Cowabunga, Dudes
It was after 11 p.m. on a recent Thursday when the end credits for the late showing of 300 rolled. My boyfriend and I exited the AMC theater in Olathe (Strang Line Road? BFE!) all bleary-eyed and ready to brave the rainy night outside. That’s when we encountered a couple of dozen Olathe South High School students hanging out with purple T-shirts pulled up over their heads. We looked up at the marquee above them: TMNT.
Well, no shit. It was the midnight movie premiere, and these kids were ready for action. They were costumed as the Foot Clan, the evil Shredder’s bottomless army of faceless, featureless bad guys whose job is to get dispatched by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in three movies, the Mirage comic books and a cartoon series.
“How does this work?” I asked a guy who was brandishing his duct-tape-bound wrists at me (not very menacingly). “I was into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when I was in middle school. You guys are 10 years younger, at least.”
(I’m only slightly embarrassed to admit that back then, I was obsessed with Raphael, the red-bandanna-wearing turtle, whose barbs of sarcasm were sharper than his sai and whose teenage angst was matched only by my own.)
That obsession belongs to a new generation now.
The Foot Clan was upon me, all black ninja sweatpants, purple caps emblazoned with orange feet, and assortments of homemade weapons. Everyone seemed eager to prove his or her formidable knowledge of turtle trivia. “Turtle Stew came out in ´91 or ´93,” someone said.
“But the cartoon started in 1989 or something. And it was on Saturday mornings when we were growing up.”
“I read the ´87 comic books.”
“We know all of it.”
“I’m a nerd. Proud to admit it.”
“I’m April!”
A week after meeting the Olathe South Foot Clan, I ended up at the movie theater in Ward Parkway (the one populated by all the kids banned by the movie theater on the Plaza) to see TMNT. Me and my BF were the oldest people in the theater by at least 10 years. And I loved it.
I consider the self-proclaimed nerds at Olathe South good company.
-- Nadia Pflaum
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