The Under(age) Classmen: Part 3 of The Adventures of Moses Kincade

One thing that would never be said about Moses is that he was in a hurry to do anything.  This could be applied to essentially everything about Moses, including his education.  For better part of the last 7 years, Moses had been a student at Tatum University and while he didn’t have a degree, he was within striking distance of at least 4, from most people’s accounts.  It wasn’t the fact that Moses was lazy, or that he didn’t want to join the real world, as some called it.  It was really that he just had no idea what he wanted to do after he finished college; so he stayed.  At various times in his collegiate career, he had been majoring in English, Biology, Psychology, Business, and for one semester Fashion Design.  Moses usually kept that major to himself though.  He didn’t mind people knowing as much as he just got tired of being made fun of by his friends, whether or not it was in good fun.  So for now, he was majoring in Wildlife Science.  No one really knew why, but just assumed it was because he would prefer to be at home with his cat than hang out with real people.

Moses had never really thought about the fact that he was much older than many of his classmates until the semester he turned 25.  Shortly after the semester began, his professor in an English class he was taking assigned group projects and put all of the students into groups.  Moses probably would have never talked to any of these people had the project not been assigned, but he was with them now, for better or worse, so he had to make a sacrifice and join in conversation with his classmates.  This is when he realized that two girls in his group were 18 years old.  Moses was taken aback a little by this news.  He first wanted to congratulate them on somehow managing to get into upper level classes as freshmen, but then he realized that because these kids were of this new age fancy pants generation that talks in emoticons, he may not be able to communicate with them.  He didn’t even start texting until he was 23 years old and these kids seemed to come out of the womb teaching their parents how to T9.  Moses wasn’t even really sure what T9 was, but he thought he had heard of it before.  The idea of having to work with these kids was very discouraging.  When two of the girls in his group started a conversation about The Hills, Moses knew all hope was lost. 

Over the next few days, Moses made his best effort to work with his group members.  However, the girls mainly discussed whether Zac Efron  or Rob Pattinson was hotter and Steve, the other guy in Moses’ group, was really just… forlorn, in a word.  Moses had come to the conclusion that he was going to have to do all of the work on his own.  He was accustomed to doing work alone so this was nothing new, and actually, it was nice because it gave him a break from cOoL kIdS who LoL’d and oMG’d!  Moses knew that sooner or later, he would have to assimilate though.  If they were going to make their presentation seem reasonably coherent, it was a necessary evil.  To not look un-hip, Moses refrained from asking his partners what they were saying and he contacted the only person that he knew that would be able to explain all of this to him; his 13 year old cousin, Terrence. 

Terrence was Moses’ 13-year-old cousin that lived in California.  Moses couldn’t imagine anyone better to teach him how to talk to these new creatures.  Although Terrence seemed slightly bummed out to learn that his “cool” older cousin was actually a “lame noob”, in Terrence’s words, he agreed to help him.  Mainly because whenever Moses came to visit he would let Terrence do things that his parents wouldn’t.  Over the next couple weeks, Moses diligently studied the dark arts of the bLoGGerS, LoL-eRs and OmG-ErS.  With the help of Terrence, Moses became fluent in emoticonese, learned all of the hip instant message lingo and even figured out, for sure now, what T9 was.  He was now ready to confidently discuss the presentation with the members of his group. 

Upon returning to class, Moses used his new skills to explain how they were going to present their project to the class.  As soon as Moses said his first public OMG!, the girls immediately stopped talking about whatever hipster fellow they fancied that week and amazingly, Forlorn Steve perked up and actually seemed interested in giving the presentation.  Moses felt a little important.  It was as if he had just said the most profound thing, or turned a key that opened a door to the Matrix.  Either way, he had their attention.  Once Moses could understand them, he began to learn more about them and realized that they really weren’t that bad.  They were just different.  He also learned one other thing.  18-year-old girls are dumb.  Zac Efron is WaY HoTtEr than Rob Pattinson.  Take it from a guy who spent one semester as a Fashion Design Major.