My visit to the University of Wisconsin began fairly innocently, with an excellent (and impressively academic) presentation on Thursday afternoon. We stimulated conversation and soaked in the academic atmosphere. Later, over pizza with some faculty friends, I listened to their nine-year old daughter explain why Stanley Kubrick is no good, why "Catwoman" is the best movie ever, and why John Ford's films are really great. Wonderful. Academia is infectious.
Or is it? Cut to:
10AM Saturday morning. I had been out late-ish on Friday night, especially if you count the time taken to eat a gyro after bar time. Anyway, suffice it to say I wasn't in a morning mood. Something woke me up.
Noise.
A lot of noise.
Right outside my window.
The annual Mifflin Street Block Party had begun.
As I squinted through my hangover out my room window at the apartment building across the street, I saw, in this order:
- A balcony of drunk frat dudes with a double-tubed beer bong.
- A balcony of drunk frat dudes taunting the mail man below.
- A balcony of drunk frat dudes yelling at their buddy on the street five floors below to throw them up the football they'd dropped, dude.
- A balcony of drunk coeds trying to get the attention of the missing football frat dudes.
I closed the curtain and stumbled back to bed.
At noon, I appeared in the lobby, showered and hiding behind dark glasses and my red diving jacket. Maybe I needed some fresh air, or maybe I needed to escape the smooth jazz playing on a loop in the lobby (a sign of Midwestern class)...so I wandered outside to wait for my buddy and co-presenter Mike to come down to eat.
Almost immediately, the balcony of ladies started yelling at me.
"HEY! RED JACKET! HEY!"
Cocking an eyebrow, I looked up at the girls. They waved. I smiled weakly and waved back.
Then they mooned me.
My mind raced. Too old to remember what the appropriate social response to getting mooned by a coed is, I turned on my heel and retreated quickly. I clearly owed them something, as they screamed at me as I ducked back into the hotel lobby.
I've never been mooned by a balcony of coeds before. Shocking, I know. I should have recognized it as a sign.
Mifflin Street was incredible. Thousands of underage drinkers carrying boxes of canned beer, singing slurring spilling up and down the street. I
I've never felt such a palpable sense of impending danger in such a large crowd of skinny post-adolescents.
I've long thought of myself as one of them.
Wandering amongst them, sober, I realized that I'm not one of them anymore.
I know better.
Mostly.
After walking the street, we found a bar for grown-ups and played darts while downing vodka sodas as quickly as possible. Nobody's perfect.
Tomorrow, back to Manhattan, the not-so-lonely frequent flier.
