Chapter 3: The reckoning.
Howdy everyone,
I actually have a plethora of things that I could write about today. As I mentioned in the pathetically short post on Friday, someone in authority mistook me for a successful graduate student and gave me an internship. As long as they don’t discover their mistake before I can write an official letter of acceptance, they’ll be stuck with me. In addition I just arrived back from 52 waking hours in Las Vegas (5 sleeping) and there is much general stupidity to report. But before I get to all of this, I believe we have some unfinished business: the final chapter of Wash U guy.
Following my last encounter with Wash U guy I took a hiatus from psychoactive substances for about a year. I was applying to graduate school and trying to put together an EEG experiment so I really did not have and entire weekend I could sacrifice. Now I know some of you are saying that tripping does not take an entire weekend. It is true, the act of tripping does not. However, all of the associated waiting for dealers, organizing people, finally going to sleep, and then recovering from the after effects seemed to take me at least two days to accomplish. Thus, even if I were to indulge on a Friday night I would not expect to be able to do something else until Sunday afternoon. Given my personality at this stage in my life, two days represented an unacceptable level of commitment (I’ve held college majors for less time).
During this year-long period of abstinence, the legend of Wash U guy had made its way into our house mythology. We had noted that Wash U guy only two awkward appearances involved people at their most f’ed up and began to joke about his return. Whenever someone was tripping, intoxicated to the level of incoherence, or otherwise impaired we would joke that he was going to knock at the door.
I think you can see where this is going.
So, finally after I had finished my honors thesis, gotten into graduate school, and generally put my sh*t in order, I finally had some time to be stupid with my friends. Someone had some mushrooms again and asked if I wanted some. I said that I did, began to trip, and heard the front door open.
As was typical, someone shouted out, “oh F*ck, its Wash U guy.” We all laughed, and then we saw him in the bedroom door.
“Hey guys, I heard about your house getting reorganized. Can I have a beer?”
Frankly, I remember little of what happened then. I distinctly remember a very theatrical “NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” echoing through my head, but I am not sure whether I screamed this, someone else bellowed it, or it was just part of a silent internal dialog. I know I offered to get one of my friends a drink and then hid in another bedroom for the remainder of his visit. I also know that was the last time I did any sort of psychedelic substances while an undergraduate. Wash U guy should have his own anti-drug commercial. Screw “this is your brain on drugs,” show kids their bedroom on Wash U guy and they’ll never touch drugs again.
Some of you are undoubtedly thinking that this story is bullshit. I don’t blame you. I would too. Let’s look at the statistics. First of all, we will ignore the time he found us tripping on dillo day. DD is a very popular time to both visit my college and to take drugs. Lets only consider the two other encounters since they were more truly random. There were approximately 50 weeks in between the two tripping incidents. Of course many of those would have been dumb weekends to trip or visit a college (i.e. summer, Christmas, finals week, etc.). Let’s be conservative and say that only 20 weekends were appropriate travel times/tripping weekends. This means that there are (20*19)/2 possible weekend pairs. According to my calculations, the probability of us randomly selecting the same two weekend is about 0.66%. That said, I assure you that Wash U guy is real. I couldn’t make this shit up.
PS -- In honor of Wash U guy, I wrote a song.
(to the tune of “Santa Clause is Coming to Town)
Oh, you better not trip
And don’t get high
Don’t candy flip, I’ll tell you why
Wash U guy is coming to town
He’ll show up uninvited
And act strange around your friends
He’ll fuck with all your mushroom vibes
And his visits never seem to end.
Oh, don’t do drugs
Say no to pot
Missouri’s too close, you might get caught
By Wash U guy who’s coming to town.
I actually have a plethora of things that I could write about today. As I mentioned in the pathetically short post on Friday, someone in authority mistook me for a successful graduate student and gave me an internship. As long as they don’t discover their mistake before I can write an official letter of acceptance, they’ll be stuck with me. In addition I just arrived back from 52 waking hours in Las Vegas (5 sleeping) and there is much general stupidity to report. But before I get to all of this, I believe we have some unfinished business: the final chapter of Wash U guy.
