Listen up, you highfalutin', over achievein', Jeffersonian, Babylonian readers. I'm about to get real with you, so take off your pants of condescension, put on your boots of sympathy, cast aside your underpants of stink and grab your sweater vest of understanding. The truth is, as most people who know me can attest, I am an unintelligent person.
Hey! Put those pantyhose of unfair judgment away! Let me tell you, being stupid is no plate of sweet smellin' flap jacks. Take this morning for example: I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to put my cell phone on speaker mode and failed, whereupon I hurled the phone at the head of a remarkably still figure that I thought was a statue but turned out to be an actual person who suddenly began experiencing his first concussion.
But while I admit to being very ashamed of my lack of coordinated brain activity, I take no fault in being irrational. After all, the very fabric of our great nation is stitched together with the veritable cloth of irrationality. Otherwise, how could the concept of golf have caught on? How could Rosie O'Donnell have been given her own talk show? How could Miley's "Party in the USA" be considered a legitimately good song? And most of all, how could our Founding Fathers have adopted the concept of Halloween?
Indeed, the idea of a holiday centered on children, dressed in ill-fitting $55 decapitated Teletubby outfits, banging on neighbors' doors and demanding Gummi Worms might seem absurd to the average layperson in Iceland, but not in countries like the United States. Even at 21-years-old, I still can't help being pumped about Halloween - although for entirely different reasons than most youngsters out there. In a somewhat pathetic twist of fate, college guys like me no longer anticipate the old Halloween joys of garnering more King Size Hershey bars than their friends. Taking the most candy out of those free-for-all "Please take two each!" baskets that lazy "out-of-town" neighbors foolishly leave on their porches just isn't the same. Instead, we are now motivated solely by the prospect of seeing college girls sluttin' it up and wearing roughly the same amount of clothing as the square footage of my left jean pocket. In a matter of a few short years, we have gone from wanting tons of candy to wanting tons of cleavage.
But hey, the motivation of college gals on this special evening is hardly more admirable than that of us dudes. After all, their Halloween compliments have morphed from "adorable" to "skanky." Every year the ladies somehow come up with new and innovative costume ideas, such as slutty cops and nurses. They go from door to door in search of booze and cleverly dressed college guys, whose costumes typically range from casual college guy to normally dressed college guy.
True, the progression from harassing neighbors for food, to pelting the homes of those neighbors who give out the crappy homemade candy with eggs and toilet paper, to stumbling drunkenly down Ivy Road wearing only a fake police badge that reads "Do me!" does not exactly make for a wholesome holiday. Then again, we must all remember that wholesome fun was not the aim of the 19th century Celts when they invented the holiday.
Back in the 1840s, the potato famine was crippling the Irish people's ability to carry on with their traditional daily activities, which consisted of chasing flocks of sheep around the countryside and throwing potatoes at them. Left with practically nothing to do, they opted to sit around all day chugging pints of beer at the local pub, a daily ritual still practiced to this day. They tried in earnest to come up with something productive to do other than getting completely hammered, but for years they were unable to do so. Until one day, when a smelly old shepherd named O'Larry, upon hearing "Zombie" by the Cranberries come over the speakers at the bar, came up with a novel idea, which spurred the following stimulating conversation:
"I've got it!" he shouted. "We take pumpkins and carve them into the faces of demons! Then we dress the young lads up as dead British people..."
"Like Albus Dumbledore!" someone chimed in.
"Or Gandalf!" added another.
"No, he's from Old Zealand, you fool!"
"New Zealand, is it?"
"Oh, my mistake, is that what they're calling it now?"
"I thought he was Chinese!"
"Anyway," O'Larry continued, "we send the lads up to Scotland and get them to bang on people's doors and beg for candied corn!"
"Or gummi bears!"
"We'll call it ... Hall O'Ween!"
"Hall O'Ween! Makes sense to me!"
"Huzzah!" they all bellowed in unison.
Some Halloween years from now, I will hopefully embrace the crucial role of the father, whose job on this night is to escape from the clutches of the nagging wife and aimlessly stroll around the neighborhood with other dads, keeping an eye on the trick-or-treating kids while chain smoking and emitting gruff laughter about mediocre work stories. As I tell my pals about my hot secretary and the copy machine, I will hear the sage words of O'Larry echoing in my head: "I'll takes another stout, though methinks I have blacked out!"
But until then, I'll just have to heed to the control of all these slutty policewomen, 'cause they tend to crack down this time of year.
Nick's column runs biweekly Mondays. He can be reached at n.eilerson@cavalierdaily.com.
Read More
Professors who parent: navigating motherhood at the University
By Malaika Rehman | 23 hours agoThese professors say that University-sponsored resources make it possible for them to flourish in both their academic careers and family lives.
Top 10 things I love — ahem, loathe — about spring
By Sam Saks | 2 days agoFor all of spring’s green-ish flags, look no further than this “love letter” to the season’s downfalls.
The six types of people we become after a breakup
By Madigan Wirkus | 2 days agoCertain stereotypes are sure to emerge as the recently heartbroken head back to the streets — or in our case, the Corner.
