On Attending a Mensa RG after Many Years

Having no plans for the Labor Day weekend, I was tempted by Northern New York’s Regional Gathering, “RechaRGe,” in Albany.  Just far enough away to be “away,” but not too far for easy traveling.  I hadn’t been to an RG for 12-13 (or so) years and had only the vaguest of plans of attending one at any time in the future.  But given the circumstances, I figured Albany wouldn’t be so bad.  I recall prior RG’s as being a patchwork: activities with some intellectual pretension and others having no purpose at all … amateurs on parade, lecturing on their notions of history and/or reality … late nights gabbing with friends and acquaintances … games that Milton Bradley would never have dared to market.  A Mensa Regional Gathering is somewhat like a science-fiction convention, only less focused.

On the outskirts of Albany, across the highway from the State University, the workaday motel was sufficient for the needs of a gathering of about 100 people.  Just provide rooms for conferences, space for hanging out and free food; Mensans will do the rest.  It all began to remind me of a cruise ship, only more down-to-earth.

Ruminations on the game room:  all games have one of three themes, rather like Nabokov’s comment that all literature consists of 10 plots.  Games, other than role-playing games, are based on strategy or chance or a combination of both.  The rest is merely “atmosphere”: whether you play on a marked board or not, whether you move pieces, tiles or cards, whether you score points or race to finish first.  I played a round of Scrabble with another participant.  Playing Scrabble with total strangers is risky, especially when there is no dictionary to hand.  There is an art to courteously disputing a player’s attempt at a word firmly enough to convince him to withdraw it from the board.

Ruminations on the presentations: when given by a professional on the topic or by a well-versed amateur, they were informative, even absorbing.  But when given by someone who wanted to be the focus of attention and expound on what he thought fascinating, it was excruciating.

Ruminations in general: There’s still energy in Mensa; the younger generations are still joining … the parties were decidedly tamer (at least based on what went on in public) … Is it realistic to expect wild parties in Mensa?  … The comfort of being among people who accepted eccentricity, even practiced it … All hail the folks who haven’t given up their curiosity!