Friday Night Madness

Yesterday was the first Friday back at school here at Carleton and people on my floor seemed to be making up for lost time when they could be drinking and getting high together over the Christmas break. Fortunately, they are extremely efficient in that that area of expertise and by 10:30 p.m. our floor was filled with woohooing, halloing, whoopeeing, and yeehawing.

Meanwhile, Kitty and I sidestepped those hooligans and were having a more sophisticated evening. One of our friends was sleeping over and we were having a movie night (or as much of a movie night as we could have given that my laptop was the only one working and DC++ was not cooperating). On the agenda was:

• Mulan (1998), in which we discovered that Captain Shang is secretly gay and wishes Mulan was a real boy.
• A Night in Casablanca (1946) featuring the Marx brothers, not to be confused with Casablanca (1942), which featured the nauseating talents of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. But that's another review for another time. The Marx brothers' version is so funny! If you haven't seen one of their movies, you have been living life unknowingly missing a limb. I'm sure you all love them. You just haven't realized it yet.
• Various episodes of Friends in which we decided to take on the challenge of naming all 50 US states. We painfully managed to get 46 before admitting defeat (It was about to be 45 but Vermont suddenly came to me at 5 a.m. in my sleep).

In the middle of A Night in Casablanca, the two worlds collided - the world of suave, urbane sophistication and the world of mindless, stoned euphoria. This is possibly the only entertaining part of their wild nights of substance abuse: watching the stupid be stupid.

With absolutely no warning, our door was flung open and a drunken Swedish guy stumbled in. All three of us stared at him while the movie continued in the background. Sweden tried to focus his line of vision (it looked like it took an enormous effort) and he blinked at us blankly. Three Asian girls huddled around a laptop watching a black-and-white movie. Silence for about 10 seconds. He stared at us. We stared at him. He smacked his face into our wall. We stared at him. He almost fell into our closet. We stared at him. He finally decides to explain himself, "Oh g-...mumble mumble...isn't my room...mumble mumble...THIS IS THE WRONG ROOM!" And with that, he flings himself out the door, slamming it behind him. We burst into laughter.

So now we have a new addition to our list of intoxicated characters that live on our floor:

• Stoned Chris - permanently high and hopelessly laid back. On occasion, he has been known to stand outside our door without knocking, ready to scare the bejesus out of us when we open the door.
• Wasted Tara and her supposed supervisor, Drunken Danielle - our washroommates who insist on going barhopping every night only to come back noisily at ungodly hours of the morning. Tara is always in miserable shape, and has spent many a night in our washroom sprawled on the ground yelling obscenities at the world. Danielle, who insists on being perfectly capable of holding her liquor, tries to help Tara back into the room while screaming at the top of her lungs for people to be quiet before they wake up the whole floor. Very considerate people.
• Drunk Pete - an exception. Pete doesn't live on our floor. His friends don't even live on our floor. And yet we have seen him about four times last semester and every single time, he is drunk out of his mind. We secretly think he's permanently drunk. In past experiences, he has walked into our room, rolled around on our TV room floor, invited us to a party, and nearly cried when we said we were going to have to pass on that offer. Always a treat.
• Sweden - I suspect his name may be Pad (that's right, as in "I'm writing on a-") I met him once on the first day back. He's living in the foreign exchange student room, which used to belong to Roderigo, who no one ever saw. He's making a wonderful first impression, getting out there and making some high friends. Kitty pointed out that it was possible he wasn't making friends and he was high all by himself. But that's a whole different kind of party.

It was a rather eventful evening to polish off my first class-less Friday. I now notice how much I've been missing out. Free Fridays are the new love of my life. What a day of possibility, of wonder, of excitement. Anything can happen Fridays! I can hear the hallelujah chorus.

On a side note, it's 10:32 a.m. and the people in my room are still asleep. I'm starving! I want breakfast! But in case you haven't tried it yourself, it is very difficult to go anywhere with two unconscious people dragging behind out.

Oh! Will wonders never cease? They seem to have heard my telepathic commands. Kitty suddenly sat up in bed and my other friend rolled over and said, "Good morning." It's a miracle! Time to feed!