THE RIP TABLE CHRONICLES
THE ORDER OF TWENTY
BOOK CLUB FIELD GUIDE
- ARCHIVE DESIGNATION
- RTC-BC-020
- STATUS
- Cleared for Group Examination
- RECOMMENDED PERSONNEL
- 4–20
- SUPERVISION
- Historically ineffective
- BEVERAGE REQUIREMENTS
- At discretion of local command
BEFORE PROCEEDING
This document has been prepared for readers attempting to determine what, exactly, happened in The Rip Table Chronicles: The Order of Twenty.
Results may vary. Witnesses are unreliable. Memories have been altered by time, repetition, nostalgia, alcohol, sibling testimony, and the universal human desire to improve a story slightly every time it is told.
The Archive therefore recommends that all conclusions remain provisional.
Especially the good ones.
THE EVIDENCE
- 1.
Which story felt the most unbelievable… and which one did you suspect was probably almost completely true?
Document your reasoning. Unsupported accusations are encouraged.
- 2.
At what point did the Order of Twenty stop feeling like a group of kids and start feeling like an actual institution?
Was there a particular event, location, rule, person, or piece of questionable equipment that changed it?
- 3.
Every group has a Rip Table.
Maybe it wasn’t a table. What was yours?
A basement. A garage. A field. A boat. A parking lot. A particular booth at a restaurant. Somewhere everyone knew to go without needing to be invited.
Where was your Rip Table?
PERSONNEL
- 1.
Who in the Order would you have trusted most during an actual emergency?
More importantly:
Who would you absolutely not have trusted?
Defend both answers.
- 2.
Which member of the Order reminded you most of someone you grew up with?
Names may be entered into the official record at the discretion of the witness.
- 3.
The book occasionally suggests that bad judgment becomes significantly more powerful when distributed across multiple people.
Do you agree?
Provide supporting evidence from either the book or your own adolescence.
OPERATIONAL DOCTRINE
- 1.
Which Doctrine deserves to survive another generation?
And which should probably be sealed permanently in the Archive?
- 2.
What unwritten rule existed among your own friends that everyone somehow understood without ever discussing it?
- 3.
Several terrible ideas in the book appear to have begun with some variation of:
"You know what we should do…"
What sentence from your childhood should have caused an adult to intervene immediately?
MEMORY
- 1.
How much of childhood do you think we actually remember correctly?
Does it matter?
- 2.
The book treats memory less like a recording and more like something a group builds together over time.
Did that change how you thought about any of your own stories?
- 3.
Is there a story from your childhood that your friends or siblings remember completely differently than you do?
The Archive recognizes that you are correct.
They are obviously mistaken.
THE ADULTS
- 1.
One recurring mystery hangs over much of the Archive:
How much did the adults actually know?
Were they oblivious? Were they pretending to be oblivious? Or were they simply exhausted?
- 2.
Did reading the book change the way you see the adults who tolerated your own childhood?
- 3.
Who was the adult who quietly made your group’s world possible?
The parent who drove. Fed everybody. Opened the basement. Fixed things.
Didn’t ask too many questions. Or asked exactly the right number.
SUBURBAN MYTHOLOGY
- 1.
When does a true story become mythology?
Is it when details change? When everyone remembers it? When nobody can prove it?
Or simply when the story becomes better than whatever actually happened?
- 2.
Which story in the book do you think the Order will still be telling when they’re eighty?
- 3.
If you could add one missing file to the Archive, what story from your own childhood would belong in it?
Give it a proper Archive title.
Bonus consideration will be given for an unnecessary Also Known As designation.
FINAL EXAMINATION
Before closing the file, every participant must answer:
Who was your Order of Twenty?
Not necessarily twenty people. Maybe five. Maybe three. Maybe forty.
Who were the people with whom you accumulated the stories that somehow became part of who you are?
And do they know you still remember?
OPTIONAL FIELD EXERCISE
Before the group leaves, choose one story that everyone told during the discussion that isn’t in the book. Write down:
THE INCIDENT
APPROXIMATE YEAR
KNOWN PARTICIPANTS
LOCATION
ALSO KNOWN AS
OFFICIAL VERSION
WHAT PROBABLY ACTUALLY HAPPENED
Congratulations. You have begun your own Archive.
SPECIAL ARCHIVE ACCESS
REQUEST A WITNESS
Some questions cannot be resolved from the surviving documentation. Fortunately, one witness remains unusually willing to talk.
Book clubs discussing The Rip Table Chronicles: The Order of Twenty may request a complimentary 15-minute virtual visit with author Joshua Cherfoli, schedule permitting.
Ask about a story. Challenge the official version. Request clarification. Attempt to determine whether something in the book actually happened.
The author reserves the right to answer: “That’s how I remember it.”
REQUEST AUTHOR ACCESS · theriptablechronicles.com/bookclub
ARCHIVE NOTE
If your discussion revealed a previously undocumented incident, questionable childhood decision, or competing version of history, the Archive would like to hear about it.