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Tale of college humor

I drove through the night to arrive in Macomb, the land of Women In Underwear. The first sights of her campus made me feel like a little kid again, as though I were a mere freshman about to go nuts for the very first time. Each building triggered a memory that seemed more like last week than forty long months ago. I drove past the Ritz, where happy hours launched many a marathon binge. And there was Sundown Liquors, where I did my weekly grocery shopping. I spotted the parkway along University Drive, where I sometimes slept on the way home from happy hour. Morg Hall was still standing, but some vandal had renamed it Morgan Hall now. Dang kids. And of course Higgindome, where I'd laughed and cried and lived and died so much during junior years.

Higgindome was to be my dorm this time as well. As I walked up to the towering palace, beautiful sounds filled my ears, stereos blasting out of several windows and people shouting humorous obscenities to passers-by below. It felt like, home.

The tough part was going up to the cafeteria alone. As the elevator doors opened at the top floor, my collegiate life passed before me. It wasn't so much a fear of the food; my heart simply had this incredible longing to go back in time to when that cafeteria was mine. I wanted so much to see Lacy and Mandy, Linda, Shellypoo, Musky and Flick and all the Boyzz. What I saw, instead, were totally new faces, strangers, all naively determined to make this coming year the best one of their lives. And it probably would be--for them.

Once I was sufficiently satisfied with my room decorations, an innate drive called me back to my old playground. As I walked inside the Palace, the place was packed and crawling with people, the music jamming, and the mating game clearly in full swing. The atmosphere was very familiar, but not a soul did I know. I had to face up to it: the Palace no longer was mine. I walked out of there feeling empty, very empty, as though I'd just seen the face of an old lover who didn't remember a thing about me.

September was a real scorcher, a nice hot extension of summer. I never saw so many pretty women, so many hot tans, so many browned legs and arms. Just picture 5,000 young ladies, all in the prime of their lives, generously showing off their late season tans. It was more visual stimulation than I was ready for. My eyes wandered more than I preferred, constantly bombarded with pretty sights. It was fun, but I was afraid it was gradually pulling my heart in the wrong direction. It was just such a change from the month before, when the only tan was Denny’s leather red neck, and the only hint of navels was a 300 pound Smitty when he reached up for something. The college girls were just a little more tempting.

There were several sweet, cute girls on my floor that I liked. Every lunch and dinner, I competed for their attention, trying to be the one to make them smile or laugh. Some times it seemed they were interested, and then there were times I felt like the Invisible Man. And the harder I tried, the more phony I ended up feeling. Same old cycle. Why couldn’t I just be bold and honest, and show a girl that I liked her? Why couldn’t I let down my guard?

I liked being on a coed floor. It was amazing how quickly the folks on that floor bonded together. I didn't think I'd fit in with the college party animals of Macomb's campus, but 12th floor wasn't party wild; they were kindly, a friendly non drinking community for the most part. I had no idea such groups existed at college.

Thanks to Connie, a hip floor cop, we did all kinds of activities together: pizza parties, canoeing, bowling, getting arrested, and a camping trip which nearly took my life. I'll begin with the camping. I didn't have a tent, so I decided to play Daniel Boone and sleep next to the fire. And while I was snoozing heavily, a spark started my sleeping bag ablaze, burning a twelve inch hole through the bag, perilously close to my genital region. Thank God Connie woke up and noticed the flames, otherwise it might have been "great balls of fire" for the Morgster that evening.

Our next thrilling adventure came the following weekend at Lake Argyle. We rowed out to a remote little cove where we figured no one could see us "swimming where prohibited." Wrong. Moments later, five of us were whisked away in a Sheriff's boat. It was an exciting moment for me. My only regret was that Lance couldn't have been there to share in it. He lives for that stuff.

Once the cop boat reached shore, Deputy Feif escorted us into an awaiting squad car. Unfortunately, things went downhill very fast from then on. Not only did the deputy fail to turn on the siren, but he adamantly refused to let me wear cuffs. Hey, if I'm paying a $35 fine, I think I'm entitled to the handcuffs and a full set of mugs. Disappointing, to say the least.

