by Dan Ryckert
“I’m pretty sure Adam and Tyler peed on those,” I mumbled from bed. “Sorry, man.”
Logan sighed and stared at the ground for a brief moment before he stormed outside with box still in hand. I heard the door to the lobby area open, followed by angry shrieking that I couldn’t believe was coming from my shy roommate. Adam and Tyler laughed uproariously as Logan broke down in front of them, screaming while on the verge of tears.
The laughter abruptly cut off as soon as I heard loud thuds emanating from the lobby. I sat up and considered running out to check on things as I heard several more thuds, followed by more yelling. Before I could leave the room, Logan shoved the door open, threw himself on his bottom bunk, and covered his head with a pillow.
He was clearly in no mood to talk, so I got back into bed and went to sleep. My suspicions were confirmed the next morning when I saw Tyler at the cafeteria with a large bandage over the right side of his forehead. Logan had thrown most of a urine-soaked 12-pack across the lobby and at least one can had squarely hit its mark.
Tyler eased up on his antagonizing of Logan going forward but this didn’t stop him from being generally insufferable to everyone else on the floor. His abrasive personality was magnified whenever he was drunk, which was a regular occurrence. One weeknight, I was playing some form of indoor wiffle ball with other people from the floor. When the elevator doors opened, an obviously drunk Tyler stumbled out and made his presence known.
I was up to bat and trying to ignore him when he sprinted up and hopped onto me like a booze-soaked backpack. His weight caused me to lose my balance and I stumbled back toward the window. We didn’t plummet eight stories to our unbelievably stupid deaths—thankfully—but his back did put a large crack in the glass.
Despite not being hurt, Tyler became furious with me.
“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” he yelled. “You could have killed me!”
I informed him to the best of my ability that he wouldn’t have almost fallen out of a window if he hadn’t jumped on top of me. My attempt at using logic was lost on him. He continued to be entirely unreasonable until a sober Adam—a rare appearance—came out and convinced him to call it a night.
Our wiffle ball game continued until I decided that it was time for me to hit the hay. I wanted to take a late-night shower before bed, so I returned to my room to get pajama pants, a shirt, and a towel on the way to the bathroom. Logan was still awake in bed and wordlessly facing the wall. This was a common occurrence in the weeks following the pee soda incident. Talking to him in this state was nearly impossible, so I grabbed my stuff and went down the hallway for my shower.
As in most dorms, our showers were inside a bathroom that was unlocked and accessible to the entire floor. Four stalls lined the wall opposite the toilets, with tile dividers between them and thin plastic curtains to block visibility. I tossed my clothes on the hook outside a stall and draped my towel over the curtain rod.
As you do in a shower, I tilted my head up and rubbed shampoo into my hair. With the water running, I couldn’t hear Tyler enter the bathroom and sneak toward my stall. My eyes were closed when I felt an oppressively heavy substance plop down over my entire face.
Slowly bringing my hands down, I attempted to assess the situation. All I knew was that I was shampooing one second, and now there was a bunch of stuff on my face, I couldn’t open my eyes, and a horrible smell overcame the scent of the shampoo. I stuck my head under the water and shook it around like a dog coming out of a swimming pool, which cleared my vision enough to see what had happened.
Much of the alfredo sauce had rinsed off my hands at this point and was slowly seeping into the drain. Numerous long fettuccini noodles were still hanging between my fingers. Months earlier, Tyler snuck a huge Tupperware container into our buffet-style cafeteria in an effort to stockpile cheap food. He worked his way through all of the cereal, oatmeal, and mints that he had amassed, but this vat of pasta had been languishing in his fridge even before he moved in with Adam earlier in the year. I’m just thankful that my temporary blindness kept me from seeing most of the mold covering the fettuccini.
Immediately after the slop hit my face, I heard Tyler cackle as he ran back down the hallway and slam the door to his room. I did my best to avoid breathing through my nose as I repeatedly shampooed my head and scrubbed noodles off my torso. Rinsed pasta sat on the stall’s floor as old alfredo sauce amassed near the drain.