Following my last encounter with Wash U guy I took a hiatus from psychoactive substances for about a year. I was applying to graduate school and trying to put together an EEG experiment so I really did not have and entire weekend I could sacrifice. Now I know some of you are saying that tripping does not take an entire weekend. It is true, the act of tripping does not. However, all of the associated waiting for dealers, organizing people, finally going to sleep, and then recovering from the after effects seemed to take me at least two days to accomplish. Thus, even if I were to indulge on a Friday night I would not expect to be able to do something else until Sunday afternoon. Given my personality at this stage in my life, two days represented an unacceptable level of commitment (I’ve held college majors for less time).
During this year-long period of abstinence, the legend of Wash U guy had made its way into our house mythology. We had noted that Wash U guy only two awkward appearances involved people at their most f’ed up and began to joke about his return. Whenever someone was tripping, intoxicated to the level of incoherence, or otherwise impaired we would joke that he was going to knock at the door.
I think you can see where this is going.
So, finally after I had finished my honors thesis, gotten into graduate school, and generally put my sh*t in order, I finally had some time to be stupid with my friends. Someone had some mushrooms again and asked if I wanted some. I said that I did, began to trip, and heard the front door open.
As was typical, someone shouted out, “oh F*ck, its Wash U guy.” We all laughed, and then we saw him in the bedroom door.
“Hey guys, I heard about your house getting reorganized. Can I have a beer?”
Frankly, I remember little of what happened then. I distinctly remember a very theatrical “NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” echoing through my head, but I am not sure whether I screamed this, someone else bellowed it, or it was just part of a silent internal dialog. I know I offered to get one of my friends a drink and then hid in another bedroom for the remainder of his visit. I also know that was the last time I did any sort of psychedelic substances while an undergraduate. Wash U guy should have his own anti-drug commercial. Screw “this is your brain on drugs,” show kids their bedroom on Wash U guy and they’ll never touch drugs again.
Some of you are undoubtedly thinking that this story is bullshit. I don’t blame you. I would too. Let’s look at the statistics. First of all, we will ignore the time he found us tripping on dillo day. DD is a very popular time to both visit my college and to take drugs. Lets only consider the two other encounters since they were more truly random. There were approximately 50 weeks in between the two tripping incidents. Of course many of those would have been dumb weekends to trip or visit a college (i.e. summer, Christmas, finals week, etc.). Let’s be conservative and say that only 20 weekends were appropriate travel times/tripping weekends. This means that there are (20*19)/2 possible weekend pairs. According to my calculations, the probability of us randomly selecting the same two weekend is about 0.66%. That said, I assure you that Wash U guy is real. I couldn’t make this shit up.
PS -- In honor of Wash U guy, I wrote a song.
(to the tune of “Santa Clause is Coming to Town)
Oh, you better not trip
And don’t get high
Don’t candy flip, I’ll tell you why
Wash U guy is coming to town
He’ll show up uninvited
And act strange around your friends
He’ll fuck with all your mushroom vibes
And his visits never seem to end.
Oh, don’t do drugs
Say no to pot
Missouri’s too close, you might get caught
By Wash U guy who’s coming to town.
posted by Bartleby the Student at 4:25 PM
2 Comments:
Bravo, truly, bravo. The strange connections that the universe makes for us are really wonderful. So, do you think Wash. U guys is some sort of observer sent from the future to monitor your activities to make sure you don't deviate from a timeline that places you in an important position in the history of the world sometime in the future? That'd be cool.
That would be cool. As a future psychologist, however, I lean more toward the idea that Wash U guy is a physical manifestation of our collect superegos' discomfort with deviance. Since we suppressed our feelings of discomfort with violating social norms they ended up expressed in the form of a weird guy who made us all very uncomfortable. That or he is my tripping albatross. Maybe I shot some Wash U alum with an arrow just for the hell of it while stoned. I like the sound of this. Rime of the Ancient Stoner.
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