Science Fairs: Is there, like, any escape?

Dude, it was, like, a totally freaky week at Beaver Creek Elementary, my so-called school. It was Science Fair week. And, like, the Games SO did not go well!

At first everything was cool in the extreme. The whole school got psyched for the Fair. Even the twerps in kindergarten made goofy little experiments using baby chicks and soda pop. We thought this time for sure we would slam our arch-rival, Pine Vistas.

Plus it looked like we had a definite tear-duct advantage. Everyone was digging up these mega-hanky, up-close-and-personal stories.

Like Dingo Martinez, the dude whose mom died last year of liver cancer? It's so sad! She was, like, this world-famous astro-physicist and so was his grandpa. Well, Dingo has this hot project on multi-tesseract time travel and he says his ma is checking his data from the Fourth Dimension! Whooaa! He's got this, like, total fixation on being the third generation to win the Blue.

And that creep Billy Heard, the wannabe tough guy, with "Girls Suck" tattooed on his tongue? We all thought he would end up in juvie! But instead, him and his old man got tight working on some motorcycle physics experiment. Now all he cares about is winning the State Science Fair.

Then there's this girl Gayle Turtleton who's really geeky in a sweet kind of way, you know? She was working on this project with her science teacher, "Your multiple personalities: which has the upper hand?" But she dumped him from the project right before the Science Fair! Says she wants to "go it alone." I mean, Hellooo! Can you spell L-O-S-E-R?!

Then our spies reported that Pine Vistas had a super-secret weapon in their award winning science project arsenal. Something about proving the viability of a new energy cell that could save the world from its, like, total dependence on fossil fuels. As if!

When he heard about that, our principal, Mr. Yagg who's, like, totally paranoid? Well, he must've forgot to take his Prozac that day 'cause he went ballistic and called a halt to all school activities except Science Fair projects. I mean, like, science ALL DAY. I think it drove some people over the edge 'cause the next day most of the sixth-grade tested positive after they inhaled their project, which was titled, "Helium: does it change voice performance in mammals?"

Things kinda went downhill from there. At the Regionals, they ordered helium tests for all the upper grades. Danielle Winthrop was disqualified for "conspiring to torture" with her project, "The genetics of little brothers: can they withstand extreme pressure?" And several third-graders were busted for plagiarizing data from the Zoog Disney website.

Pine Vistas got accused of buying off the judge from Deer Valley. He was seen accepting a big bag of Xtra Gooey Sticky-Wicky donuts. The Science Fair Committee confiscated the donuts and gave purple participation ribbons to everyone to prevent a mass boycott.

But the Big Question still was: Like, who would win the Blue? It was totally a nail-biter up to the end. Dingo's Tesseract Time Traveler and Pine Vistas' energy chip were in a dead heat, with a second-grade project, "Talking to ETs using a Slinky," close behind.

But by the final bell the second-grader had swiped the energy chip, jumped in the time machine, and disappeared into thin air. So zooming up from fourth place to grab the Blue was Dinky Wezel's spectacularly bogus project, "Cloning Granny's Kitty."

I mean, like, girlfriend, how lame is that?

Kit Miller has experienced many, less fictitious science fairs and hopes to compete again at the 2004 Games.