The Worst Mixo Ever

2 parts someone else’s vodka

1 part salty tears of fratless living

1 case of warm, cheap beer

It’s day 12 and morale is running low. Rations, scarce to begin with, are severely depleted. There is rumor of plenty over in the Choates, but distance, darkness, and roving bands of S&S officers, identifiable only by their reflective bike uniforms in the night, make the journey far too treacherous for all but the bravest and most desperate of freshmen.

Word is trickling in over Snapchat and other such forms of millennial communication that elsewhere across the country there are beacons of light far from this desolate frontier in the mountains of New Hampshire. Friends and compatriots in colleges and universities across the country spend their Friday and Saturday nights engulfed in the warm embrace of Bud Light and Jim Beam, but here, here we are left only the cold nothingness of House community gelato, which though delicious, fails to truly fire the soul with the same vigor of a well—or even poorly mixed drink.

Suddenly, an opening! Hope on the horizon in the form of a simple text message: “Lit in the fays. Come thru.” After many flights of steps, and a dogged, frenzied search for the correct room number the promised land is reached. Three knocks. Silence. A door unlocks- and reminiscent of an old Chicago speakeasy cracks open the smallest amount and then, after a pause, swings wide open. Alas! The promised land! A pregame!

Yet there is no game. There is nowhere to go after this. Only desolation, the Mowglis and endless awkward House community socials. Through the dormitory window, campus spreads out, dark, empty, closed to us lowly freshmen. Luckily there’s a plastic handle of cheap vodka to help us forget, shotglasses for everyone—provided we share, and a backpack full of warm beer, which along with our salty tears might help cut the taste of Stoli as we bide our time.

If we don’t make it past homecoming, inexplicably late this year and extending the ban to 7 weeks I ask one thing of you—dear 17s, 18s, and 19s. Remember our plight and take pity on those poor wretched, housebound souls of next year’s worst class ever.

By Keg Norman