat on the floor closest to me, with a girl whose name I did not know, although I had seen her around Jeromeville Christian Fellowship and at church.

“Hey, Greg!” Marlene said as I sat down.  “How are you?”

“Pretty good.  How are you?”

“Good!  I feel like I haven’t talked to you in a while!  Are you still doing The Edge this year?”

“Yes,” I explained.  “The kids I knew when I first started there have moved on to high school, but I’m getting to know the new kids.  We’re kind of short on leaders this year so far.”  I trailed off after realizing that I did not want to make Marlene and 3 feel guilty for deciding not to volunteer with The Edge this year.

“Is The Edge the youth group at church that you used to work with?” the other girI asked Marlene.

“Yeah.  Greg and I and 3 all did The Edge last year.  Junior high kids.  Greg, have you met Lacey?”

“I don’t think so, but I’ve seen you around,” I replied.

“Hi,” the other girl said, smiling, extending her hand as if to shake mine.  She was fair-skinned, with strawberry-blonde hair down to her chin and bright blue eyes.  Her face was lightly spotted with freckles, and she had a mole on the side of her neck.  “I’m Lacey.”

“I’m Greg.  Nice to meet you.”

“Lacey is a freshman,” Marlene explained.  “She and I went to high school together.”

“Oh,” I replied. “That’s awesome.  Have you been following X-Files?”

“I used to watch it with my parents sometimes,” Lacey explained.  “And I saw the movie.”

“I did too.  A bunch of us from this group all carpooled to see it the day it came out.  It was the last day of finals week, but I had finished all my finals already.”

“Well, that worked out!  Are you a sophomore, like Marlene and 3?”

“Actually, I graduated last year.  I’m the same age as Eddie and John.  I’m in the teacher training program at UJ this year.”

“No way!  You’re gonna be a teacher!  How does that work?”

“I do student teaching every day in the mornings, helping out in two classrooms at Nueces High,” I explained.  “I’ll be gradually taking over the classroom as the year goes on.  The teacher for that classroom makes observations, gives suggestions, stuff like that, and my professor observes me teaching a few times a year.  In the afternoons, I’m back here on campus taking education classes.  I have a seminar with the other math people that goes all year, and this quarter I’m taking a class about teaching non-English speakers and a class about cultural diversity in schools, with the secondary student teachers from all subjects.”

“So you’re gonna teach high school?  What subject?”

“Math.”

“What kind of math?  Algebra?  Calculus?”

“I don’t get to pick.  Usually they just hire teachers by subject, math, science, social studies, English, whatever, and what class I teach depends on what they need and what I get assigned.  As a real teacher, I might get a say in it, I might not, it depends.  This year I’m doing geometry and Basic Math B, which is the math class for people who need one more math class to graduate but probably won’t take any more math.”

“What’s your favorite kind of math?”

I paused.  I hated when people asked me this question, because in my mind, the concept of different kinds of mathematics did not really exist.  There was just mathematics, and it was all connected.  Proofs were a part of algebra and calculus as much as they were part of geometry, and solving equations was part of geometry as much as it was part of algebra.  The fact that people did not see this, that the course titles on their high school schedules led them to believe that algebra and geometry were entirely separate, and that their teachers did nothing to refute this, was one of the biggest problems with mathematics education today, I believed.  But I did not want to scare off the cute new girl with a rant, so I shortened my response and said, “I don’t really have a favorite.  They’re all connected.”

“That makes sense,” Lacey replied, smiling.  “I like that.”

“Greg!” Eddie said, emerging from the combined kitchen-dining area in the back of the house.  “You made it!”

“Yeah.  I lost track of time.  Sorry I’m late.”

“Can you watch the volume?  Turn it up or down if it needs to adjust?  The sound comes through the stereo there next to you, and there’s no remote for it.”

