THE GLORY DAYS

My five year college reunion is coming up this year, so I'm constantly receiving all sorts of flyers and emails reminding me that college was the bestest time of my life and if I want to experience even a sliver of joy ever again, I have to pay them money and participate in their weekend events this June. I'm going to do just that because, cynicism and sarcasm aside, I had a blast at college. I'm not so foolish as to consider them the halcyon days of joy and rapture, I did not experience a state of exaltation never to be repeated again, nor will I live my life in a cloud of misery and disappointment believing I can never again achieve such happiness as I found there and then. I will, however, remember those days fondly and repeat many of my stories from that time. Because hey, they were pretty funny (or, in some cases, have become funny since time stepped between us and blurred the details a little). With that in mind, expect a number of college tales over the next few months. Not ALL college stories, of course, I am doing other things with my life now, but a goodly number (and they will be largely the goodly ones, after all my parents read this column).

That said, let us begin:

My first year of college I lived in a suite with nine other guys. We had a brother suite, watched over by the same RA. We were (by dint of our room numbers) the One-Tens, they were the One-Twenties.

Our story starts on a warm fall night when two members of the One-Twenties strode into our suite and tossed a fencing glove on the floor, thus throwing down the gauntlet and formally challenging us to a duel, laser-tag guns at 8pm in two weeks time (not as catchy as pistols at dawn, but who was going to get up at dawn on a college campus?). This was an RA sponsored event, well our RA was kind of lazy so it was all the One-Twenties doing, he just arranged for RA program to pay for it.

There weren't enough people available in our two suites, so we each recruited others for our teams. My suite contained six engineers and the One-Twenties contained none, so the teams largely formed along school lines (and by schools I mean the School of Engineering and Applied Science, referred to as the E-School and the College of Arts and Sciences, generally referred to simply as The College). This wasn't surprising considering how much trash talking went on between the two schools anyway. They called us Enginerds, we labeled their school the College of Arts and Crafts and referred to their classes as Basketweaving. The impending laser tag battle merely gave us a focus for our jibes. It was all friendly of course. There was little real animosity. We all liked each other, actually. (After all they knew deep down that the world needs engineers and deep down we appreciated the value of a good basket).

The day of the battle we all had a good time (especially the engineers since we trounced the One-Twenties and their allies) and afterwards everyone agreed that the One-Twenties had done well to coerce our RA into "running" such an event.

Apparently, however, defeat stung. The next year the One-Twenties challenged us again, although this time they changed the battlefield. For one thing, the original dormmates had scattered and we couldn't raise a large enough group for laser tag. For another thing, the RA wasn't paying for it this time.

So instead the former members of the One-Twenties challenged us to a few rounds of Starcraft. For those of you unfamiliar by Starcraft, it is a Real Time Strategy game. The player is responsible for managing producing and directing military units, building defensive and supportive structures, and gathering resources.

That's right, the College students challenged the Engineers to a VIDEO GAME. To this day I'm still not sure what they were thinking. Okay, so one of those College students was really a Computer Science major (whether he admitted it or not) but that didn't help them. We did try to warn them, but they wouldn't hear us.

It took us three minutes to whipe them out the first round. At this point they might have realized they were out of their league, but they tried again anyway. This time they requested what they thought was a handicap. They asked that we give them ten minutes to build up before we attacked their bases. The second round was over in twelve. (We had their bases surrounded in six and spent the rest of the time waiting, watching, and building more units to add to the pile - at ten minutes exactly we stepped in).

There was no third game, nor did the One-Twenties challenge us again. But really, challenging engineers to a video game? That's like challenging a shark to a swimming competition. There's no way it can end well for you.

Speaking as the shark, though, I had a good time.