Now that the DNC is over, the wide-eyed liberal college students with clipboards stopping you to talk about the DNC have morphed back into wide-eyed liberal college students with clipboards stopping you to talk about MASSPIRG.
So I came out of the T at Kendall carrying, as usual, my clipboard with a puzzle on it--in this case, Acrostic #17 from
http://www.puzzlecrypt.com--and ran into the aforementioned MASSPIRG campaigners. One asked, "Do you have a few minutes to spare for the environment?"
I glanced at my own clipboard and said, "Well, if you can spare few minutes for a puzzle, I can spare a few minutes for the environment."
I don't know if this confused her, or if she was hoping this meant she'd be able to talk to me about the environment after all, or if she was just desperate for conversation after being blown off all day, but she smiled and said "OK" and looked at my clipboard.
As it happened, I didn't have the first answer, and the clue was "Married relative in the Far East makes delicious food." This was clearly not what she was expecting, and she looked confused, and the other two came over, and eventually she counted the blanks and guessed "Pakistan?" (which is not, trust me, right), and I shook my head and said "Ah well" and kept walking.
It did feel much better than just blowing them off.