Once I was certain that my body was cleansed of any hint of sauce and my hair was fully noodle-free, I turned the water off and prepared to confront Tyler. Reaching for my towel, I found nothing. I knew what was coming next, but I still sighed as I pulled the curtain back to discover that my clothes were no longer on the hook.
My options were limited, so I tore the shower’s curtain down and wrapped it around my waist. Getting Tyler back in some way was my first order of business, but I wanted to get some damn pants on first. Me and my curtain skirt scampered down the hallway to my dorm room where I swapped my makeshift outfit for a pair of pajama pants. Logan was awake but in one of his usual catatonic states, so he didn’t raise an eyebrow during this process.
Without any real plan in mind, I went straight to Adam and Tyler’s door. Options spun through my head like a slot machine as I loudly knocked. I wasn’t going to punch Tyler in the face because I was more annoyed than angry. After all, it wouldn’t be sporting to get mad about an admittedly good goof after spending most of my lifetime messing with people. Removed from my alfredo-induced haze, I had no idea what my plan was when it came time for the door to open.
Tyler made sure that I wouldn’t have time to do anything at all. With me standing shirtless outside of his room, he quickly opened the door, sprayed a generous amount of glue onto my chest hair, and slammed the door shut before I could even react.
Fettuccini Alfredo was something that I was very familiar with, but this substance was new to me. I didn’t even know that glue came in spray form, but I learned quickly when I swiped my hand across my chest in an attempt to wipe it off. Thick, adhesive glue had matted my chest hair to itself and my skin. My palm swipe only ensured that I’d pull numerous hairs out as I assessed the situation. Back to the shower I went. My head and face may have been sauce-free, but now I had a sticky chest and hair on my palm. I threw another set of clothes on the hooks outside the stall, half expecting them to be missing when I stepped out.
No amount of scrubbing remedied the sticky situation on my chest. My hand was easy enough to clean, but trying to get my chest free of glue led to nothing but redness and discomfort. I turned off the shower and felt like I didn’t have many choices outside of getting rid of the hair entirely. While mulling over my options for getting revenge on Tyler, I grabbed a razor from my room and fully shaved the area. A couple of floormates had heard about the night’s events, and were laughing in the hallway as I walked back to my room with a freshly shaved red chest.
Even in my annoyed state, I couldn’t help but appreciate the absurdity of the situation. It was really funny, but I knew I’d have to get Tyler back and I’d rather even the score sooner rather than later. An elaborate comeback would take a lot of planning, so I threw on some pajama pants and headed across the hall with a simple offer.
Knock, knock.
“Tyler, open up.”
“There’s no fucking way,” he laughed.
“I’m not gonna do anything right now. I’ve got a proposal for you.”
Peering through the peephole, he saw that I wasn’t holding a pie or a boxing glove attached to a spring or anything obviously meant for revenge. He cautiously opened the door, and I explained my position.
“All right, here’s the deal. I promise you that I’m going to kick you in the balls and it’s going to suck. It might be when I see you on campus, it might be when you’re getting off an elevator here at the dorm, or it might be out of nowhere at the cafeteria. I can do it that way when you don’t see it coming, or we can get evened up right here and yo
u won’t have to worry about it.”
Tyler could tell that I wasn’t kidding. He considered my offer for a moment before stepping into the hall, biting the knuckle of his index finger. His eyes closed as he widened his stance.
“Just fucking do it. If you’re gonna do it, just do it.”
Fearing that he’d back out if I let him think about it too long, I didn’t miss a beat. I reared my leg back and gave the swiftest, most perfectly placed field goal kick I could have possibly mustered. My leg swung straight up between his legs and my shin almost certainly struck the dead center of his scrotum.
