Stephanie Grant
Mr. Jennings.
September 21, 2010
Honors English III, 4th hour
Revised: Operation Steal Spock
I do not remember why it mattered so much to me, but it did. Maybe I felt a bit unaccepted within my house, or maybe I was just competitive; nonetheless, the idea of outsmarting a group of highly intelligent people on a mission that seemed doomed to fail was just something that I couldnot quite pass up.
I remember when the seed was first planted. It was probably the first or second day of MSA, and I was riding up the dreaded middle elevator, which had a tendency to get stuck between floors. I was tired of waiting for the other elevators though, and my lack of both coordination and endurance made me scoff at the idea of walking up the seven flights of stairs necessary to get to my room. Perhaps it was so early on in my time at MSA that I did not even know how frequently the middle elevator got stuck; regardless, I was riding up the elevator with a few girls from my house, and a few other girls I didnot know.
The elevator opened on the floor below us and all the girls that werenot in my house stepped out of it. I jumped slightly, alarmed to see a man on one of the exclusively female floors.
“Oh my gosh! That’s a cutout of Spock!” Chelsea screamed, and I laughed at my mistake, for right in front of the elevator, the original Spock stood before us, in all of his six feet, two-dimensional glory. The elevator closed after a moment and then continued its ascent. “We should kidnap him!” Chelsea stage whispered.
“That would be ah-may-zing!” Jenna trilled, excitedly. “We should dress up in all black and take him tonight.”
“I’d help,” I told them, hoping that my participation might lead to my acceptance into their group. It’s not that Chelsea or Jenna were mean; I just was really shy around new people, and at the time, I wanted nothing more than to be home, instead of two hours away at a three week academic camp. I didnot even know or care about Star Trek, but it hardly mattered. They nodded happily.
At our house meeting that night, we discussed our plan with our resident assistant, Abby. “I’ll have to check and make sure that Christina won’t freak out,” Abby said, referring to the RA that owned Spock. “I mean, you guys do plan on giving him back, right?”
“There may be a ransom, like homemade cookies, but yes,” Jenna said. Abby nodded.
“Well Christina’s cool, so she may want to see if you guys can pull it off. I’ll let you know,” Abby told us, and tried to move on to the next day’s schedule, but the house could think of nothing but Spock.
“We need a codename!” Chelsea exclaimed, unable to contain her excitement.
“Operation Steal Spock?” Janet suggested. Everyone nodded in approval.
The next day, a note was posted above the seventh floor’s elevator button, addressed to my house.
“Dear Team Todd,
OSS is on.
- Abby”
And with that, we began discussing how we would pull off the amazing feat. We were unable to leave our dorm rooms after lights out without getting into a ridiculous amount of trouble, which meant that our only choice was to steal Spock during the day.
We checked floor six multiple times a day. We hoped to find no one wandering around, so that we would able to stealthily steal Spock, but there always seemed to be at least one girl who was in our way.
My roommate Delaney and I sat on our beds on the first Thursday of MSA with about fifteen free minutes before we had to leave for Big Group. We had checked the sixth floor a half hour previous, and, as usual, one girl stood in our way.
“Delaney, we should check to see if we can get Spock,” I suggested.
“How much time do we have?” she asked, thoughtfully. I checked the clock.
“Fifteen minutes.” She paused for a moment to think, and then grinned.
“Let’s do this.” We quickly stood and exited our room, leaving the door unlocked. Our lock always stuck, which could be potentially problematic if we had to quickly enter our room while holding a life-size cardboard cutout.
“How are we going to do this?” I whispered, as we crept unnecessarily down our hall, realizing that we never had a concrete plan.
“Shoot!” Delaney said, as I laughed at the delivery of her signature phrase. “I didn’t think about it. Let’s take the elevator down and then one person will hold it.”
“If we press seven as soon as we start heading down, we can almost guarantee that we’ll come back up. If not, we’ll end up on a random floor with Spock,” I said.
“So, I’ll take Spock, and you work the elevator?” she asked. I nodded in agreement as I hit the ‘down’ arrow. The elevator opened immediately. We stepped inside and Delaney pressed the ‘six’ button and then the ‘seven’ button as soon as the doors closed and the elevator began to move. After a few moments the elevator stopped and the doors opened. I quickly stuck my arm in between the doors and Delaney stepped casually out of the elevator. She looked to her left and her right, and then promptly grabbed the cutout. She ran to the elevator, awkwardly carrying the six foot figure, and as soon as they were both safely inside the elevator, I hammered the ‘close doors’ button. The elevator began to move and I silently prayed that it was ascending and not descending. It opened and I saw the familiar corkboard with “Things Overheard at MSA…” written on red paper. Delaney ran with Spock to our room and I followed her. I yanked the door open and then locked it behind us. She sat Spock in the middle of our room, and we stared at him. We knew that our success could be mostly attributed to luck, but, nonetheless, we had succeeded. We stole Spock!
That was the first time I really looked at our captive. I noticed that he was wearing a blue dress with sequins that one of the male RA’s had worn during their skit. He also had a Minnie Mouse hat on, which I now know was probably Jenny’s, who was one of the sixth floor RA’s that loved Disney. He also had an ugly, pattered scarf around his neck. Delaney pulled a blue Star Trek shirt out of her suitcase and slipped if over Spock’s cardboard head, while I untied the scarf, and retied it around his eyes, as if he were a hostage. Then, Delaney pulled out her camera and took a picture of us smiling next to our kidnapped Vulcan. We moved him carefully into Delaney’s closet and slid the door shut.