"Lee Harvey" made my return to Macomb an enjoyable one. He didn't drink the way I used to, yet he got into Dorm Warfare as much as I ever did. With him as my partner, all of Higgindome was in jeopardy. Our assaults became the highlights of my evenings. The two of us suited up in goofy looking disguises, armed ourselves with dart guns and squirt guns, then conducted nightly hit-and-run raids against pretty, defenseless women. For me, it was a throwback to the old days of fun and games, a chance to live out my "never grow up" philosophy. No one knew who the masked gunmen were; we went only by the alias of "Night Assassins."

Few women learned our true identities. To some we were known as those cute guys who go around shooting people, to others, those immature brats who go around shooting people. Some things never change. As our reputation grew, many people sought our services, asking Lee Harvey and me to kill their friends for them. Our usual contract called for payment based on the number of darts that struck the victim. It wasn't easy to tell how many darts connected, so we came up with the idea of putting shaving cream on the tips of our darts. Kind of a tracer effect. And what a great innovation! How satisfying to watch that stuff splatter on your victim's forehead.

My favorite target became Kellygirl, a tough little lady I met in a football huddle the week before. "You got the hots for this girl?" Lee Harvey asked as we crept up to her door.

"Kind of," I whispered to my masked side kick.

We applied the shaving cream to our dart tips, then knocked and trained our weapons on the door. An instant later we lunged into the room, darts flying, cream splattering, and girls screaming in fright. One of those girls happened to be Kellygirl's mom, an unlucky visitor. She laughed even harder than the young coeds.

Just as I was retrieving my last stray dart from under a chair, Kellygirl grabbed a loaded squirt gun out of her desk and pumped me full of water. At last, a woman with a little fight in her. I stood in shock for just a second, then got the heck out of there.

I wondered if Kelly knew who was behind the mask of that attack, and how much this masked gunman dug her. It didn't take long for the first question to get answered, maybe fifteen minutes. After showering up, I heard a knock on my door. "Who goes there?" I called out. No answer. Uh huh, I had a pretty good idea who it was. I grabbed a pitcher of water and slowly opened the door. Just as I expected, Kelly lunged in at me like a cat. I splashed the water into her face, but that was hardly enough stopping power to halt this warrior woman. She cleared her eyes, then stepped in and smeared shaving cream all over my face and chest. Twice, twice now she bested me. That is when I realized: she could be the one. All my pranks of the past went by unchallenged, unappreciated, until this girl came along. At long last, I came up against a girl with some moxie in her, a rebel girl who could give me a good fight.

I wiped the shaving cream away from my eyes, looked long and hard at this laughing woman in front of me, then reached out to lay hold of her. She was a slimy devil, slipping through my arms and down the hallway, with me following closely behind. It didn't help that Kelly was on the track team. Nevertheless, I managed to grab her arm from behind, only to have my bath towel come loose from around my waist, leaving me without a stitch. I had no choice but to let her go, but not without my respect.

Over the next few days, Kelly and I took turns dropping in on one another. I'd stop by her room in the afternoon, usually just to chat, then she'd sneak by my room at night and douse me with a bucket of water. If she only knew what that did to me, how it captured my heart. So innocent, the simple and wonderful feeling of a fifth grade crush. We seldom spoke by phone, Kelly and I. Instead, we'd call out, window to window, since we were in adjoining wings. "I'll see ya tonight!" she hollered at the end of our room-to-room conversation.

"Bring rubbers!" a dude from another floor shouted back.

"That wasn't me!" I quickly added.

One evening Kelly stopped by, not to throw water on me, but to describe how she'd just escaped the hands of Pubic Safety. While she was walking across the footbridge to Higgindome, she proudly explained, a sudden urge caused her to leap off of the twenty foot high bridge to the top of a tall, skinny tree a few feet away. The front desk clerk quickly called Pubic Safety, as well as Higgindome's Head Staff, who rushed to the scene and ordered Kelly to swing back to the bridge immediately.

"I swayed back and forth," she boasted, "til I could grab onto a skinnier tree." That skinnier tree slowly bent over from Kelly's weight and eased her down to the ground, where she easily outran the authorities.

