Ghetto Excursions

• Walking to Blockbuster and back without a movie, not because the store was closed or we didn't have "the card", but because we simply couldn't decide which one to rent or even if we wanted to rent one.
  
  
• Carrying a huge bouquet of a dozen pink, lavender, and yellow roses--very full of water, I might add--through Michael's (a large craft store) because we didn't want to leave them in the hot car.
  
  • For the record:
    
    • The roses were for Morgan's 18th birthday.
    • Erin was the lucky one who got to carry them through the store, getting plenty of looks.
    • Laura drove, and she was the reason we were in Michael's in the first place.
    • Liz was the one who got spilled on in the car when we changed speed or direction.
    • Megan was there to laugh at us.
    • Morgan had been in Erin and Liz's room perhaps once prior to this date. However, now that the roses were hidden in Erin's closet--too big for the door to close completely--Morgan, oblivious to the roses' existence, chose to spend a few hours in their room that night. Sarah, Paula, and Megan took shifts nonchalantly standing in front of the closet door.
      
  
  
• On almost any given trip to Selleck's dining hall, deciding it's time to leave before we get kicked out.
  
  
• Paying $1.75 each to see "Mafia!" and still feeling ripped off.
  
  
• Laura's stealth mission all over Neihardt, collecting the playing cards taped to people's door frames to advertise casino night. We weren't entirely surprised when she came up one card short of a full deck. (No lie!) Fortunately, Erin managed to find a four of hearts in her room, so now Laura has a complete 52-card deck. Well, not exactly. They're not all from the same deck and there are duplicates.
  
  
• Morgan going out into the hall to put on deodorant. (Of course, some guy just happened to walk down the hall at that moment.)
  
  
• Getting attention whenever we go to or from the mall as a group, even when we act like normal people.
  
  
• Paula getting too much attention from weird older biker guys who like her shorts, on the way to Pizza Hut one night with Erin.
  
  
• Liz's sudden trip to the airport to pick up her friend Megan from Grand Island who was flying in on her fall break from college in Pennsylvania. (This trip unfortunately tore her away from an enthralling conversation.)
  
  
• (This isn't so much an excursion by the ghetto as an excursion into the ghetto.) A certain SA's trip to Piper 1, looking to borrow a bra large enough to fit him and whatever he had stuffed in his shirt. Shall I continue to be nice and not use any names?
  
  
• Our seven-hour "Secret Ultra-Dry Mission" to Super-K on a Friday night during Moonlight Madness. We figure we could've come away with 21 pounds of free apples, but we didn't. (Okay, it wasn't actually seven hours; it only felt like it. Jason was lucky to escape with his life.)
  
  
• Another excursion into the ghetto: Late one night, there was a loud squeaking heard entering the ghetto. The squeaking stopped, and there was pounding. Erin stuck her head out the door, and what to her wondering eyes should appear but some guy pounding on Sarah's door, pushing a cart with a girl on it. Erin explained that Sarah was in Omaha and would be back in several hours. The cart was heard squeaking back out of the ghetto, and Erin went back into her room. Ten minutes later, the squeaking came again, and there was pounding on the door again. This process was repeated several times. Eventually Cartboy (not to be confused with Cartman from South Park) gave up.
  
  
• Leslie and Laura's late night fourth-degree Piper lap, in ...costumes. (This may be explained in greater detail at a later time.)
  
  
• Sarah, Liz, and Erin's last minute efforts to enjoy being noisy, before finals week quiet hours began at midnight. This involved plastic buckets, metal silverware, some major instigation, and the subsequent ticking off of most of Neihardt.
  
  
• And many more...
  

• Coke Classical and Pop Music
  We wandered downtown with cameras, on a mission to get pop for Sarah's room, then returned to Neihardt with Mozart CDs.
  
  
• And They Don't Even Have Little Plastic Boxes
  We spent two hours in the Westlake Ace parking lot when Sarah's car died, and, being computer majors, the others who had been on the shopping trip never thought to come back and see what had become of Sarah, Erin, and Tiffany. Fortunately, Ross and Wes came to the rescue.
  
  
• The First Annual Neihardt Labor Day Weekend Pajama Party
  At almost seven in the morning on Ryan's birthday, during a thunderstorm, lightning made the fire alarms go off. The population of Neihardt had to evacuate to the Pound and Cather lobbies for forty minutes or so, with nothing but a giddy Jay Cappellano to entertain us. Based on how long it took people to get out, we concluded that if it had been a real fire, there would be a lot of new scholarships to give out next semester.
  
  
• Anything But Blockbuster (Holmes Park, Part 1)
  Nine people, two bags of marshmallows, fuzzy bunnies, a windy night, an Aim & Flame, playground equipment, gymnastics, and several cameras. Make up your own story, and make sure you don't leave out the discussion of our combined senior thesis. We would have started collecting data for it in the wind tunnel at the playground, but sadly we all forgot our calipers and graphing calculators at home.
  
  
• Keyless Entry with the Top Down (Holmes Park, Part 2)
  After the other five left, Laura, Ross, Ryan, and Erin had an excursion of their own. It was almost a much longer, much more interesting excursion, but Ross got talked out of skinnydipping, Erin gave the shirts back without running to the car with them, the car keys were found despite the darkness and the grass, the innocent bystanders didn't appear to notice Ryan's suggested partner switch, and Ryan and Laura have almost stopped itching. If you'd like to know what really happened, just ask, and there's a slight chance you'll get the real story.
  
  
• Make a Run for It
  Somehow, unprecedentedly, the decision was made to do something, and it involved not only leaving the dorms but also leaving Lincoln. It was decreed that everyone in the room was going clubbing. Once in Omaha, we stood in line on the sidewalk for quite some time, shivering and burning far more than 55 calories, wondering which would happen first: we'd freeze to death, or there'd be a drive-by. Eventually the line started moving, and at the door we were all frisked. Some were tickled, too, but Morgan was the only one to receive a visit from the Ass-Grabbing Fairy. On the dance floor, Morgan and Erin got tickets to something, Rob nearly lost the use of his legs, Ross made several daring rescues, Laura had to keep pulling her skirt back down, Ryan got a tongue in his ear and then got offered mace, and poor Paula was nearly raped by a 4-foot-tall skank.
  
  
• Flights Now Arriving....
  January 9--As she left her plane, Laura was probably wondering whether she'd be taking a taxi back to campus from the airport. However, as she entered the terminal the question was answered immediately. Liz, Ryan, Sarah, Ross, Morgan, and Erin were waiting there, holding an enormous sign that said "LAURA," getting all kinds of looks from the rest of the people there. (And giving a few, too, not mentioning the names of any incorrigible people.) But that's not the end of the excursion. A thick purple carpet had been rolled up in plastic and lying beside the dumpster behind Piper since Friday, and some members of the party just had to pause to get a look at it on the way back. Fifteen minutes later they were using a pocketknife to hack it into quasi-doormats.
  
  
• Many more have occurred; many more will occur. And eventually I may even get some of them written up.