Fifty years from now, I'm going to sit down on a hovering rocking chair of the future and tell all my grandchildren to gather about my well-manicured feet. I will not ask my red-headed horde to give me a pedicure, because I doubt they could reach my open-toed slippers -- what with the hovering and the rocking -- but I will ask them to listen:
"Listen, dag nammit! When I was a kid at the University of Virginia, we had no water."
The Drought of 2002 will be my loveable old kook trademark tale of choice. My parched story of dehydrated hardship will give that "shoeless in the snow" whine told by generations past a barefooted Kenyan run for the money.
Call me Ronald Reagan and sing to me about senility if you want, but lunch trays are no more! I had to get the DL from my tuna scooper at the sandwich bar. She cupped her mouth with a plastic baggy hand and squawked to me about water conservation after asking me, "WHAT ELSE?"
Apparently, U.Va. and the surrounding Charlottesville area are on the brink of desertification. Your blue route bus is two seconds away from being replaced by a camel. The Rotunda was renovated yesterday. It's now a pyramid. The entire University will become migratory by the end of the semester, and each of its sub schools will become rivaling bands of sheep herding nomads. Learn how to brandish a sword and charm a snake now, because GPA's are out and "Survival 101: Thirsty Ali Baba Style" is in.
In short, trays are a luxury the dining halls just can't afford right now.
Initially, I was outraged. I had a tuna sandwich on a plate in one hand, a veggie pizza on a plate in another, and I could not high five any of the acquaintances I ran into for fear of erupting into edible chaos. My temper flared, and my head did a 360 double-helix-summersault-shorty-flip-spin like a taut figure skater harnessing the gold factor. You mess with the Ice Capades bull, and you get the horns.
I flip flopped over to the drink dispensers and promptly tore down the water conservation propaganda. "Ration this!" You know what I did, next? Muwahaha. I took a single glass and filled it with sweet, sweet water. Then I dumped it out. I repeated this action until I was kidney punched by Dean.
But here's the thing: Make peace, not war. Instead of taking on an entire college like a zealot high on righteous fervor with a chip on one shoulder and a bazooka on the other, I decided that I'd just be a tool and take up this whole "save the water" cause. So, here are some tips:
1. You fools who hit up the new International Bar at Newcomb and decide to get a plate at each and every station are going to have to exercise some discrimination and just choose a meal and go with it. Your foremost concern is that trays have been annihilated. Unless you're an octopus, don't try to get more than two plates. Attempting to transport five plates by balancing dishes on your head is Ringling Brothers material. Why don't you swallow a couple knives and breathe fire while you're at it. Trust me when I say you can go without the spinach and kidney bean rice pilaf.
2. Shower with a buddy
or two. Hey, why not hang a disco ball from the bathroom ceiling and turn your shower stall into a naked rave -- loofas a necessity. It could be like one of those radio station promotional gigs involving phone booths and 20 inebriated fans vying for tickets to Dave. But instead of diving into a claustrophobic phone booth and lodging your head in the Old Spiced pit of some random dude's mashed potato arm, you could play a frisky game of connect the birth mark with half of Old Dorms. Everyone has a birthmark. Go Lewis and Clark and discover uncharted countryside. Some birthmarks even look like animals!
3. I know you've heard, "If it's yellow, let it mellow." But brown, obviously, is in your face like Carrot Top on crack, and refuses to chill -- and herein lies the problem. I say we assassinate Carrot Top, scrap toilets altogether and import an army of Port-a-Johns. They could be painted green and passed off as shrubs, or splashed blue and orange and deemed a pep squad. Besides, the thought of a U-Guide vocally scrambling to explain away a campus engulfed by crappers is priceless: "Mr. Jefferson felt passionately about latrines. It's tradition."
4. When you're feeling the burn at the gym, and you don't think you can go another second without wetting your palette, think again. Go another mile. Go two. Finally, after you've gone from grape to prune, from slug to sludge, after your saliva packed its bags and wheelied out of your mouth while flashing an evaporative middle finger an hour ago and you're giving serious contemplation to the thought of licking the sweat off of your arm because it has some semblance to H20, still don't get a drink. Pass out instead.
5. The swim team should practice in a giant pool of Jell-O. Forget about watering the athletic fields. Soccer, football -- they all should play on Jell-O. On game day Casteen could get fancy and sprinkle marshmallows about.
Somewhere, Bill Cosby is smiling.
Cavaliers, with our powers combined we could save a bronze bathtub full of water by the end of the semester and donate it to the city of Charlottesville with hugs and kisses. Or, we could uniformly take a step over to the dark side and run our faucets into reservoir-tapping oblivion, starting now. Either way it goes, we're doomed. The world is coming to an end.
You might label me a pessimist and say that my glass is half-empty, but I'd shrilly pronounce you stupid in front of your mom and show you that my glass is in fact totally empty because of the drought.
If we survive this test of tests, you all will join me 50 years from now on turbo boosted hover rockers and babble geriatrically to ADD-riddled gene extensions about the time in college when you were forced to ride a camel to class under the watchful eye of a Jeffersonian sphinx, all the while searching for an oasis with your herd of sheep. Dismiss my precautionary writings with an apathetic "whatever" if you must, but remember: Vin Diesel sucks and his birthmark most likely resembles Satan.
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