Journal: May 17, 2000

(retrospection)

(What follows is a long and somewhat rambling treatise on how I've decided I'm going to treat full names from now one. If you want to get right to the retrospection entry, just skim over this italics part.
I've been thinking a lot about the internet and privacy issues lately, and I've decided it's just playing with fire to keep referring to people by their full names in these retrospections. Sooner or later someone is going to get upset.
I know some of you are reading this and thinking, "well, duh! In fact I couldn't believe you had the chutzpah to keep using full names for as long as you did.
To which I can only reply, point taken. My defense is threefold:
1) All of these retrospections are from so long ago I couldn't imagine anyone would have a problem with them
2) all of the events in them are benign and pretty harmless
3) lastly, I thought without using full names it would lead to a lot of confusion about who was who, especially since there were so many Toms, Dicks and Harrys at Calvin. (Actually in the case of Calvin, according to the unscientific survey we conducted on Second Boer, the most popular names for boys were John and Matt. Girl were usually some variation on Christina/ Kristin/ Kristy, etc.)
Truth be told, I still have some reservations on this 3rd point. Especially since as more time goes by, our memories will fade and the the "who was that guy again?" factor is going to increase. Looking back through these journal entries I can't even remember who half these people were sometimes, and it was my life. I think a full name would trigger more memory cells firing than an initial...
...But all that aside, it can't be helped. It's just common internet sense and good manners not to use other people's full names without their permission.
Thus forth, I will either refer to people by a first name and first initial of last name, or by last name only. If they have a nickname I might try and sneak that in too.
Stylistically I realize it is going to grate a little to have all these initials and partial names popping up, but that's another sacrifice we'll just have to make.
If you have any questions about who is who, you can always e-mail me, and I'd be glad to tell you privately off the world wide web. If you recognize yourself and don't want even a part of your name to appear on this blog, you can e-mail me. Likewise, if you recognize yourself, and want full credit for all you exploits, e-mail me and I'd be glad include your full name.)
5/17/00
I woke up and took my last exam, then went back to the apartment and went back to bed. Mr. Bandringa came over, and found both Brett N. and I in bed. He called us lazy, but when we offered Cecil L's bed to him, he took it and joined us in a nap.

We all woke up much later. Brett was supposed to go over and see Hannah M.(He was going to be leaving soon for Colorado, so he wanted to spend some time with her before going). Mr. Bandringa and I came along. We met Hannah, and the four of us went out to Yesterdog, and then afterwards went back to Hannah's house and relaxed on her porch. Everyone else had a beer, but I didn't want to drink so I just had one of Hannah's limes instead. (They had been putting the limes in with some of the drinks, but I ate it straight. I figured it was good vitamin C. The rest of the gang thought it was very funny.)

Hannah was her delightful self, and I really enjoyed spending the afternoon with her.
It was also good to spend time with both Brett and Mr. Bandringa. I think we all had a sense of how quickly our time together was slipping away from us now. Mr. Bandringa will be leaving to go British Columbia soon. Brett is also leaving to go to Colorado soon, but at least with Brett I know we'll always stay in touch. I have a feeling I'm going to end up loosing touch with Mr. Bandringa.

On the way back to Calvin, I we stopped up Meijers and I picked up film I had gotten developed. On the drive I told Brett the whole story of the little mess I had gotten myself into with the exchange student from Hungry. Brett's the first person and so far only person I've confided in about this.

For most of rest of afternoon I read my book. Brett was going with Hannah, and Esther B. to a BBQ at Ms. Skogerbie's house. He invited me to go with him, and I was tempted but in the end I decided against it because I had the feeling Brett Hannah and Esther would want to stay longer than I would (they knew the people at Skogerbie's house better than I did). We could have taken two cars, but I didn't know the way and I didn't want to mess with all the trouble of two cars following eachother out.

Instead, I helped Bosch (Ribs) clean the apartment so he could get checked out. First Cecil and I moved our outside couch from the porch and into the dumpster. Then I decided to tackle all the dirty dishes in the sink, but soon gave up once I realized Rob and Cecil were were getting the dishes dirty again just as fast as I was cleaning them.

Bosch eventually managed to get the apartment cleaned and checked out in spite of all this.

I felt a little guilty for sitting around on a Sunday afternoon reading a book instead of going to the party, but at least there was a lot of activity going on in our apartment. People were always coming in and going out and there was a big crowd playing video games, so I figured I was at least being partly social.
Nevertheless when Brett called me up to invite me to another party at Mr. Hong's house, I jumped at the chance and drove over.

It was a typical Calvin party. Mr. Lagrand and Mr. Stroboscher were performing music together for a while. Mr. Nienhuis was also there, and I talked to him for a while. He’s graduating this year, but doesn't know what he's going to do, which makes me feel slightly better about my own ambivalence about the future.
I sat in on a conversation in which Mr. Nienhuis and Mr. Lagrand complained about people who blindly support large coorperations, and are too lazy too seek out more ecological alternatives when they go shopping.

