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Beer Foam and Bad Grades
Sophmore year at Akron U (1996): amazingally, I was an even bigger jack ass during my sophomore year, dropping all of my classes and drinking like I read beer cured cancer. Hello from Akron. How are things at school? Everything is more or less unchanged in Ohio…. well, I suppose, in truth, that things are slightly different. In fact, I have some rather disappointing news: a) I am now a college drop-out, b) I’m a drunk, and, more alarmingly, c) neither ‘a’ or ‘b’ seems to trouble me. Actually, perhaps you could argue that –even though the particulars of my life have changed– things are still more or less the same since my campaign of self-destruction, poor habits and tasteless jokes continues along at its normal course. I would like to begin this letter by focusing on my least pernicious habit, namely the now furious rate at which I consume beer… obviously, one must have some tremendously poor habits when he begins his catalogue of positive habits by admitting that he is a drunk, but I am speaking truthfully- given recent decisions at school and work, drinking is, right now, my least destructive habit. Actually, I do not sincerely believe that I am any more of a drunk then the average person of my age, but I do know which incident people will now cite when arguing otherwise: last week I attended a party with Donna and became drunk under circumstances which can only be described as troubling- a) I knew no one at the party, save Donna. Well, I did, in truth, know at least one other person (the hostess’s boyfriend) from a previous party, but knowing him did not make the evening any less awkward since, when I last saw him at the Halloween party, he was trying to ban me from any future parties after I disrupted a game of pool by convincing the ‘Ridler’ to urinate on the table. b) I was the only person who was drinking. c) I spent much of the evening by myself because Donna, my only social link, was distancing herself from me as the evening advanced. and d) I became drunk by drinking beer foam and only beer foam. The tap was malfunctioning and –since the party began late and had few people at it– no one was able to secure a functional tap. Therefore the keg was, to most people, useless since only foam could be extracted from it. However, the malfunctioning tap did not even slow my drinking habits- I was probably drunk within two hours. If given a drink that could stave off death itself, I would not be able to consume it with more speed or enthusiasium then I showed when drinking the foam from this damaged keg. Obviously, this incident could not be described as your typical Friday evening. I am not an expert on drinking disorders, but I would imagine that any one who is willing to drink what amounts to nearly a case of strict beer foam, has the potential to become a ‘problem drinker’. I labor to even state an analogy for this behavior: no one voluntarily drinks almost twenty cups of pure beer foam. I have met plenty of people who claim that their love of marijuana matches my love of beer, but I have never met a pot smoker who, when left with no pot, would begin drinking the previous night’s bong water as his best substitute. When I arrived at the party, I quickly went down stairs, accompanied with Donna, so that I could begin drinking. Four or five men were fooling around with the keg, removing and then refastening the tap, releasing the pressure button, poring beer while the keg was titled- it was obvious that some problem existed. They stated the problem to me and I immediately began trying to assist the effort. I have an odd reaction to kegs. Clearly I am a lazy man, and yet, when I prepare or use a keg, I become this incredibly earnest man, willing to carry a seventy pound object up several flights of stairs, hold it at special, and very demanding, angles so that the tap can be optimized, and even talk softly to it, if I believe that my encouraging words will some how help. Once I see a keg, I transform into this serious, focused and well-driven person. For almost an hour, we tried to extract good beer from this keg with heroic perseverance: I held the keg in almost every possible position while they pumped, we called dozens of numbers, trying to reach some one with a better tap, and even tried disassembling the tap- apparently we thought some reverse engineering could correct the problem, a doomed effort since this ‘engineering’ was conducted by a group of drunk men who had almost all fractured their toes while steering the keg around the basement. EMS crews attempt to necessitate dying men with less resolution then we showed. My point being, that I would only show that discipline for a keg- a person could have collapsed in the basement and I would just calmly walk over the body, stating, “hey, that guy’s not driving is he?” . If my grandmother died, I would probably just leave a single message one some one’s machine, “hey, grama’s dead. Why don’t you get on the horn and start telling people. I’m gonna take a nap, so I’ll just see you at the funeral….. ….probably.” But for this keg, I was calling every one who might have a tap and pleading with them to meet me in Kent. I am a man with