With apologies to Dave Sim...

Why an aardvark?

Back in October 1972, a new teacher had recently started at Addison Trail High School in Addison, Illinois, one whose favorite animal was the aardvark. He was a sponsor of the high school theatre troupe, and some of the students "caught the bug," so to speak. The first play the troupe did that season was Dracula. At one point, one of the characters is supposed to say "A big rat just ran across my foot!" During one performance, the actor decided to ad lib and change the line to "A big aardvark just ran across my foot!" From that point on, in each and every single play & musical the high school put on, at least one line in at least performance was altered, replacing a word with "aardvark." The worst-case scenario occurred during a production of 1776, when one actor replaced the word "donkey" in a discussion of the resources of the Continental Army. Several actors had to switch their lines as well, in order for the show to go on and the conversation to make any sense whatsoever--but that resulted in several of our Founding Fathers having a discussion about how many aardvarks the Army had, used for pack animals, foraged for, still needed, etc. One of the actors involved wasn't all that good at ad libbing, and had problems getting his lines straight as a result.

Anyway, partially as a result of all this ad libbing over the years, the troupe as a whole developed a kind of "thing" for aardvarks. The end-of-year drama awards were named the "Aardys," the troupe adopted Bernaard, one of the aardvarks at the Brookfield Zoo, and took up an annual collection to help pay for his supply of ants. (Bernaard was later sent to stud in Texas, and another aardvark was assigned to the troupe.)

Jump ahead a few years, to my sophomore year at AT. I had finally been dragged kicking and screaming into drama after a semester of dragging my feet and conveniently finding excuses, and had just finished working tech on my first production there. Then came the musical for the year, Little Shop of Horrors; I didn't make the cast, and so gleefully once again signed up for tech. Part of the set design called for graffiti-covered brick walls (actually painted canvas flats, naturally); the sponsor in charge of tech pulled out a large box of various-colored pieces of chalk and told us to have fun. The only rules: no vulgarities and no "real" names of people or groups (which resulted in the appearance of a lot of nicknames, as well as misspelled rock group names, such as "Deaf Leopard"). I had spent most of the first semester listening to the other drama types tell various "aardvark" stories, and had just begun a semester of Speech class taught by Captain Aardvark himself (the teacher with a yen for aardvark memorabilia), and was inspired to chalk one wall with an enormous, green "AARDY WAS HERE." During the construction stage of another show, I did the same, only using a 6" wide paint brush with a bit of light brown paint still in it, on one of the walls offstage one night when I was washing out paint brushes after most of the crew had left. (It was painted over after I graduated, but I got the chance to add it back--only smaller and less sloppy this time--and the newer version is still there, in plain view.) Over the next few years, "Aardy was here" occasionally mysteriously appeared on desks and blackboards throughout the building.

During my senior year, my schedule got all messed up. Normally, everyone in Band was supposed to have lunch immediately afterwards, in case rehearsal went long or in case section rehearsals were needed. I took a class that only met during that lunch period, and so the Band/Lunch duo got split--but that meant I could work in the Drama Office for credit during that period (and I also had the last period free, so that meant two periods in the Drama Office). During the last week of March, I had read an article in the paper about employees taking April Fools' messages for their bosses from "Mr. C. Lion" (or any of a number of other fun possiblities) with the number of the nearest zoo, and decided to try it myself. I spent a few days trying to come up with a creative spelling of "aardvark" that wouldn't necessarily be an immediate giveaway, and, as I remember it, ended up leaving a message from "Mr. R.D.R. DeVarque." It wasn't to the point of being a nickname or pseudonym at this point; it was more akin to the "Kilroy was here" of World War II airplane mechanics.

Then came Valpo. Valparainsnow, Windyana. Home of Orville Redenbacher's Popcorn Field Number 1. Chiefly during my freshman year (not nearly as often after that), "Aardy was here" would occasionally pop up on blackboards and other places around campus, most notably on the set for Lysistrata (which, like Little Shop, involved graffiti-covered walls on the set).

Valpo first made Internet accounts on the school's VAX system available to students other than engineers, math majors, and science majors while I was there; I got my account shortly after Spring Break of my Junior year. One of the first things I was shown how to do was change the Personal_Name; I figured the name I'd been joke-signing things with for a while would fit the bill nicely, and so "Aardy R. DeVarque" was born. Originally, "Aardy" was only a character I played while I was on-line; I treated the Internet like a giant role-playing game. That way, "Aardy" could have any history I wanted, without revealing anymore of myself than I really wanted to. This was especially handy for the inevitable "Who are we?" threads on the listserv & usenet newsgroups I read (I eventually came up with "Raymond Dennis Reginald DeVarque, nickname 'Aardy'" for the answer to Name) and for when I wanted to flame someone or argue a viewpoint that wasn't actually mine, as well as for use on the MUCK I got drawn into. (MUCK = A MUD--multi-user dungeon--only not as "deep/large.") Over time, I subsumed the character of Aardy into myself, but kept the name for net-related recreational activities. I first started being called Aardy in real life in conversations with fellow Valponians that met me first on the "qwest" MUCK, and the name sort of stuck after that. At this point, I prefer Aardy R. DeVarque in the vitrual world, and my real name in the real world, but will generally answer to either.

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