“I’m going to knock on a few doors,” Delaney said, suddenly eager to share our success with our housemates. She walked out of the room, gently pulling the door closed behind her. In a few moments, the door opened and Chelsea, Jenna and Janet walked into our room. Delaney suspiciously scanned the hallway before shutting the door and locking it. She looked at me and nodded. I slid the closet door open. “Ta-da!”
“No. Way.” Chelsea screeched, with a look of utter shock on her face. “You- I- But-” she stuttered, and then paused for a moment to regain composure. “How?”
“We just kind of took him,” I shrugged, casually, trying to not let on my excitement.
“Who’s we?” Jenna asked.
“Stephanie and I,” Delaney said, beaming proudly. Jenna squealed happily, before she snapped a picture next to Spock. Janet and Chelsea followed suit. After a few minutes, we left for Big Group, making sure that we locked the door behind us.
I did not hear a word about Spock’s disappearance until the next day in my major class. Erin turned to me during our break. “Spock’s gone!” she said. I blinked innocently.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, acting confused.
“We had a cardboard cutout on our floor, and now it isn’t there anymore,” she said, and watched my face intently. I blinked a few times and then settled into a blank stare.
“A spock is something from Star Wars, right?” I asked, acting clueless.
“Spock is a person from Star Trek.” She corrected.
“Oh. Who took him?” I asked. She looked at me suspiciously for a moment, before relaxing. My lie had worked.
“That’s what I want to know. I’m going to make flyers and offer cookies as a reward for his safe return,” she said, before turning back to the poem on her desk. I suppressed a grin.
Later that day, I heard another mention of Spock’s mysterious kidnapping.
“Okay, who knows where Spock is?” Taylor demanded before our minor began. She looked at me, and I shrugged. As she looked away, I shared a look with Janet, but was careful not to smile. “Dang it! We’re going to find him!” Taylor announced, adamantly.
That evening I sat with Janet at dinner, as usual, except this time, Justin from our minor sat with us. I didnot know much about Justin but he seemed like someone that I could easily befriend. I had a strange urge to tell him about the Vulcan in my closet, but I suppressed it, knowing that he was a close friend of Taylor’s. After about five minutes, a girl that I didnot know joined us, and immediately began to question us about Spock.
“Do you guys know where Spock is?” she asked.
“Oh, that Star Wars dude?” I said, seriously. I had to focus on keeping a straight face when I saw her flinch; this was nerd camp, so it was not acceptable to mix up Star Wars and Star Trek.
“Star Trek.” She corrected, reflexively.
“Oh.”
“No idea,” Janet said.
“Me neither. I didn’t even know that there was a cutout until today. Boys can’t go past the fourth floor,” Justin explained.
“You’re right!” the girl said, excited at the new development. “It must be a girl floor.” She lapsed into silence, considering the information she had.
“Or a male RA could have taken it,” I stated.
“That’s true,” she mumbled. I carefully steered the conversation to funny stories, and now remember that meal as one of my favorites, a time that I laughed so much that my non-existent abs hurt. I also began to trust Justin, for reasons I didn’t understand. Perhaps it was because he reminded me of my friends with stories about going through a drive through seven times in a row; once for every person in the car, instead of going into a fast food restaurant, or maybe his banter with Taylor reminded me of mine with my guy friends; nonetheless I became sure that I could trust him. So when the girl from floor six had left our table and was at a safe distance, I looked at Janet. She nodded.
“Justin?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“If we tell you something, do you promise not to tell Taylor?” I asked, mentally acknowledging the risk I was taking for the first time.
“I guess,” he said, hesitantly.
I leaned toward him and waited a few seconds to build suspense. When I could wait no longer, I whispered, “I stole Spock.” He searched my face for a moment to see if I was being honest, and then began laughing hysterically. His face turned completely red, as it often did when he laughed.
“No way!” he said finally.
“I swear.”
“I won’t tell Taylor. That’s so cool!”
“Were we convincing liars?” Janet asked.
“Well, you had me fooled! How’d you get away with it?” After we explained the story, I decided that it was time to arrange a funny way to return Spock.
“What’s your RA like?” I asked.
“He’s cool. Why?”
“Do you think that he’d prank one of the other RA’s on your floor?” I asked, letting the plan come together in my head.
“Definitely. What do you have in mind?” Justin asked.
“Well, we could send Spock down to your floor. And then, in the middle of the night, your RA can put him in front of another RA’s door. It would probably scare the crap out of them when they opened the door in the morning.”
“That’s brilliant! I know he would!”
“Alright, I’ll iron out the details. I’m glad you’re as devious as we are. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” I grinned, not knowing then how right I was. After dinner I went up to my room, in a particularly happy mood.
“Spock’s gone,” Delaney told me sadly when I entered.
“What happened?” I asked, let down that my plan was for nothing.
“A girl from my major came to talk to me. I was straightening my hair and she was just walking around, and she slid my closet open. Then she screamed, grabbed him, and ran out the door. I guess the sixth floor was raiding the rooms and I fell for it. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine! We still stole Spock first,” I said, and smiled. Delaney grinned back at me; no one could take our accomplishment away from us.
Other houses began to kidnap the poor Vulcan after that, copying both our method and our idea. After one house bent his neck, Spock had to be retired. Still, my roommate and I were legends; the first people to steal Spock, a high accomplishment at nerd camp. A reenactment was featured in a camp skit the last night of MSA, which showed Delaney and I as stealthier than we really were. Regardless, the legend of the girls from floor seven who stole Spock lived long and prospered.