As I said, about half my floormates wasted little time in bonding with one another. It all started with some basic group-bonding sessions hosted by our RA, Craig (who just so happened to come from the same town as Jon. Small world.), but it quickly grew from there.
We had a lot of fun on the 9th floor. Weeknights often ended with group hangout sessions in someone's room, usually Alex/Karl's for whatever reason. We'd pretty much just sit around, shooting the breeze, work on homework together, and once in awhile pull a prank on someone.
One of Steven's favorite pranks was to yell out the window at random passerby crossing Stadium Way; mocking something about them or pretending it was God speaking to them from above. We pulled a few good ones on each other from time to time, such as the group session in Jaimeson's closet I mentioned last time, but our best was reserved for strangers - especially those who dared enter our territory without our permission.
One evening I came home from attending a theater production that a friend of mine starred in to find an unknown couple watching TV in our lounge room. The boy wasn't from the 9th floor and I didn't recognize the girl either, so I was a bit confused why they were on our floor, but not as confused as when I noticed two shirtless men with pillow cases over their heads sneaking up on the lounge room. I watched as they burst into the room, screamed some weird gibberish at the couple, and then quickly ran back out and around the corner laughing.
It was August and Steven. I followed them and discovered several of my floormates were gathered together in Jon/Steven's room. Apparently these strangers had taken over our lounge about a half hour before my arrival, and some of the 9th floor gang had taken offense and made it their mission to annoy the hell out of them while they were here.
Previous attempts included August just silently sitting in the room and creepily staring without saying a word for several minutes, and both Dans standing outside the lounge by the elevators loudly (and vividly) discussing gay sex together while they waited for the elevator to arrive (for clarification, they are not actually gay. In fact, White Dan is now engaged to a lovely lady I met sophomore year at college. Small word again). Yet the couple stubbornly refused to vacate our lounge.
I wanted in, so they tasked me with coming up with the next strategy to scare the invading couple.
Some of you who know me know I am particularly good at giving my voice a "demonic" tone. Basically I lower my voice and sort of half growl my words - GF can attest to how scary it sounds; she doesn't like it. Anyway, all the guys knew about it, but these two lovebirds had never had the pleasure of hearing it before.
So I stood just out of sight of the lounge doorway and started speaking to them with my "demonic voice." It was warnings to "leave this place and never return" and threats of "agony and despair" if you didn't, etc. I was going for a haunted house vibe. But the only effect it had on the stubborn couple was cause them to finally close the lounge door.
We reconvened again and came up with one more all-out attack. Hayden, the Dans, and myself would pose as repo men come to repossess the couch and table out of the lounge. Surely that would drive them off!
As it turned out, we never got to enact that plan. By the time we were ready to play our parts, we discovered the couple had vanished. Mission accomplished.
So that was a typical weeknight. Weekends usually included some form of debauchery.
I think it was the second weekend of the year when we had our first "floor party." A couple of students' parents were generous enough to provide alcohol for their kids before dropping them off at WSU; so that they could truly enjoy the "college experience" right away, I guess. And enjoy it we did that night. There were many a red Solo cup to discretely dispose of by night's end, and Jaimeson was down a lawn chair (I didn't mean to break it! I swear I was sober too!).
The only thing maybe more popular than drinking together on the 9th floor was smoking together. Hookah parties became a semi-daily occurrence. We had a few nicotine addicts in the group, but even guys who didn't smoke cigarettes would get in on the hookah parties. I know there are plenty of legal substances you can place in a hookah, but I'm fairly certain half the time they were using stuff that wasn't legal in this state until recently.
(Can I just say that before my freshman year at WSU I didn't even know hookahs were still a thing. I assumed they hadn't been in style since 19th century Arabia and India. I was so innocent before WSU.)
Floor-wide dinners together were also very common. We often commandeered entire sections of the local dining center for ourselves. One time about 10 guys sat on the same side of a table with only one on the opposite side; it just sort of happened naturally. They proceeded to start mock interrogating him until he switched sides, and then they tried re-enacting the scene from The Last Supper instead.