I decided to send Kelly some flowers on Sweetest Day. A pink one meant friendship, red meant romance; I sent one of each, figuring I'd leave the choice up to her. But when I didn't hear from Tree Woman for the next few days, I feared I'd scared her off and spoiled a great friendship. I'm going to feel really stupid when I bump into her now, I thought.

Imagine my relief when Kelly finally popped into my room, a few days later, and doused me with a bucket of water. Still pals, that's what that meant. With my confidence restored, I wrestled the chick to the ground and squirted shaving cream all over her. And she, on me. I was happy to be reconciled with Kelly, even if it was only as buddies.

It's easy to see why I got so wrapped up in her. Being with Kellygirl reminded me of myself a few years earlier. Looking at her, I could see a young Morg in his college prime, a master of fun, a shooting star no one could keep up with. I loved being around Kelly, but at the same time, I felt old and outdated compared to her. Granted, I was still clowning around even at twenty six, but inside I wasn't so carefree as I used to be.

I'd been trying so hard to get the playful old me back, forgetting all the while the many lessons my heart had learned in recent years. I had to face it: innocence was lost, the wonder of young adulthood past, and I couldn't go on envying Kelly for what she had. Now was her time in the sun; I already had mine, and God knows I enjoyed it to its fullest.

Now was my time to grow up, to realize that life means more than having fun, it means giving instead of taking; it means stepping back instead of plunging forward, it means caring more than desiring, and it means graduating instead of flunking.

I'd faded out of the tight circle on my own floor during the past month or two. Lee Harvey was going out with one of the ladies I'd tried so hard for, a couple others had new girlfriends too, and the rest trimmed down to their own little clique. Hanging out with them just didn't seem worth while. They were time-killers. Nintendo games, TV, anything to pass the time, much like me and the Boyzz used to do. But the years had changed my heart about that. Time was a precious gift, I realized, not to be wasted or squandered.

I devoted every bit of my spare time to writing. Deep down I felt I was meant to be a writer. That was the gift I longed to use. But how to use it was an issue I didn't dwell on enough. Writing prayers had given way to writing Boyzz stories. With no Christian fellowship down here at school, I drifted a million miles away from God, and my spirit disappeared. I was so utterly alone.

The only spark I had left was fueled by old memories: Lance and Musky, Flick and Banjo Jim, all of us living on the edge of life. To write of those times, I had to animate and relive them in my mind. I hadn't touched a drop of beer or alchohol in more than two years, but in my heart I was back to being Morgypoo, worshipping the nectar of the gods, glorifying beerdom and all that it brings. A dry alchololic, they call such a man, replacing booze with another addiction.

Only occasionally could I write of the hurts or emptiness I was embracing, painful admissions like this one:

I was trying not to be selfish, yet I was hanging onto my heart with all my might, afraid if I gave it to God He'd be a killjoy and not let me have the things I wanted. The lesson I needed to learn is best illustrated in the following prophecy:

A thwarted, captive, imprisoned self, that was me precisely. No naughty behavior, but no good virtues either. How could I have anything good inside? I wasn't plugged into God any more. I was proof that Jesus' words were true: "Just as a branch can bear no fruit unless it remains in the vine, so you must remain in Me, apart from Me, you can do nothing." Without His Spirit I became utterly self centered. And unhappy.

Again it was the stories I was writing, the earlier portions of this book, in effect. So in my heart I was back in those ruts all over again, reliving the quest for fun and fame, and the emptiness that resulted.

It's too bad I didn't put some of that energy into studies. Come mid December, I took a quick poll of my grades and found I needed to ace two of my final exams, or else I would fail probation and be sentenced to forty years in hell, dodging branches and feeding the nasty chipper every day. Why, I could almost hear the Tree People above me again, their chain saws buzzing away just before the blood curdling warning: "Headache Morgy!"

Hell became my motivation. For two weeks I lived in a real sweatmare, caring only about surviving finals week. For the sake of studying, I quit going to meals with people and turned myself into an absolute hermit, burying my head deep into the books as never before. My God, I even found out where the library was.

Come finals week, I crammed, I exammed, and I would wait very nervously for the mail over winter break.

Turn to Chapter 23: The Chlorine and Concrete Jungle [Club Macomb] … http://www.morgypoo.com/ch23.htm