Some Dane History....

So believe it or not, I was in a fraternity at UMass. Don't get me wrong, I was like the rest of this Earth- never thought I would join sit I did not fit the prototypical "mold" that is so portrayed on mass media, and ingrained in our heads as follows:

A group of douchebag guys that stare at themselves in the mirror too much, get the same haircut (potentially a blowout), wear pink and headbands/wristbands because it happened to be trendy and pathetic, and had lots and lots of sex with lots and lots of women, only to dump them outside directly after getting off. Something along those lines, right? Oh and you have to be a moron and love drinking beer and some are even meatheads.

Well, that just wasn't me. I am NO meathead! The rest... well
I hope you sense my sarcasm. Anyway, my freshman year, I met a bunch of idiots that I happened to work well with (see: get drunk with). On my floor, 2 kids had decided to pledge this fraternity their first semester. Also on my floor lived 2 other "older brothers" and a few floors down, other friends that were part of the same frat. Basically these losers were all over the place. But if we were all friends, I must have been a loser as well, right? So one day, during the whole pledge process, this one kid turned to me and said "Hey why don't you pledge next semester?" And I'm all "Nah, I'm not a meathead, just the rest of those terrible things..." But I slept on it, and I thought, well- it's a reason to move out of the dorms, if nothing else. Nothing like paying for your friends, right? So I pledged. And without doing that, I wouldn't be the person I am today, in the situation I am today, living with the friends I live with today. Quite the contrary, I would probably have a perfectly healthy liver, I would have graduated at LEAST Cum Laude and I would be prosperous and some form of psychologist.

BUT WHO WANTS THAT? I'm happy, my liver is probably running somewhere around 83% of it's max function (Shout out to the Milk Thistle- HOLLA) and I have a good job and good people surrounding me. Probably the only reason I joined anyway was that these guys weren't like the definition everyone has held as true. They were a diverse group of guys that liked to come together, throw a mean party, drink until the sun came up, and rock 80's music until the headbanging hurt. If that isn't the coolest thing ever, I don't know what is.

The point is, it shaped me in many ways that NOT joining may not have been able to. I went through a lot of shit, and a lot of growing up in that fraternity. Sure there was pathetic boy drama, what do you expect when you get 25-30 guys living together in one house, and sharing 3 and very occasionally 4 functioning showers and really only one amazing toilet (3rd floor toilet was more sought after than vagina on some occasions). But it also taught me a few things, respect for your "elders" not being one of those lessons. It taught me I could get away with some crazy shit, and always have some idiots behind me to back me up, because we were "all brothers, all men" We lost a dear dear friend, Frankie boy, who happened to live directly below me; and I still think about him anytime I hear his favorite song of the time... Beautiful, by Snoop Dogg. That's life: there is growth, and there is death.

Pledging was nothing more than a huge mindfuck, and taught me a very, very valuable lesson. No matter what game you are trying to play, respect is an issue that is never forgotten. I can clearly remember at least one or two guys who fucked with us because it was part of the process, and then directly after the fact expected handshakes and everything to be forgotten. That is absolutely a lesson that can be applied once you are no longer a douchebag and in the real world, let me tell ya.

I never regret my decision to join a fraternity for even a second. We had some wild parties, and I made some amazing friends that I will never lose. I learned some lessons, and I taught some as well.

I am not even sure I have a point here, I just want you to understand these next few memories I am about to spit about living in the fraternity, and some of the mayhem that may or may not have happened. Some is up for speculation because now and then we all get blackout drunk and have to hear about the memories of events through others' stories.

PSA for Weed.

So this is what happens when you smoke too much....

Getting over a hangover at my place, downstairs watching football like we have been all day. Someone comes over with too much weed and wants to smoke it. Well shit, I want my headache to go away and my appetite to come back. So what do I do? Smoke a lot of weed. And what does that cause, besides hunger and laziness? Stupidity, and I love it.

Boise State is playing right now. They are from, go figure, Idaho. So we get some interesting Idaho commercials during the breaks. One was for a woman advertising healthy diets and losing weight. What was she pushing? Idaho potatoes..... let's be honest, can you think of ANYTHING else that might come from Idaho? I thought so. So this woman was trying to say if you eat tons and tons of Idaho potatoes, with sour cream, bacon bits, ketchup, olive oil, butter, margarine, salt, WHATEVER... that you will get healthy? So I cracked on it, we may have gone too far but we joked about it for a good 3 minutes, and since we are all high, it only became more ridiculous, and more hilarious, with each passing contribution.

Then a light bulb goes off in my friend's head. Now this is something maybe he would normally take a little more time thinking through, but not this night. He turns to my friend and I, giggling like school girls because we can hardly breathe, and our rib cages are starting to hurt.. and he offers up a gem

"Well that is the irony of the potato family" with a shit eating grin and squinty red eyes he looks at us and declares that statement. Now, giving him the benefit of the doubt due to the marijuana intake, and also knowing I was high myself and potentially missing a simple connection... I thought, I thought hard for a long minute. Potentially the longest minute I've experienced in a long while. I played out all the scenarios- was it a play on words? Nope. is there some family with the last name Potato that is really fat?? No, but I thought about that one for a while...

What does he mean why is he laughing is my other friend laughing does anyone understand man am I hungry hold on where was I what did he just say?

That may have been about a minute by then... so I asked him "What the fuck are you talking about?"
At this point, the laughing is more of a gasp for air than anything. My roomate has now put the blanket over his head and is hiding in order to try and stop the laughter. Good luck, stoner. I grill him hard and he has just no explanation for what the statement can be.. but he presses on with ridiculous attempts at making some semblance from a pile or horse shit. But he has nothing, so I call his bluff. I told him he can admit to saying some BS he thought may have sounded so intelligent that it wouldn't be questioned by a couple of high kids, and I would leave him alone. After one more attempt at making sense, no one able to even rebutt due to lack of oxygen to the brain, he concedes defeat. Now that, would be a commercial to keep kids from smoking weed. I could see it now.

KIDS! Do you want to be high and worthless for hours and say really really stupid shit that might embarass you in front of your friends? And then they would run my story right here and it would end with one of us grabbing Daddy's gun to play or riding our bikes out the second floor window.

I am a genius.

In a real life attempt at instant replay, we talked for a few minutes about how funny what just happened was, and how none of us will remember in a half hour, especially if we smoke again (nightcap?)
And I ran upstairs to share my story and really, to help my own damn memory out.