Eventually the cops came, but surprisingly enough the party was not broken up. The cops just old everyone to go inside and keep the noise down instead. Brett decided to leave around this point. I stayed for a little while longer than he did, but I got bored soon after and left myself. I talked to Jen B, who had come to the party with Brett and Ms. Schipper, but was upset to find they had left without her. I offered her a ride home in my car, but she said she wanted to stay at the party a little bit longer and would find a ride home somehow.

When we got back to the Calvin apartment, Brett was just stopping by briefly before he made his way onto Ms. Schipper's place. I told Brett before he left we should go out and have a look at the Calvin Nature Preserve. Brett was in a hurry to get to Ms. Schipper's place, but I convinced him to spare 15 minutes.

I had been out in the nature preserve the previous night during the thunderstorm, and had been amazed at the beauty of it. It was raining again tonight, so I told Brett he should come out and see what it looked like. At night the heavy sheets of rain made the normal Michigan forest look more like a tropical jungle. The lightening would come out periodically and also add to the earry effect.

We both got soaked by the rain, but Brett agreed he was glad I had made him come out to look at it. We were overlooking the pond in the middle of the preserve, and commenting on how bright and Brett said, "This is amazing." There was a pause and then he added, "I'm going to pee in it." The juxstiposition of those two statements, once Brett realized what he had said, gave us a good laugh. Brett relieved himself in the nature pond, and then we headed back to the apartment.

We ran back all the way, soaked to the skin but enjoying the cool feeling of the rain. It was still somewhat cold for a spring night, but once we started running we didn't mind it so much.

Once we got back to the apartment, Rob P. wanted in on the fun as well and said we had to go back out in the rain. He mentioned this just as Brett had finished drying himself off, so Brett took a little bit of convincing but eventually we got him to agree to go out again. Mr. Bakker (Cakes) also came along.

Eventually the as we discussed things the plan evolved into a streaking across campus. After all it was raining, there were only a few people left on campus now, and besides we were only a couple days away from graduation ceremony, so it was the perfect time.

Rob called up Mr. Boss (team Boss), who grudgingly agreed to it after some convincing on the phone. Boss had apparently been drinking that night, because he remarked several times that he would never have agreed to do this if he had been sober.

The first place we went to was the nearby soccer field. (We later heard from Cecil, Mr. Gort, and Mr. Gerken (butterball), who all opted to stay behind, that the RA from Beta had somehow got wind of our plans to streak and ran out after us to stop us, but we never saw anything of him.)

At the soccer field we disrobed and ran the length of the field. Rob sped off across the field at full speed as if he were in a race, and at the sight of his naked body speeding across the soccer field the rest of us were laughing so hard we could hardly run. Eventually we made it across the field and back but our stomaches ached from laughing too hard and trying to run at the same time.

Once we had completed the run, we realized there was absolutely no one around besides ourselves, which somewhat defeats the purpose of streaking. In fact once we looked around, there was no one even close to the soccer field. After some discussion, we put our clothes back on and walked across campus to the PE building where we again disrobed and ran naked as far as the underpass.

Since this meant running through the dorms, Boss lost his nerve at this point and decided not to streak with the rest of us. Instead he decided to serve the function of collecting our garments for us, and also ran ahead to stand guard and warn us if any parents were coming. It was the end of the year, so there had been a lot of parents on campus that day helping their children move out of the dorms. Now it was around midnight, so there wasn't a lot of activity.
Ther were a still a couple groups of people loading up their cars as we ran by. Boss tried to warn us away from the groups of parents, but once we had actually started running and got in our stride we lost our inhabitations and ran straight through. Rob yelled out, "I'm graduating," to the crowd of parents. (As far as I could tell, it was all parents and there were no one our own age, although you never know who might have been watching from the dorms). Our bare feet hurt from running along the asphalt

On the way back, a campus safety patrol car was going by and everyone mooned the car. I, feeling that I had already put in my exhibitionist time for the evening, alone refrained from the mass mooning. (Rob and Boss knew the girl who was working because of their campus safety connections, so needless to say no one got in trouble).

Even after we got back to the apartment the rambunctious mood from the evening's excursion carried over, and we spent a lot of time mooning each other, wrestling, etc.
At one point I went into the other room to change into my pajamas. While I was naked the boys caught hold of me and dragged me out into the living room. I didn't make much of an effort to resist because I figured that even though I was in an exposed condition, they were the ones who had to look at me and so they were getting the worse end of the deal. I don't think they really had planned out what they were doing. They simply assumed I would hate being dragged out of the bedroom, and when I didn't resist they weren't quite sure what to do next.

Then someone opened the blinds, and suddenly I was exposed to the whole courtyard area. I grabbed the first thing I could find for cover, which happened to be Cecil's coat lying on the floor. He was slightly upset that his coat was coming into such proximity with my more intimate parts, but I think he was just acting upset more than he actually was. I suspect he understood that I had just grabbed the first thing next to me, and it didn't represent and intended personal affront. There was a moment when I worried it might blow up in a big fight, but fortunately he let it go.

Link of the Day
Via Tom Tomorrow
Stimulus Package
and All Republicans are not assholes