My Titanic (Part One)

On your mark, get set, oh right you already sunk...photo courtesy of Real Skiers Ski Uphill

I consider myself to be an optimist. For most things I look on the bright side until I have my hopes squashed under the crushing force of disappointment and defeat. Except for this time. There is no optimism to be had. This is going to be so comically hopeless that the only experience that could possibly be more doomed would be if I, or somebody with an equivalently terrible sense of rhythm, tried to win American Idol. I'm being a realist, not a pessimist.

What experience would ever match up? My engineering class and I are going to race our cardboard boats across the swimming pool with an amazingly quixotic crowd of newspaper reporters, middle school students and administrators. Prepare for disappointment, audience.

Technically we should be okay. We planned these boats for months, making absurd calculations, multiple prototypes, 3D sketches incomprehensible pencil marks.

Then the prototype sunk in its trial run and we figured out that all our calculations were wrong. We were not given time to revise our plan however, because BOOM deadlines. After failing to retrieve sufficient materials at the cardboard "cornucopia bloodbath," and then realizing that we weren't going to have time or the materials to build our original idea, we decided to wing it. That was when it became apparent that we were heading towards a certain death.

Now we have an oddly-shaped cube of cardboard with duct tape perpetually peeling off at the corners, and gooey with black and white paint (our theme is Hawaii but seeing as Michaels is out of flowery leis and we had no access to colorful paint, we have yet to figure out how to pull that off.) We had no time to build paddles or the pontoons that were supposed to make it float. Yet we are going to march straight towards the pool and stand in front of our soon-to-be-disappointed audience with reassuringly proud smiles.

It's a famous To Kill a Mockingbird quote: “I wanted you to see what real courage is. Instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what." I guess we could call this courage. Or megaflop.

The optimist in me knows that it's going to be fun, titanic or not. When my partner and I step in the boat and it slowly starts taking in water, maybe we could pull out trumpets and play Amazing Grace as we sink into the murky depths of what once could have been our success? We could sneak water guns onto the bus and turn the whole event into a cardboard armada in full water-fight battle. Who knows...

I have one major concern. When the duct tape turns to useless strings of polyester, our water-soluble glue dissolves and the cardboard sucks in water like smoothie straws, how will we get the soggy mess off the bottom of the pool? Maybe we'll dive down and pick it up, piece by piece...

Keep it together,

Victoria