priorities that most children would be ashamed of. After an hour of this buffoonery, it became clear to every one that the tap was irreparably broke and that we would be incapable of replacing it. There was a small amount of cans, so people quickly drank the spare beer, hoping that some person might arrive with a functional tap before all of the cans were emptied. My approach to the situation was different: I did not feel that a keg, under any conditions, should be wasted, so I aimed to drink as much of that foam as possible. Moreover, I felt that most of the people probably agreed with me, and that they were only waiting for some one to ‘break the ice’. That is, they needed some person –preferably some one who is comfortable with being crass, disrespected or even disliked– to walk up to the keg, in full view of all persons, pour himself a cold pint of foam, and then calmly walk away to mix with other revelers. As you probably expect, I became that person, but I showed no subtlety: I broke the ice with a neutron bomb of shameful behavior. After pouring my first beer, some people laughed, even seemed to encourage me, but I suspect they were mostly amused because they thought that I was joking- that this drink was some prank and that I would soon join the others in drinking loose cans or just give up beer for the evening completely. No one joined me, and, as it became obvious that my consumption was no prank, but, rather, some obscene expression of binge drinking, people became disgusted with me. Nonetheless, I was becoming drunk and did not realize that these people were disgusted with me. I still believed that they wished to join me in drinking the foam, but were just more reserved then I originally anticipated. So, I tried to engender support for the cause via misinformation: I told people, at least those who had not seen me pour the beverage, that my cup of foam was a special drink, called a Fluffy Nazi, made of melted marshmallows and Vodka (”it’s actually quite delicious, I would be happy to make you one”), I claimed that beer foam could not be detected by breathalyzers and that all drivers should join me, and then tried to spread the ambiguous rumor that, “beer foam doesn’t soften your hardware, if you know what I mean”. The campaign was a total disaster- no one joined me, although my strange behavior might be more to blame then the distaste of beer foam. I went from being a misleading, although innocent enough jackass, to an all-together puzzling moron: the keg stood totally unattended in the corner, no one being within ten feet of it, but I still yelled, “house beer! house beer!” when pouring each glass. I began to draw shapes in the foam of my beer and Donna soon distanced herself from me once I started to challenge people to play a game of tick-tack-do in my beer. Although I do not know exactly how long Donna and I stayed at this party, I would suppose that we left no sooner then 4AM simply because I did vomit in the back yard and I am normally only drunk enough to vomit in the evening’s latest hours. During the ride back to her place, Donna began her most frustrated lecture yet on my drinking. The lecture also constituted her most successful admonishment yet, because a balanced debate was impossible- it is difficult to defend your drinking habits as healthy or common when your antagonist has just seen you drink over a liter of beer foam. “Donna, I really don’t feel that this incident is any different from the average college experience and, moreover, I— ” “—SEAN, you drank beer foam until it made you sick and then excused yourself to go vomit by saying, ‘well, time to go make some cotton candy’ “. On to my less constructive habits. School has changed some what: I am no longer associated with school. I dropped all of my classes. You will have some questions, I am sure, but I am afraid that my explanations will be even more puzzling. First of all, no, you are not receiving this letter well past the date at which I wrote it: I did, in fact, wait until May before dropping all of my courses- two weeks before final exams occur, to be exact. I have always been more interested in those who fail with pinnace, rather then those who simply fail in a conventional style. I have certainly failed with pinnace. I just dropped twenty one, paid-in-full, college credit hours, two weeks prior to exams, while maintaining –at last check– four ‘A’s and one ‘C’. That, my friend, is how one screws up with pinnace. A normal person just does not do that type of stuff. I can think of few extenuating circumstances for such an action- maybe if you suddenly realized that you would die shortly, or if you had horrible grades, but you should certainly not drop all of your classes for the opportunity to drink beer while watching day baseball, especially when you are only class removed from a four point. In fact, my teachers argued this very point when ‘releasing’ me from the classes- I quote ‘releasing’ because my experience did not agree completely with the guidelines for dropping a class. Dropping a class two weeks before final exams is a difficult task- in truth, it might be easier to just study for all of your exams rather then complete the de-enrollment process. Signatures, at