Don't be snitchin', yo

I am a nerd. It is useless to deny it. The realization was really driven home when I found myself, on Saturday afternoon, running around a venerable-looking green with thirty other people, playing none other but the greatest imaginary sport ever invented, Quidditch. Despite the sport's unrealistic qualities, however, it was probably the funnest hour and a half of the week. The group of us quickly became a spectacle, attracting amused/bemused faces and more than one envious glance. The thing is, Quidditch is intense. We play contact. We shove and yell. We throw balls at each other. The game was a festival of spirited rivalry and youthful ebullience while at the same time a laid-back bunch of people who knew this was in fact a very silly thing to be doing - and were okay with that.

I think I may actually have outnerded myself beyond the boudary of respectable limits. You see, for the first two games of the afternoon, I was the Snitch. In the college version of Quidditch, the snitch is a person who runs around the entire campus with a sock, chased by two random other people. In practice, this meant I discovered many fun and out-of-the-way nooks, gutters, construction sites, and other off-limits locales while sprinting up Docteur Penfield in a most unnatural manner, chased by two people on brooms.

LARGE GROUP OF WELL-DRESSED GIRLS: Oh, look, they're playing Quidditch! That's so cool!
ME, SPRINTING AROUND THE CORNER: SHIT! I'm the Snitch!
(thirty seconds later, two large guys on brooms come running by)
LARGE GROUP OF WELL-DRESSED GIRLS: Go Snitch go!

McGill's Quidditch team is a fairly new institution, having been started this year by our rez, Douglas Hall. Interest is sky-high, suggesting either a severe case of suspended adolescence for all of us or just awesomely immature fun.


We also have a crest, granting instant credibility to any project we undertake.