Here and There

Spent the evening tonight playing Scrabble and drinking Chimney Rock Fumé Blanc with a certain someone.

But to spice things up, we culled a movie theater-sized box of Rainbow Nerds.

I grew up with Nerds. I should specify: I grew up with split-box Nerds, in which one half was devoted to, say, cherry, while the other side was home to grape.

Rainbow throws a true Nerds party, and everyone’s invited.

But that’s the problem—the less-desirable flavors rub elbows with the royalty of the Nerds flock.

So … what are nerds (lowercase) to do but separate the flavors out? And to do this over wine and a friendly game of Scrabble, no less.

It’s amazing what you can discover through a seemingly useless activity, but here are a few Nerds observations we gained through our piling activity:

* Wonka loves green nerds more than any other color.
* There are two variations of yellow, color-wise (see photo below).
* There was one blue Nerd, an obvious misprint of grape.

And here’s the end result:

(Sidenote: as a kid, cherry was always my favorite. I thought life would never end when Dairy Queen made Cherry Nerd Blizzards.)

Also, we developed different strategies for culling our respective piles of Nerds. My friend says, “I make little piles of the same color. I have five or six green piles. Sometimes I let piles mix, in the interest of speed, and I separate them later.

The most important thing is to create coherence in the Rainbow Nerd pile right away. The initial culling is a two-stage process. The first stage is fast and furious. You want to create basic organization, and some colors slip through. Second stage, you refine and polish it. That’s when it matters.”

My tactic was to not ever get preoccupied with any particular color. As my eyes fall back on my master pile, whatever color happens to stand out, I go full force for that color. No hesitation. Two hands is a given, and they never stop moving.

Okay, her strategy is more of a strategy-strategy. We debated making this “Nerd allotment” the game tonight, letting it take precedence over Scrabble.

In the end, we got our color-coordinated piles. We scratched our respective autistic itches, and we didn’t spend any extra money. I mean, really, who needs Netflix when you have a big box of Rainbow Nerds?

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