My arch nemesis

20Dec05

Everyone should have an arch-nemesis. It fleshes you out as a character and makes you more interesting. Both of you, in fact, since you’re his arch-nemesis too, and it goes both ways. I’ve believed this for at least a decade, since university, when I met my own favorite arch-nemesis.

My university humour newspaper, Golden Words, had a continual staffing crisis — two crises, in fact: how to get rid of the contributors we didn’t like, and how to attract more. The first had a deceptively simple solution: just being ourselves. The second was more difficult. We eventually settled on a two-step solution: First, stop ripping up new contributors’ articles in front of their faces. Second, set up a booth at the annual Clubs Night held in Grant Hall.

As co-editor, I manned the booth along with Justin, the senior staff writer and chief keyboard smasher. How this was supposed to attract new staff, I don’t know. Our area of expertise was more in the field of antagonizing strangers. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before we ran afoul of Medieval Club Guy.

Medieval Club Guy was, true to his name, there representing the Medieval Club. (I don’t actually recall his real name — just that he looked like Gareth from the UK version of The Office.) The Medieval Club was a bunch of guys who got together to practice the nerdly pursuits of heraldry, the bardic arts, whacking each other with foam swords, and memorizing lines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, while the few girls just got to weave or be scullery maids. Needless to say, this was not an organization that one would join to meet women. So it was perfect for Medieval Club Guy, who didn’t seem to be at risk of meeting women anyway. I’m not sure how our disagreement started, but I’d guess it had something to do with the fact that he was wearing a cape and hosiery. You can’t let that sort of thing pass without comment.

We argued freely over a wide variety of topics, ranging from how gay his cape was to how gay his pantyhose were. Finally, his manhood impugned and his stock of medieval insults exhausted, he’d had enough and challenged me to a duel. Fortunately, I knew my rights and reminded him I was entitled to choose the time, place, and weapons.

“We fight in Cornwall,” I said.

He wrinkled his brow. “Cornwall, Ontario?”

“Cornwall, England. And we fight with tin.”

“Tin swords?”

“No, just hunks of raw tin.”

Either he decided I wasn’t taking the duel very seriously or would have strongly preferred an alloy, because he grabbed a quarterstaff and started thrusting it menacingly in our direction. Pretty soon, an older man in a robe came over and yelled at him and took away the staff. Medieval Club Guy slunk away at the wizard’s heel, and that was the last we saw of him that night.

However, I saw him again one afternoon a few weeks later. I was crossing a busy street with my friend Jon. Standing catercorner to us, decked out in his full regalia of cape and hosiery, was Medieval Club Guy. He spied me at the same time I saw him. He raised a fist and shook it.

“Knave!” he shouted. Then he scampered away.

Jon turned and looked at me, dumbfounded. I kept an impassive face and just shrugged slightly, as though this sort of thing happened all the time, as though it were just a fact of life that occasionally a foppish courtier would travel through time from the 14th century to tell me off in the middle of the street. I’m not sure I ever actually did explain the whole thing.

Medieval Club Guy was in one of my classes the next semester, and although he cracked unfunny nerd jokes now and then, he wasn’t really a bad guy. He still played the role of antagonist, but really, he wasn’t an arch-nemesis so much as an arch nemesis. As I said, everyone should have one. But it’s definitely a bonus to find one you actually like.

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