Forget about taking that course in existentialism. Forget the entire philosophy department. Forget evolutionism and creationism, too. Don't even pay attention to Monty Python and his meaning of life.

Because life, claims a select group of Harvard students, is foosball, and, paradoxically, foosball is life.

"It's a subculture," says sociology concentrator Robert H. Greenstein '89. "I wrote my sociology paper on small groups on the foosball players at Currier." Greenstein says he has played foosball since summer camp nine years ago.

Foosball, for the uninitiated, is a kind of miniature soccer game. Twenty-two plastic and wooden men, 11 per side, are attached to eight rods which the foosers manipulate, allowing the players to perform such daring maneuvers as a "Z," in which the ball bounces off each side of the playing table and directly into the goal.

A shared addiction to the rather obscure sport gives the hard-core players an identity as foosers. "It's a clique of addicts," says Manuel Lopez '89. And Flora Chang '86-'87 says, "A lot of the people in Quincy recognized me because I played foosball."

Students offer varying reasons for their foosball fascination. "Really because it's there," says Lopez, who defines himself as "addicted." The game tends to "get a little intense sometimes," Lopez says.

Despite the "intensity" exhibited by some foosers, many say they were initially attracted to the game because it's a social thing. "I liked the people that played," says Quincy resident Megan E. Jewett '86-'87, to explain her initial attraction to the game.

Robert E. Brown '85, a grad student at MIT, returns to Quincy to play an average of one hour a day to defend his number one doubles ranking with partner J. Nicholas Dowling '88. He says he goes "there to talk to the people who play" as much as to play himself.

Foosers also say that the game provides them with a way of procrastinating. "It's a good way to waste time, especially during exam and reading Period," Jewett says. Robert Jen '87 says that one Reading Period sophomore year, he "stayed up all night" playing foosball.

Unlike other Harvard sports which require beginners to master skills and complex rules, the basics of foosball are easy to learn. "Anyone can walk up to the table and get the idea of the game in five minutes," Brown says, but, he adds, the best players spend a lot of time at the table.

Although the game is deceptively simple to the neophyte, really good foosball "requires extremely fast reflexes and quite a bit of strategy," says Philip E. Ross '88. One good working strategy entails "getting a variety of shots in order to be as unpredictable as possible," he says.

Warning--Foosball Is Addictive

"I was totally addicted," Jewett says. One day she played foosball from 2:00 p.m. until 3:00 a.m., but that was an epic night. When she began foosing in November of 1983, she averaged only three hours a day.

Some have managed to break, or at least cut down, on the habit. "I used to be really addicted," says Scott R. Panzer '88. Panzer plays on the Quincy House foosball ladder and is the House "czar. The czar is handpicked by the previous czar and takes responsibility for the upkeep of the table and running the ladder.

"This year I've had more control than last year," said Ross, who cut back his weekly quota from five hours to two.