I expected a pained yelp to be the first reaction, but this was a great underestimation. His body lurched forward as he projectile-vomited over my right shoulder. A night’s worth of beer and whiskey soared through the air and splattered on my own door behind me. I glanced back to survey the disgusting scene as he slumped to the ground.
At the same time, Tyler and I started laughing uproariously. My laughter was out of pure joy. The whole situation was amazing and my door getting sprayed with vomit—with me remaining clean!—was an entirely unintended side effect. Tyler had fallen to the floor in equal parts laughter and pain, and the sounds coming out of his mouth made him sound genuinely insane.
Several people on our floor stepped out of their rooms upon hearing this commotion late at night. They saw me on the floor in my pajama pants, shirtless and sporting a newly hairless chest. They saw Tyler lying on his side, alternating between laughs that sounded like cries and cries that sounded like laughter. Behind me laid a puddle of vomit. Some of them stuck around to hear the story. Most retreated into their rooms and went back to bed as if it were any other night in Hashinger Hall.
The Dumbest Kid in Gifted Class
All things point to me being a pretty damn dumb guy: elements of my personality, things I’ve done, and plenty of things I’ve said. However, documented evidence from the past contradicts that notion! Teachers started to notice that I was different at a very young age. During standardized tests in first and second grade, I always landed on the extreme high end of the national average. After two years of this, Principal Weber and my second grade teacher asked my parents to have a meeting. They explained that my test results indicated a high level of intelligence, and that they didn’t have the resources for a gifted program at this small Catholic elementary school.
They proposed the idea of bussing me from Holy Trinity to public school one day a week to participate in an “Enhanced Learning” program. My parents had no issues with this, and Monday instantly became my favorite day of the week. Watching WWF Monday Night Raw was the thrilling conclusion to the night, but I spent the day doing fun activities that fascinated me.
The Enhanced Learning room was filled with a variety of gadgets, chess boards, tangram puzzles, and building materials. We rarely had a set schedule. Students were encouraged to gravitate toward whatever interested them the most. Logic puzzles were my favorite. I’d spend hours reading clues and filling in grids with X’s and O’s to determine which color and breed of dog belonged to Fernando instead of Ginger or whatever.
Puzzles and problems based on numbers, shapes, and process of elimination always grabbed my attention. Other students took an early shine to Science Olympiad or political debates. I preferred puzzles based on pure logic that could be objectively broken down until you were able to reach a definitive solution. From my perspective, I was getting shipped away from the boredom of nuns teaching me about Jesus. For one day a week, I felt like I had won a contest that allowed me to have fun and play games instead of sitting through dry lectures.
I felt awkward when I started going to EL, because I’d still be wearing my Holy Trinity uniform (bright red polo shirt, blue slacks) while the public school kids were free to wear their Ninja Turtles shirts or whatever they felt like. Wearing the uniform at Holy Trinity was something I welcomed, as I’ve never had any sense of what I’m supposed to wear. By having a set uniform each day, I never had to worry about it. We’d have “dress down days” a few times a year, and I always defaulted to my Razor Ramon “Oozing Machismo” shirt that consisted mostly of a massive image of Scott Hall’s face as he chewed on a toothpick.
Everything was better in public school. The kids were nicer, I actually enjoyed the “learning” part, and the cafeteria was on a completely different level. Compared to the bare-bones lunchroom at Holy Trinity, the one in public school seemed like something from The Jetsons. Students’ meal balances were tracked via a computer system that utilized passcodes instead of paper punch cards. I didn’t have to get milk every day, as vending machines allowed me to guzzle all the Coke and Mountain Dew I could stand.
About this time, I discovered my all-time favorite school lunch: a soft pretzel, french fries, and a gigantic bowl of nacho cheese. These items were found at an à la carte window stationed across from the main lunch line. Conceivably, it
was put into place in case students wanted to get an extra item to accompany their meals. I learned quickly that I could make the à la carte window my primary destination and ignore the main line entirely. This window sold cookies and ice cream and plenty more, but I rarely strayed from my own cheesy Holy Trinity.
