My son Matthew is away at a three-week summer program for gifties. He is having a great time, and making his old man proud by manifesting eccentricity. The program took the kids to a gator farm this weekend. The place had the most bizarre gift shop, Matt wrote to tell us — and he walked out of the joint as the proud new owner of a Czech-made gas mask. It came in handy too in the boys dorm, as he explained in tonight’s missive:

The gas mask is surprisingly well ventilated. It even has a small valve that goes to a straw inside the mask so as to drink water. There’s also an analogue voice modulator in there that makes me sound like Darth Vader. It turned out to be particularly useful recently when the toilet clogged with someone’s (not me) massive poop still in it. Everyone was gagging and going to hang out in other people’s suites, but I stayed cool and stink-free with my activated charcoal-deuterium filters. They protect against biological, chemical, and nuclear contamination!

Yeah! By the time he finishes nerd camp, I think he might end up handing out tracts proselytizing for Cosimanian Orthodoxy. But we will be glad to have him back at home, where he routinely cracks us up with his crackpot wit. He reports that he won the contest in his suite in which all the guys tried to come up with the weirdest song they’d ever seen and heard on YouTube. Matt won with “Lesbian Seagull,” by Engelbert Humperdinck. That’s my boy!