Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day

[bigdamnprincipal]

Even if a new term wasn't starting soon, today would be the perfect day for a picnic. The weather was calm and warm, the food table was full, and there was a respectable amount of glitter on the decorations. There might have been a bigger party going on somewhere else, but here it was time to celebrate the start of summer!

[We're going OCD-free! Have at it!]

Comments

[what_big_teeth]

"I know pizza," Eleanor assured him with a nod. She hadn't had it much, but it was always a popular food in the cafeteria t her last school. "But..."

She frowned a little.

"Cell phones?"

[napking]

"Oh, boy. Forgot all about that one. Okay, so the date in local time is May 6, 2023." Might as well start there. "When is it where you're from?"

[what_big_teeth]

There was a pause, a suspicious sort of look, and then a reminder that different time periods had definitely been mentioned to Eleanor a couple times thus far.

"...definitely not that," she said, "unless you all use a completely different calendar system, anyway."

[napking]

"I don't know if we do or don't," Gray pointed out. "Uh, okay, let's see..." He pulled out a pen and scribbled a list on the back of the envelope. "Here," he held it out to her. "Check off the ones you're familiar with."

The list read:

phones
television
radio
drunk squirrels
computers
cars
airplanes
electric lights
indoor plumbing

With 'drunk squirrels' scribbled out but possibly still legible.

[what_big_teeth]

And the drunk squirrels was definitely catching Eleanor's attention as she looked it over, because almost everything looked familiar to her. She meticulously checked off everything except the drunk squirrels and the computers, and, when she handed the list back to Gray, she had ask.

"Does the scribbled out one say 'drunk squirrels'?"

[napking]

"Uh, yeah," Gray admitted. "They spy on us and then someone reads all their weird squirrel gossip on the radio the next day. It's--it's a thing. Okay, so no computers, no cell phones. Got it." He pulled out his phone. "This is a cell phone. You're gonna want to get one. It makes calls, like a--you know, land line, plugged into the wall phone does, but it also does all sorts of other things like take pictures and let you watch anime." The anime was very important. To Gray, who gave Eleanor a handwavey demo of the basic capabilities of your average smartphone.