I have been hanging out on occasion with a guy who is an aerospace engineer. What he does isn't actually important to the friendship, but it is important to the story because his job is actually launching things into space. Now, if you came to my blog from Facebook you probably know that my middle name on Facebook is Rocketship (I know Rocket Ship is 2 words.) and has been for the last 10 years.
I have waited the entirety of our friendship for him to ask me if my middle name is truly Rocketship. Everyone asks eventually. When they do I get to tell a really dumb story that reflects well on my commitment to a bit.
Well, he has not asked me yet and I am growing impatient to tell the tale.
During the 2009/2010 school year, my sophomore year at Whitworth University I lived with my friend Kristina. Kristina is my favorite roommate that I have ever had, 90% of our conversations were shouted, we gave each other a lot of space and had our own friendships, and we loved hanging out together when we made intentional time to hang out together. What I mean is it was a really strong dynamic that worked for both of our personalities. The other reason our roommate friendship worked so well was we both enjoyed ridiculous, nerdtastic, things and it was always safe to share them and joke about them.
One of the things we loved together was A Very Potter Musical. If you haven't had the chance to see it go ahead and look it up on Youtube, I'll wait.
There is a scene in it in which Draco Malfoy is making fun of Harry Potter and his lack of parents saying, "not all of us inherited enough money to buy out NASA when our parents died. Oh look at me! Moonshoes Potter! Rocketship Potter! Starkid Potter! Traversing the galaxy..." but I'm getting away from the point.
Another thing Kristina and I enjoyed together was playing Aladdin on our Sega. Judge if you want, it was a solid game.
One day while we were playing we decided we needed snacks and we let the game idle while searching for something to devour in our college fueled hunger. When Aladdin idles he pulls out an apple and starts doing tricks like juggling and his very impressive move from the film where he rolls the apple off of his shoulder and bounces it at Jasmine, very impressive. Kristina and I both paused for a second to watch Aladdin do these tricks and be impressed.
"I wish I could do things like that," Kristina commented, then walked back into the kitchen.
"Yeah," I agreed, " but you know, if I could do things like that I wouldn't be here at Whitworth. I would be off traversing the galaxy."
Kristina turned back to me with a raised eyebrow. "You've made 2 big assumptions there. 1) that that is a marketable skill and 2) that it is a marketable skill in space. Oh look at me! Rocketship Daroff.."
"Moonshoes Folger!"
"Traversing the galaxy on intergalactic missions to juggle apples."
And that is the story of why I changed my middle name on Facebook to Rocketship. Kristina also changed her middle name to Moonshoes that day, but, somewhere along the line she grew up and got married and took it down. I, am committed to the bit though. Plus, it has been 10 years and has kind of become a thing. So...
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