“Sure,” I said, glad to have a job to do and help to make these X-Files watch parties run.  I put my hand on what appeared to be the volume for the stereo receiver that Eddie had pointed to and asked, “This knob?”

“Yes.  Thanks.”  Turning to the group as a whole, Eddie asked, “Is everyone ready to start?”  The room erupted into cheers.  Eddie sat on the couch, in the seat that Tabitha had been saving for him, and pressed Play on the remote.

The X-Files was restarting this week after the annual hiatus that most weekly television shows take for the summer.  Many shows had begun their new seasons at least a month ago, but The X-Files was on the same channel that showed Major League Baseball postseason games, so most of their new shows did not start until baseball had ended.

New episodes of The X-Files aired on Sunday nights at nine o’clock.  However, the Bible study small group leaders from JCF had a weekly meeting on Sunday nights, and this meeting often did not end until after nine.  In order to accommodate them, someone from the De Anza house would record the episode on a VHS tape and begin showing it around 10:10, after the full episode ended and everyone arrived.  Eddie skipped through the commercials at the beginning of the recording and pressed Play just in time for the start of the episode.  He turned off the lights in the room.

I watched the beginning of the episode; some scientists in the desert in Arizona were exposed to the alien black oil virus that had been a recurring plot point for the last few seasons.  One of them began acting strangely.  The next morning, one of his colleagues went to check on him and found a huge hole in his chest; the creature that presumably emerged from the dead body then attacked the colleague.  Multiple people in the room gasped and shrieked; I was having trouble hearing over that, so I reached over and turned the volume knob.

The opening credits played, then the show went to a commercial.  Eddie pressed the button on the remote to fast-forward through the commercials, and people started talking quietly to each other as the commercials skipped past quickly on the screen.  Suddenly, still playing fast, the screen went dark, and people on the screen sitting around a table began interrogating Mulder, moving very fast but saying nothing.  Eddie forgot to resume normal speed playback after the commercials.  Several people in the room booed, and I chuckled at their reaction.

“Sorry!” Eddie called out.  He switched the tape to rewind, then pressed Play when he reached the beginning of that section of the show.  I listened to what Mulder’s supervisors were interrogating him about; basically, they were summarizing the plot of the movie, which took place between the end of the last season and the start of this one.  They pointed out that they did not believe Mulder’s report that he found aliens hiding under the ice in Antarctica, because of insufficient evidence.  Frequently on this show, Mulder’s superiors did not believe him.

At the next commercial, after the bad guys did tests on a human boy with alien DNA who appeared in the previous episode, Eddie attempted to fast-forward through the commercials again.  He missed the start of the show again, and he got booed again.  I joined in on the booing this time.  “Why don’t you do it?” he said to Tabitha, handing her the remote.  “I can’t seem to get it right.”

As I watched Mulder and Scully, now in Arizona, investigate the site of the deaths, I wondered what was happening at the U-Bar.  A couple months ago, Jed and I were both there, I saw a girl I knew from University Chorus named Candace Walker, and I introduced her to Jed.  They seemed to hit it off well right away; I could not tell if they were romantically involved yet, but it would not surprise me at all if they were.  I wondered if Jed and Candace were dancing now.  I wondered if those girls who were so mean to me last week were there.  I wondered if, had I shown up this week, I would find anyone to dance with, or if it would be like it had been the last couple weeks where none of my friends showed up except for Jed and Candace, who spent the whole time dancing with each other, and everyone I asked to dance turned me down.

I heard someone on the television say “Homer,” drawing my full attention back to the screen.  “His name is ‘Homer?’” John asked out loud.  “They named the nuclear power plant employee ‘Homer?’”

