Sometimes traditions are just dumb
I was really tired and stressed out at work the other day, and in a moment of weakness, I decided to let loose a rich baritone howl that could be heard all over the office.
Then I did it again.
Then others joined me in a rousing chorus of wolf-like lament.
“It was like so awesome – it was like we were all unified and everything – and I think we should make howling a new tradition whenever we finish a big project at work,” I should have said.
Yup, that just sounds stupid.
Either I am getting old or this whole howling during Finals Week just sounds like a “wonderful” idea. To me, this ranks up there with that brilliant microbe-laden proposal of putting LoveSac lounge chairs in the Taggart Student Center to bring students together.
A sincere thank you goes to the dude who decided to jump off the wall in the lounge, speeding up the chair replacement to something more sensible, something more affordable, and mostly something that retains much less hobo drool.
Other wonderful unification ideas on campus in recent memory include the Night on the Quad to raise awareness about the homeless. Nothing screams “We feel bad for the homeless” like an all-night party with hotdogs, live bands and howling college students.
Unification on campus should either serve a humanitarian or community service purpose (boring), or be really fun.
HASS vs. College of Engineering Snowball Wars come to mind, or perhaps Prank Your Least Favorite University Office Day.
Then, for example, the thousands of students who have ever thought the Registrar’s Office was the bane of their existence could be united, if only for that day.
Now, if you’re going to do something mischievous simply to wake up the people in the library during Finals Week, make it extra exciting.
Two words: cherry bombs.
Or if you’re a little more tame, or too slow to avoid the campus police, tap into the PA system and play Rawhide repeatedly. Just as many people will freak out, but this way they’ll also have a dumb song stuck in their heads the rest of the week.
I also think there many more enjoyable ways to relieve end-of-semester stress on campus. For starters, I may decide to start the “slap someone new” game the week before finals.
This game begins on day one at the beginning of the alphabet. Every time you meet someone new that day whose name begins with the letter A, you slap them in the face. On day two, you move to the letter B, and so on.
In the two weeks until finals are over, you will have slapped a good portion of people who have names from Aaron to Justine or all the way to N if you observe the weekends.
The following semester you can continue on with the next several letters of the alphabet. By the time you graduate, you should know just about everyone that passes by you daily, walking to and from classes. Professors are also fair game.
If not that, at least you’ll quickly learn how to avoid football players and others with excessively large hands.
It’s survival of the fittest. And comparable to whack-a-mole, it’s a brilliant stress reliever.
But you know, maybe I am getting old. My knees are getting stiff, my hair is thinning and my howl just isn’t what it used to be. And because I’m old and cranky, I hope I don’t see or hear multitudes of students gathering to howl in April.
But if there are, I’ll be sure to meet everyone and show off the one thing that has improved over the years – my vicious backhand.
Garrett Wheeler is a second bachelor’s student in technical theatre design. Send any comments or column ideas to wheel@cc.usu.edu.