Floor Three: For the Win!

Unfortunately, due to the peace treaty dinner being scheduled for a Tuesday night when I had class, I was unable to attend. Luckily, however, my friends Chris and Will were able to nicely explain what would be occurring at this dinner as well as the incredible power of a good suit in a video on their YouTube Channel "The2GuysVarietyHour." These guys are hilarious and you should definitely check them out, particularly my favorite song of theirs "Stalker Song!"

Enjoy! 

"I feel like I'm in a dream..."

I’m in my room, innocently practicing for my keyboarding class, when suddenly Chris Bill comes knocking on my door.

“C’mon, Tori,” he hissed, gesturing for me to come out into the hallway. 

“Come where?” I asked and he glanced down the hallway quickly before looking back at me and seeing my keyboard. 

“Oh! Are you practicing?” he said, “Well you don’t have to then.”

“Come where, Chris?” I called but he’d already left. 

I decided that practicing could wait for the moment and I went out into the hallway and into chaos. People were running everywhere, wielding nerf guns and banging on doors and shouting instructions. 

“What is going on?” I asked my friend Natalie who was also trying to keep out of the fray. 

“I’m not exactly sure,” she said, “I think they said something about a meeting to set the terms with Floor 2, but I don’t really know what that means.”

I was about to reply when Chris Bill suddenly let out a shout, raised his hand, and all movement abruptly stopped. 

And then they came. Rising out of the stairwell and advancing in some odd parody of a military march, more reminiscent of Monty Python’s Military Fairy than any army I’ve ever seen, wearing capes and wielding light-sabers and staplers threateningly. 

A hush fell over the hallway and I just stared at the sight with a sort of morbid fascination. I heard Cory whisper next to me, “I feel like I’m in a dream...”

Truer words have never been spoken. 

The meeting itself was mostly an agreement that all fighting would cease when we had a peace dinner we would all cook together in the Community kitchen, formal attire required. 

When they finally left, the boys began plotting and August came wandering out of the suite at the end of the hall.

“Hey guys,” he grinned, “What’s going on?”

“August,” Robinson said, looking at him seriously.

The smile dropped from August’s face. “Nerf gun time?” he said gravely, with the air of a man just having been informed he needed to sacrifice himself in order to save the planet. 

Robinson just nodded. 

“I’ll be right back,” August said, disappearing back into his suite. 

Slapping a hand to my forehead and looking around at the misfit army I began to wonder just what I had gotten myself into. 

The Root of the Matter

The War of “2 on 2” had begun and it wasn’t pretty. 

The boys from Floor 2 were understandably indignant about the Floor 3’s new rule and decided to retaliate by making their own “2 on 3” policy. Tensions began to grow which manifested themselves in the form of pranks including putting towels outside the 3rd floor boys’ showers in the morning and turning on the water so that anyone wanting to take a shower would believe that they were taken. I believe the Floor 3 boys also did their fair share of plotting and pranking. However, tensions reached a breaking point one night when Floor 2 took things a bit too far. 

I was in my room hanging out with my roommate, Sarah, and her boyfriend when my other roommate came into the room looking a little dazed and befuddled. 

“Whats wrong?” I asked, concerned. 

“There’s a forest in the stairwell,” she said. 

Sarah, Nick and I laughed. “What?” I said. 

“There’s a forest in the stairwell,” she repeated and finally we realized she wasn't joking. 

“Wait, really?” Sarah asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“Well, there’s a tree,” she said slowly, looking as though she didn’t quite know what to think, “I couldn’t go up the stairs. I had to go around.”

Just then someone knocked on our door. I got up and opened it to find Chris Bill was standing there. “Do you have a broom?” he asked, looking anxious.

“No,” I said, “I think Natalie might though. Why?”

“There’s a tree in the stairwell,” he said. 

“Seriously?”  I said, shocked, “How’d it get there?”

“Floor 2,” he answered darkly before continuing his search for a broom.

I glanced back at my roommates and they nodded, standing. Still half disbelieving, we all made our way to the stairs and sure enough, upside down and still covered in leaves was a huge tree. All the branches were bunched and tangled together completely blocking the way downstairs and the broken end of the trunk was sticking up through the railing of our floor. 

“Oh my god,” I said, dumbfounded, totally understanding my roommate’s reaction now, “There really is a tree.”

It didn’t stay there for long though. Someone told my RA and a few of the boys made quick work dragging it back down the stairs and out into the quad, Chris Bill sweeping up the leaves behind them. It was made very clear that that was a fire hazard and that it will NEVER happen again. We still don’t know who put it there and I don’t think we ever will. 

But the root of the matter was if this battle continued there definitely needed to be a few rules. And it was also clear that, in the words of John Keats, "The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled."

The Wall of Shame

In the movie, The Lion in Winter, Katharine Hepburn’s character says “We are the origins of war: not history’s forces, nor the time, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing...We breed wars.” When I first came to Purchase I had no idea that I would ever be drawn into any sort of battle. But, we are human and we breed wars and C-Side was no exception. And the origin of this war was the Wall of Shame. 

It was perhaps two weeks into school when I was walking down the hall only to see a sign taped to the boy’s bathroom door. In big, black letters it said 
WALL OF SHAME 
and below it was a picture of my friend David looking extremely disgruntled. I was obviously confused and curious about this new addition to the floor’s decor but I have found in situations such as this that it is often safer not to ask. So I decided to let it go, not knowing that very soon I wouldn’t really have a choice in the matter. 

The next day I was just leaving my room to head to the music building when I froze. Every guy on my floor was crowded around the door to the boy’s bathroom laughing and talking excitedly. I was just about to go over and ask what was going on, when the door of the room across from me flew open and my neighbor Chris Bill came sprinting out waving a camera in the air, almost running me over.

“Chris, what-?” I tried to ask, now completely bewildered. 

“Can’t talk now, Tori!” he called back before hurrying over to the group just as the door to the bathroom opened. I couldn’t see who it was, but whoever they were, they were greeted by a flash in the face from Chris Bill’s camera and a lot of shouting and laughter from the other guys. After hesitating for a moment, I decided I probably didn’t want to know and left it at that. 

The Wall of Shame remained on the bathroom door for a few weeks, the picture of the shamed changing every so often without any obvious pattern or reason. Finally, my curiosity got the better of me and I asked my friend David what it was all about. 

“Well,” he said slowly, “You see, Chris made up this rule called ‘2 on 2’.” He looked at me pointedly as though that should explain everything, but I simply stared at him nonplussed. 

“2 on 2,” I repeated. “What does that mean?”

What it meant was that due to a desire for general freshness in the 3rd floor boys bathroom, they had come to a consensus that all (ahem, how to put this delicately?) “2s” will be taken care of on Floor 2. Any who did not comply with this new decree and were caught would have their picture taken and put on the Wall of Shame to discourage such behavior. Overall, the reasoning was a bit odd and a tad disgusting, but not quite as weird as I thought it would be. But, unfortunately, things were about to get much weirder because the boys on Floor 2 had caught onto what was happening and they were not happy. 

Stay tuned ;)