“That’s awesome,” I said.  “Nice reference.”  Clearly, in my mind at least, this character had been named after Homer Simpson.  Homer Simpson also worked in a nuclear power plant, and The Simpsons and The X-Files came on the same channel.  After the creature from earlier in the episode attacked Homer, and Mulder got into an argument with recurring character Agent Spender when Spender stopped Mulder from accessing the crime scene, the show went to commercials again.  Tabitha pressed Fast-Forward on the remote control to skip the commercials, and when she resumed normal speed play at exactly the right moment, everyone cheered.  I was nervous now; if I ever got asked to control the remote, hopefully I would not get booed.  Hopefully I did a good job finding the right volume tonight.

I looked around the room as everyone watched the screen.  My friends were here.  My friends did not go swing dancing anymore, except for Jed, whom I saw all the time anyway.  I made the right choice coming here instead this week.  But I made a note to stay in touch with Bethany Bradshaw, since she had always been nice to me at swing dancing.

The episode ended with Mulder and Scully being reassigned to a different supervisor who seemed unsympathetic toward putting them back on the X-Files, and the creature still hiding in the nuclear power plant.  Some people made foreboding sounds as they saw the creature on the screen, followed by the screen fading to black and the ending credits beginning.  Someone turned the lights on in the room as the credits played.

I stood up to stretch as the lights came on.  A few people left right away, but some stuck around to mingle.  John came over to talk to me.  “You think we’re gonna see that creature again?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “You never know with this show.”

“That new agent running the X-Files, he’s been in it before, right?”

“Yeah.  Spender.  He was in it last season.  The Smoking Man is his father.”

“What?  No way!”

“Yeah.  It was in an episode from last season.”

“I don’t remember that.  Good thing you pay attention.”

“What?” Eddie asked, overhearing us.

“Spender, the agent who is running the X-Files now, the Smoking Man is his father,” I explained.

“Oh, yeah,” Eddie said.  “I remember that one.”

“Am I the only one who forgot that detail?” John asked rhetorically.  He followed Eddie to the other room as I looked around to see who else was still here.

“We’re gonna take off now,” 3 said as he saw me turn back toward him, Marlene, and Lacey.  “It was good seeing you.  Hope you have a good week teaching.”

“Nice meeting you!” Lacey said excitedly.

“You too!” I replied.  “I’ll see you around.”

“Have a good one,” Marlene said, smiling, before turning toward the door.

I left a few minutes later, after a few other people had asked me about how teaching was going.  Hopefully they understood that, in giving them the very brief answer, I was not being disrespectful; I just knew that it was already a few minutes after eleven o’clock, and I had to be up early to get dressed and leave for Nueces by seven in the morning.  Jed would not be home from the U-Bar for a while; hopefully he would remember that I had to be up early and come in the house very quietly.

The radio came on as I started the car.  The song that was playing was one I’d been hearing a lot lately, one with a guy talking really fast, making a lot of cultural references that seemed kind of incoherent and disconnected, but the song was really catchy.  By a happy coincidence, the song contained the lyric “watching X-Files with no lights on.”  In other words, what I had just been doing.  I could not understand what he said next, but I thought he said something about the Smoking Man.  Maybe this little coincidence was a sign from God that I made the right decision attending the X-Files watch party instead of swing dancing.

Although I had had a lot of fun swing dancing this past summer, I honestly had no plans to return right now, at least not until the season of The X-Files ended in May.  While my friends who first invited me to go swing dancing had all abandoned it, my X-Files friends were still regularly watching, and I had made a new friend tonight.  This group had become an important part of my life last year.  I enjoyed the show.  I enjoyed the camaraderie.  I enjoyed the group’s little traditions and inside jokes, like booing if someone skipped the commercials and missed the correct moment to restart the tape.  And now I enjoyed having an official job, monitoring the volume.  Even though the view from that uncomfortable red chair was not ideal, I sat there again the following week so I could control the remote.  The red chair became my usual seat, and another of this group’s traditions was born.

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RIP Mark Snow, who composed the music for The X-Files. He passed away a few weeks ago.

Have you ever had to decide between two activities that met at the same time? What led to your decision, and do you think it was the right decision? Tell me about it in the comments.

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