Freshmen Year: Live and Let Live (Part 1)

Dorms at Stanford are largely run by Resident Assistants (RAs), students employed by the university to put together fun events for the dorm, act as a shoulder to cry on, and (lightly) enforce dorm or university rules. Most RAs are friendly, energetic upperclassmen, and “Gently”* was no exception. Gently was a tall, attractive brunette majoring in History. She was the type of person who I am sure has always been naturally popular throughout her life, without a hint of malice or manipulation. Even as a Senior, Gently was mature beyond her years, and quite ready to leave the Stanford bubble. This led to an interesting dynamic, as she was placed as an RA on the first floor of “Egypt."

Egypt was actually divided so that the first floor was all guys, the second floor was all girls, and the third floor was coed. I am not quite sure what the logic behind placing Gently on the first floor was, but I assume the powers that be guessed a shot of estrogen was needed to balance out the floor. This was on the right track, but somewhat short of the mark. You'd need truckloads of estrogen to turn the first floor of Egypt into anything close to "normal." You see, Egypt 1F was the place where I met many of the depraved friends who remain to this day constant characters in my life. As Freshmen, we just had that much more time to generally act like the social retards we were (and arguably remain).

If you peered down the hall of Egypt a random day that year, there would be little surprising about it. There was the carpeted hallway and the usual row of dorm room doors, each decorated with brightly colored name tags. If you walked in, you might pass a few rooms and stop at 110 - where Spamus and G$ reside. In a typical scene, the pair are at their computers playing a first person shooter called Quake on matching LCD monitors. It's actually dead silent, as they both have headphones on, are facing away from the door, and are engrossed in the game. Maybe G$ would be running around with Quake's version of a pinprick - a mere machine gun. Spamus is sporting one of the game's stronger weapons, the rocket launcher, and is on the prowl. He turns the corner and Aha! finds G$ frantically darting towards the end of the hallway, where there's a better gun. Spamus leans slightly in towards the monitor, as he tap-tap-taps the mouse, unleashing a gratuitous volley of rockets. Rocket blasts explode all around G$'s screen, and it is at this point that the silence is cracked by G$'s high pitched scream (“fuuuuuuuuuUUCK!”). His character is quickly reduced to giblets.

This was actually a common phenomenon as the floor was just filled to the brim with gamers (or generally weird people). There was a guy who tried to readjust his sleep schedule so he slept 8 of every 36 hours, another was a bronze medalist in the International Math Olympiad, a decidedly not in shape third repeatedly walked around with his shirt off. Of the 20 or so guys on the floor, I can think of over half who ended up as Computer Science majors. Multiplayer Quake matches amongst people living just down the hall were a reality, and when the whole floor was playing, a cacophony of insults, taunts, screams and gloats could be heard whenever something interesting happened.

With the personality of the first floor thus, it should be no surprise that the release of Star Wars: Episode II was highly anticipated. We prepared ourselves the only way we knew how - by repeatedly playing Jedi Knight II matches against each other. Jedi Knight was a Quake-like game themed Star Wars style. We'd fight on a stage that was designed to look exactly like the "Duel of the Fates" scene from Episode 1. John Williams' score would be blaring loudly in the background while I desperately tried to use the force to choke and throw G$ off the ledge before he sliced me in two. The music became ingrained in us. One day, I walked back into the dorm to see G$ standing in the hall talking to Gently. Though we are half a hallway apart from each other, spontaneously, he turns to me and begins loudly singing:
G$: "KOR-AHHHH. MAH-TAHHHH"
Me: "KOR-AHHHH. RAH-TAH-MAHHHH"
G$ and I start giggling, and we hear Spamus - "Is that BeatenByJacks? What're you guys even doing??"

Another Star Wars fan and character on the Egypt stage was TFH. At the time, TFH was the RA of the second floor. In a later story, I will describe the gaming heaven that was his room, but what is relevant now is that his dad worked at the toy company Hasbro. This meant a free shipment of six lightsabers. They were put to good use:

1) G$ and I decided to choreographed a lightsaber duel for an hour or so in the Egypt lobby. We'd run through a few moves, earnestly discuss how "cool" they looked, then practice a few times. The Egypt lobby was a highly trafficked public space.
2) On the day Episode 2 premiered, we were obviously in line for several hours waiting for good seats. Fortunately, we brought the lightsabers to the theaters. TFH and I decide to engage in a spontaneous lightsaber duel, which culminates with TFH pretending to use the force on me, while I act like I am pushed to the floor. I could see parents standing in line with their kids thinking "God, Little Johnny better not still be obsessed with Star Wars when he's as old as these losers."
3) Near the end of the year, non-local students often put their stuff in temporary storage for the summer. This meant there were 10 or 20 Door-to-Door storage containers scattered throughout the Egypt field (the containers basically look like outhouses). G$ and I saw this for what it was - a perfect place for a lightsaber battle. At 1:00 or 2:00 AM, we ran into field and tried to ambush each other from behind the storage containers, lightsabers providing our only source of light.

It seemed so natural at the time, but looking back I can only imagine what it was like to be one of the few non-gamers on the floor. Gently's room, for example, was situated directly across from Spamus and G$'s. As an RA, her door basically had to be open the whole day, so sounds of gunfire and virtual explosions constantly interrupted her attempts to catch up on reading. My roommate came from a musical theater background and was another non-gamer. I basically had nothing in common him, which was unfortunate because he was a cool guy. The difference was pretty obvious when you looked at the posters up on our room:

Him: Framed pictures of friends. Posters of Abercrombie & Fitch models.
Me: A single "demotivator" from despair.com which read, "Adversity: That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable."

Despite the widely different personalities that lived there that year, I have to say there were few major fireworks or drama that came out of our floor. We all loved Gently, and I like to think she liked us as well. My roommate and I may not have become best friends, but I think there is no bitterness there. And I did meet many of the people that have defined me from that point on. Far from a disaster, Egypt was just a bunch of cool people hanging out together, letting each other do whatever they wanted to do. And that’s what it’s all about, right?

* The origin of this nickname is from a dorm tradition known as Secret Santa. This is where each participant draws a name of a person they will anonymously give a gift to. The catch is that the recipient are given anonymous commands that must be followed in order in order to receive the gift. This led to an entertaining week of random feats. In the midst of this, G$ and Spamus interrupted a widely attended dorm meeting to serenaded Gently to Tenacious D’s song “Fuck Her Gently” (NSFW). The punchline of this is G$ and Spamus’ dance wasn’t even a part of the Secret Santa – they did it just for kicks.