So in college, I lived in a fraternity. I guess that technically, that makes me a "Frat Boy." But anyone who's ever met me, or visited the MIT chapter of Tau Epsilon Phi knows that the stereotypes... don't always hold.
But my goal today isn't to compare and contrast (okay, mostly contrast) my house and friends with the manly-man beer-guzzling date-raping image some of you may have. I want to talk about throwing food.
We ate dinner together 6 nights a week. Picture the scene... Thirty to forty geeks, mostly guys, mostly 18-22, and tasty meat and veggie options they'd cooked themselves. Obviously food's going to get thrown sometimes. Rather than legislate against it, our forebrothers came up with a way to limit it while keeping it fun.
You see, anyone who wants to can throw food at dinner. Boys will be boys and all that. And, to be fair, anyone who wants to is entitled to retaliate. But if a third food projectile is ever launched, that perpetrator is responsible for any and all resulting cleanup. This both keeps full scale food fights rare (who wants to spend the rest of their night wiping spaghetti off the ceiling?) and makes sure that when they do happen, they are both uninhibited and EPIC (since all but one of the people involved know they won't be responsible for the resulting catastrophe).
Picture the scene: A dinner roll sails through the air. "One!" calls out an observer. The wronged party sends a return volley of what appears to be chicken bones. "TWO!" the whole room cries in unison. The electric thrill, the breathless anticipation as the whole room waits (most either in a defensive crouch or with a handful of potatoes raised.) An endless moment awaiting the fateful third... 99 times out of 100 the moment passes. But that hundredth...
Sometimes a alum will get word that there hasn't been a food fight all year. They'll come back (occasionally bringing their own cleaning supplies solely for the purpose of throwing The Third. More often than not, many of the participants will voluntarily help out with the cleanup (call it a thank-you for the good time?) Occasionally a food fight will coincide with some one's girl- or boy-friend's first visit to the house. But overall it was a pretty effective tradition. One there's no way my wife will ever let me implement at home of course, but... Oh those mad college days...
P.S. Red Jello stains are a dozen times harder to scrub out than any other color. Consider this a public service announcement.
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3 comments:
There was one night when cooking team had made an IMMENSE number of biscuits. Perlick said something along the lines of "Man, these are just *begging* to be thrown." T-Stop and I looked at each other and had a beautiful moment of telepathy, and in almost perfect harmony both threw a roll at Perlick, shouting "One! Two!"
Perlick was Three. It was epic.
I remember that night! Totally worth it.
Tappan's just fortunate that he was a freshman when both Hardpack and I were seniors and were using food fights as therapy for being stressed :)
My favorite was the night there was some sort of tofu dish that was liquid-y and messy. When I was cleaning up afterwards, there was the dish splattered all over the wall... except for the outline of me since I stood throughout the fight instead of taking cover.
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