STUDENT 1: A
Chemistry major with poor coordination skills.
(Athletic part.)
STUDENT 2: A History
major with poor coordination skills.
(Athletic part.)
NARRATOR: A typical
pretentious narrator.
SCIENTIST 1
SCIENTIST 2
SCIENTIST 1 speaks with a powerful, portentious tone
throughout. SCIENTIST 2 is handling
papers.
(SCIENTIST 1 takes center stage.)
SCIENTIST 1: Symmetry.
An unnatural state, made familiar only by the shape of our own bodies
and our Euclidean figures? Or the
fundamental frame of all things? This
question—
NARRATOR walks up and
taps SCIENTIST 1 on shoulder.
NARRATOR: Excuse me—unless I misread my part, I’m the
narrator for this sketch.
SCIENTIST 1: (Checks
script.) Oh, sorry.
SCIENTIST 1 leaves,
embarrassed.
(Pause.)
NARRATOR: (Clears
throat.) Corridor etiquette. Merely a trivial social grace? Or the underlying foundation of modern
civilization as we know it?
STUDENT 1 walks by,
chanting: Chemistry. Got to get to
chemistry. Can’t skip chemistry. Got a test in chemistry. Chemistry.
Got to get to . . . Exits.
STUDENT 2 then walks
by in opposite direction, chanting: History. Hurry up for history. Half an hour tardy. History.
History. Have to stay for
history. History . . . Exits.
SCIENTIST 2 (pacing
aimlessly): It looks like . . . No, that can’t be it. I’ll have it in a minute. It’s got to be there somewhere. (Continues
to pace.)
(Short pause.)
NARRATOR: Observe, for example, the following scenario. Two typical college students meet in a
corridor going in opposite directions.
STUDENT 1 and STUDENT 2 pace slowly onstage and see each
other. At a distance, they stop walking,
smile, and raise a hand in greeting.
NARRATOR: These two
students are suffering from a typical case of Excess Casuality Syndrome. They have now seen each other five times
today. Even though they have never met,
they both believe that the other knows their name, and are therefore obligated
to greet each other.
STUDENT 1: Hey, how are
ya.
STUDENT 2: I’m good. You?
STUDENT 1: Doin’
alright. How’s your sister?
STUDENT 2: What sister?
STUDENT 1: Yeah, what
sister? Same here.
STUDENT 2: Yeah.
NARRATOR: Now observe this
classical mishap.
The STUDENTS continue to walk, both veering upstage. They stop again. They then resume, veering downstage. Both stop.
Once more, they veer upstage.
They are now face to face.
STUDENT 1: ‘Scuse me.
STUDENT 2: Sorry.
Both students move upstage. They remain unable to pass each other.
THE STUDENTS laugh.
They try to pass each other again, without success. They continue to attempt passage during the
following lines.
NARRATOR: The mechanics of
Simultaneous Veering Phenomenon, or SVP, were first laid out by a Swiss
sociologist named Andreas Geser in 1833.
They are closely related to the fields of game theory, quantum physics,
and Freudian psychoanalysis.
Simultaneous lines:
| STUDENT 1: Okay, you go
right, and I’ll go left.
| STUDENT 2: Okay, you go
left, and I’ll go right.
Students bump into each other.
STUDENT 1: You remind me
of my mother.
STUDENT 2: You are a
latent phallic symbol.
Students bump into each other.
NARRATOR: It is said that
through intense study of Zen Buddhism, one can ignore the question of corridor
veering entirely, as the effect will dissipate between iterations as long as
excess thinking is avoided. Those of us
who have not studied how to empty our minds, however, are at a disadvantage.
STUDENT 1: Okay, let’s
grab each other as if we were dancing and spin around. Got it?
STUDENT 2: Yep!
Students assume exotic dancing stance and attempt to spin
in opposite directions, first one way, then the other. On a paricularly large swing, they fly apart,
still no closer to passing each other.
STUDENT 2: This is
ridiculous. I have to get to History.
STUDENT 1: Sure is
crazy. I can’t miss Chemistry.
Students babble about passing each other in the background
through the following lines.
SCIENTIST 2: I’ve got it!
The universal center of symmetry is located in Northfield, Minnesota!
SCIENTIST 1: Really?
SCIENTIST 2: Would I lie to you? It looks like it’s somewhere on the Carleton
College campus!
SCIENTIST 2 walks up to students and observes their
struggle, scribbling notes on his/her script.
SCIENTIST 2: How interesting . . . Hardly any sign of the St. Olaf effect at all
. . . And where did you say you were
from?
Struggle intensifies as SCIENTIST 1 speaks.
SCIENTIST 1: It has been speculated, over the ages, that the
universe began in symmetry. From the
moment that the expansion of matter began, to the present day, all matter and
all energy—Nothing. It is all equivalent
to nothing. Somewhere, somehow, it must
all balance out . . . .
NARRATOR (mocking SCIENTIST 1): Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah.
SCIENTIST 1 and
NARRATOR sneer at each other. They throw up their heads in
disdain, say Hmmph! and leave stage at exactly the same time.
Upstage, the students fall down one last time.