that point, are required from your teachers, your guidance counselor, and the dean of your college. None of those signatures were easily acquired: some of my teachers were quick to accommodate me, probably so that the could just free themselves of having me in class, even if they knew that I should not be dropping the class at this point. But other teachers were less accommodating- they demanded a convincing explanation and were fond of pointing out that even if I remained truant for the rest of the semester, I would still get a ‘B’ in the class. My explanations were awkward and uncomfortable. At times I spoke about vague commitments which could no longer be balanced with school (e.g. casual painting, beer consumption and day baseball), but those explanations were insufficient because they could not explain why I should not just remain in the classes, forget about all future meetings and then receive a ‘B’. Eventually, I just offered impassioned, but nonsensical, descriptions of why I hated school and needed to totally remove myself from the process. Prisoners probably describe their confinement with less reprove then I showed. Fredrick Taylor used less impassioned language when speaking about the emancipation proclamation- I think, at one point, I even suggested that my faith in God might return if I dropped out of school. This was not really a formal strategy; only a natural reaction to school, but the approach worked: I described school, teachers, and, in some cases, the specifics of the class, with such reproach, that no teacher then wanted to have me in class- all but one signed my forms. I forged the final teacher’s signature, met with my counselor and succeeded in having him sign a form which stated that I was only dropping one class. I met the dean with that form, had him sign it and then I doctored the form so that, when submitted to the academic department, it read that I was dropping all classes. The ladies who processed the forms did not detect any problems with my doctored form- my only punishment being their poor jokes: “jeez, you must of really screwed around this semester, huh?”, “wow, the parents are not going to like this.” I should have been more open with them: “actually, I have satisfied nearly all requirements with remarkable accomplishment, but I am still de-enrolling from what is certain to be a semester worthy of the Deans List so that I can drink beer and watch day baseball- I can’t imagine my parents being upset with that decision. It’s as American as apple pie.” Forging all of the documents is incredibly immature- a maneuver that most students out grew by the second grade and is better fit for a Dennis the Menace cartoon. Obviously, I was acting like a childish rascal, but –and this is the experience’s most ironic aspect– the university could do nothing to me if I was caught. Well, more accurately, they could do something, but any punishment would be almost self-defeating because it would probably help my cause. How do you punish a student who tries to remove himself from your university via lies? If caught, I would have owned the academic equivalent of political immunity. Expulsion is a weak threat- after all, my sole purpose was to remove myself from class, so the punishment would only assist my goal. In fact, I should have used poor workmanship when doctoring those forms, so that I could have been caught- I would have then circumvented the $20 processing fee: “wait a minute, the Dean’s signature is signed by ‘Prince Smelly’ and, is that an asterisk in your counselor’s name?”. Although I am greatly satisfied with the freedom consequent to my actions, my parents fail to see the libertarian merits of my decision, choosing instead to react with anger and frustration- although much of their disappointment may have been stimulated by how my decision was revealed. My mom saw me preparing for work during a time which I normally have classes and became curious. The act of missing class was not very suspicious, but missing school so that I can attend the second worse commitment in my life, namely work, is uncommon. My mom asked if I had already completed finals, and I replied, “no, I dropped out of all that stuff last week.” “WHAT?!? YOU DID WHAT?!? What were your grades? WHAT?!?!” In any other parent/child relationship, this incident would have constituted the apex of parental frustration, but my parents have come to expect a certain level of self-destruction from me. The episode definitely frustrates my parents, but it does not shock them: I am the Ford Edsel of academia. My parents have, for over a decade now, been routinely embarrassed on each parent-teacher conference night, so they are not surprised to learn that I am, even in college, still an imbecile. Because my family has so man children, our parents were often meeting with teachers, and you could always infer if they met with my teachers or not based upon their mood when returning: “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life- who else has a child that would submit a video report on Jesus Christ that shows Jesus ‘mooning’ the apostles?!?” RSS feed for comments on this post. | TrackBack URI Leave a Comment |
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