These Monday lunches were a blessing, and I felt like the luckiest kid in the world when I eventually made the permanent move to public school. I could eat these three items for lunch every day, and no one could stop me. I kept up with this tradition until I graduated high school in 2002. Concerns from parents would lead to less junk food in the cafeteria by the time my sisters went to school there. I was thankful to have attended during a glorious era that was rife with rivers of nacho cheese.
Mondays were amazing, which always made it disheartening to head back to the oppressive seriousness of Holy Trinity. There was a tension in the air there that I didn’t see during my brief glimpses of public school. The nuns demonstrated a special breed of intensity. It wasn’t quite “bending students over a knee and taking a paddle to them” intense, but they’d occasionally pull out a ruler for a quick knuckle rap.
My third-grade teacher was Sister Mary Ann Blackburn. She appeared to be in some nebulous area between 50 and 90, and the lines on her face formed a permanent frown. Despite spending nine months under her watch, I can’t remember her attempting to teach us a single thing that wasn’t Jesus-centric or at least Jesus-adjacent. I’m pretty sure math and science were subjects that third-graders were supposed to learn, but they were clearly not the priority in Sister Mary Ann’s classroom.
She was militant about keeping kids in line and eliminating any kind of horseplay. As we were practicing for the annual Christmas program, she was furious when I sang “Silent Night” as Bob Dylan. I expected my classmates to laugh at the impression, but it turns out that not a lot of eight-year-olds in 1992 had even heard of him.
I wasn’t yet in my glory days of enthusiastically causing trouble. That didn’t stop Sister Mary Ann from coming down on me. The worst example still confuses me to this day. Holy Trinity was battling a scourge of boys’ bathroom-related mischief at one point in the year. I was unaware of whatever had been going on in there, but the staff was apparently on high alert for the troublemakers.
After peeing into the urinal and washing my hands in a wholly unremarkable manner, I turned to see Sister Mary Ann standing in the boys’ bathroom. She was holding her right hand up as if waiting for a high-five, and pointing at it with the other.
“I caught you red-handed.”
This confused me for a couple of reasons. First, I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Secondly, I had never heard the term “red-handed” before, and her hand was not in any way red.
She grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me out of the restroom. I asked her what I had done, but not in the belligerent, combative way that you see from a lot of guilty people. Rather, I was genuinely baffled as to why a nun was pulling me down the hall to the principal’s office. My head was whirring through a variety of possible offenses, and I was c
oming up blank. I had woken up, put on my uniform, attended class, peed, and washed my hands. That was the extent of my day thus far, and I was about to face the principal for some unknown reason.
We entered Principal Weber’s office and Sister Mary Ann acted like she captured Jesse James in the middle of a bank robbery.
“I got him,” she said. “Caught him red-handed.”
There was that weird phrase again. Principal Weber motioned for me to sit in front of his desk.
“So you think it’s funny to horse around in the bathroom?” he asked.
“No... I just peed and washed my hands and then Sister Mary Ann yelled at me.”
After talking for a bit, I learned the details of the heinous crimes that were plaguing the boys’ bathrooms of Holy Trinity. It was just some kid who was jumping up over the stalls and throwing wet paper towels down on the heads of pooping children.
This made things even more confusing. Not only had I not been “caught red-handed,” but no one in the bathroom was doing that when Sister Mary Ann made her dramatic capture. It’s not like she witnessed someone mid-throw, then somehow got confused and thought I was the dreaded Paper Towel Bandit. She walked in on me washing my hands, and that was that.
“I know that you like going to EL class, don’t you?” Principal Weber asked.
“Yes, it’s great.”
He stood up, preparing to drive home a final point for me to remember.
“I’m telling you right now, Danny: if we catch you doing this again...I’m pulling the plug!”
With those last three words, he made a way-too-dramatic “pulling the plug” motion with his arm.