On other occasions we commandeered materials from the dining center. A small number of utensils and food trays made their way from Southside Cafe to Stephenson North. "Borrowing" food trays was a fairly common practice during winter in all the dorms as students sought ways to sled and snowboard even if they didn't own any sleds or snowboards.
In between Thanksgiving and Winter Break, Southside was festooned with Christmas decorations. Among these included large paper candy canes (about four feet long) tacked onto several walls.
One morning, I awoke to find one of those candy canes stuck to the wall across from the elevators on our floor next to the floor lounge. Someone had also bent it to form the shape of a "9." And there was clearly a open spot of wall that had been previously decorated in Southside that morning.
Our candy cane 9 was taken down by the afternoon, but no punishments were ever handed out or anything ever said to any of us. Lack of evidence and witnesses saved us, I guess.
We heard a lot of noise complaints from the girls living on the 8th and 10th floors. We developed a tongue-in-cheek answer every time one of them voiced their grievances.
"Oh, that wasn't us. That's the guy who lives between the floors."
"The guy who lives between the floors" was like a boogeyman we could pin all our shenanigans on. With a little wink and a smile, we'd watch accusatory neighbors get flustered and leave in a huff at our answer. Our poor RA Craig heard that answer a few times too on the rare occasion he'd catch us being too rowdy.
Suffice to say, our floor earned itself a bit of a reputation. But it wasn't all hooliganism, all the time.
During the harsh winter of 2008, where temperatures got so low it physically hurt to breathe the frigid air (it felt like a punch to your windpipe and gut simultaneously), some of us showed off our heroic side.
Steven, Mexi-Dan, and myself were in Alex/Karl's room one night, just relaxing, when we noticed car after car struggling to get up Stadium Way out the window. Traffic was light, but rapidly becoming a mess as more and more cars struggled to make it up the icy hill. After spending a few minutes enjoying their misery, Steven and Alex flipped gears and got the idea of going down and helping out the drivers. So the five of us donned our winter gear and spent the next hour directing traffic and pushing cars up Stadium Way.
See? It wasn't all mischief and mayhem. Not everything we did upset Craig or other RAs.
We loved Craig, and not just because he so rarely knew what we were up to (he was an engineering major and spent a LOT of time away from the dorm working on projects). You always got the feeling he knew what we were up to, but since none of us were getting ourselves or others seriously hurt, he was content to let things slide. As long, that is, as he didn't directly catch us in the act. He always seemed relaxed and was never overbearing as an RA.
Besides, Craig owed us big time. He organized a competition between the floors of Stephenson North called "Floor Wars." Various challenges and activities were planned for weeks during the middle of Fall semester, and the floors who won the most events and also showed the greatest amount of participation won a pizza party. Not to mention dorm bragging rights.
The competition wasn't even close. The 8th, 6th, and 3rd floors were the only other floors to show any real interest in "Floor Wars," but they still lacked our level of camaraderie.
From the very first event, a drinking contest with shots of apple juice instead of alcohol, we dominated the competition. Maybe 30 people showed up for the first event (not a good showing), but about 2/3rds of the participants were from the 9th floor; and the top three drinkers of the night were Alex, August, and Mexi-Dan (trust me, they had a lot of practice).
The only event we struggled in was a karaoke contest, but we made up for it by having the winning team in the Frisbee bowling tournament. By the time the final event came, a casino night, it was academic. Four of the six biggest winners that night were from our floor, and we earned our free pizza party.
Yes, life was pretty good on the 9th floor. But as documentaries and biopics about rock bands have taught us, the good times weren't destined to last...
(What? You don't like cliffhangers? Give me a break; it ain't easy coming up with topics on a weekly basis. I got to stretch things out sometimes. Don't worry, I'll have the finale posted next week.)
(Edit: The finale is here!)
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