My Sophomore Year and a Trashcan

I upgraded to a television that knew what cable was, but I had to put this beast somewhere. What better place than a flimsy entertainment stand bought at the Wal-Mart Supercenter. The box said, “Some assembly required.” It should have said, “Some assembly required, but if you plan on finishing the assembly don’t buy this product.” The thing stood up straight, but it was vulnerable to crashing to the floor when someone brushed by it, or if someone decided to lean on the thing. Someone did try that out one night after many beers, but I bounded off my bed to save my beloved electronics from a loud, disastrous tumble to the tiled floor.

A lot of great things happened to me during my sophomore year, perhaps, the best of things, but I am going to try to go in order here.

McIntyre’s fourth floor was chockablock of athletes, primarily, swimmers and football players. I remember only a few of the rooms on the guys’ side that were not housing athletes.

A very nice chap on the football team decided to play a prank on me one evening. I heard a knock at the door at 2 am. By now I knew that the floor was full of rambunctious, Neanderthal like football blokes who pissed on carpet, tore down bulletin boards, hot-boxed bathrooms, and wrote their names on the bathroom walls using their own feces, which is to say, I took a cautious approach to a knock on the door at 2 am with an ominous shadow visible through the gap made by the door and the floor. I looked through the peephole. No one was there. I got down on my hands and knees to look at what was making that shadow. I saw the aluminum edge of a trashcan that was tilted toward my door.

Okay. I settled on trying to open the door to see what was in the trashcan. I took a deep breath and opened the door a sliver. The edge of the trashcan dangerously scraped down the front of the door. The trashcan was full of water. If I opened my door any further the water would rush into my room. I am not talking about a small trashcan here. There were easily 15 gallons of water in this trashcan.

I weighed my options. I could try to open the door fast enough to try to grab the trashcan before the contents emptied into my room. I could have called one of many friends on the floor and just had them come lean the trashcan upright, but that obvious solution didn’t occur to me until later. I decided on going for the trashcan. I pulled out loads of sweatshirts and towels hoping that the wall of water would be held back by the makeshift levee I had constructed with my clothes.

In the meantime, I had shut the door and was debating my ability to move fast enough to catch the trashcan. The apes that set the trap were apparently nearby while all this was going on. In order for their prank to work as planned they were banking on a glaringly hopeless factor: the person in the dorm room had to be dumber than those that set the trap in order for it to work. They had miscalculated and picked the wrong room. But as I sit here now and think about it, the only people dumb enough to mindlessly swing open their door to a conspicuous knock at 2 am would be the very guys that set the trap. These guys would have opened their door hoping to find a gaggle of easy jersey-chasers ready to jump anyone on the football roster only to find out months or years down the road after many humps, as attempts to lift their social status, that they are, in fact, sluts.

I was reaching for the doorknob when someone, presumably the disgruntled ignoramus, kicked the trashcan over. The gap was so big at the floor that the water rushed in and broke the levees. Luckily, there weren’t loads of poverty stricken Southerners in my room. That would have drastically complicated the situation. The water even came pouring in up the sides of the doorframe. Water was everywhere. It had soaked into my rug and ran behind my TV, soaking wires and outlets. I was saddened by my poor engineering skills that were exhibited by soaked towels, shirts, and sweatpants.

I opened the door all the way to see the carnage outside when a folded piece of paper floated down to the ground. It had been stuck in the top of the door by the perpetrators. I unfolded it and it read, “Glad you like the water, swim fag.” I stood speechless with the piece of paper with the disgusting scrawl. I wasn’t concerned about the water. I would later have help from a friendly janitor who dry vacuumed the room and rug. I was concerned about the message. What prompted such a hateful message? After some pondering, I concluded that it must have occurred to this young cad that he was an inferior athlete. He brandished his sport the manlier one to make up for his insecurities and athletic shortcomings. Next, he had to insult someone to convince himself that the niceties of life that he was subjected to, simply for being on the football team, are well deserved. Even though, in his heart of hearts, he knew this wasn’t true. He saw, in swimmers, more honorable athletes that humbly and painstakingly deal with two-a-day practices all year long, and yet never complain about them, or even worse, brag about them like his teammates are so prone to do. These are the same athletes that do the football team’s running workout for a warm-up. We win our competitions. We also, as a team, are Academic All-Americans, we break school records, we go to class, and we will graduate; all of which are a far cry away from the team this guy was a part of.