I was gone to South America, but now I'm back to bore you with trite Dartmouth opinions that will change your whole outlook and give you entirely new perspectives about absolutely nothing.
Today's topic for discussion is the Dartmouth 'hard guy.' You know the ones. Never talk in class, cuz it ain't cool. Sit in the back, never talk, laugh or even look around. Keep their eyes on their notebook and just exude hardness. Maybe cross their legs every once in a while. Take some notes. Look really bored and never, ever raise their hands.
But that's only one side of the hard guy. Other manifestations exist in more social settings that can indicate a tendency towards hardness. But first I should make a distinction between the 'hard guy' as he's known, and his cousin, the 'rage guy.' The rage guy is the one who never ever talks or smiles when he's raging. Pulls his hat way down over his eyes, plays pong very seriously, never loses, ever, and when he finally achieves that level of incapable drunkenness, the rage guy just stands around drunk. Everybody is afraid to talk to the rage guy because he looks really scary, but in fact he's just really drunk. He's actually not scary, unless he turns into the hard guy. The important distinction is that the rage guy can turn into the hard guy, if something sets him off before he gets too drunk, but the hard guy can be anyone at any time. He can be the nicest guy in the world sober, but get a dozen beers in him and it's all over. He could be an all-around jerk or a really boring individual, or even a creative loner, the key ingredient is alcohol. The alcohol brings out the silicofluoride treatment they received drinking the tap water as kids, and they get really mean.
The rage guy usually just sticks to the basement and hangs around completely removed from his environment, but the hard guy is acutely aware of what's going on around him. You see, the hard guy has problems. He wants respect, so he acts tough when confronted so that nobody will confuse him for unmanly. Anything can set the hard guy off. He takes anything as a challenge, and he's almost always wrong. Maybe he's the life of the party making all kinds of noise and commotion until something finally really gets him angry. Somebody bumps him, causing him to miss a shot, or somebody looks at him and laughs. That's all it takes. The hard guy is unleashed, and there's no restraining him until everybody around has decided to leave or ignore him.
Interestingly, one of the characteristics of the hard guy is to flock to other hard guys. That way, when they're all drunk they can mutually support each other in being jerks. But by far the worst situation is when a couple hard guys run up against competing hard guys. This happens almost nightly somewhere on campus. The best thing to do in these situations is laugh at them and then when something happens, get really hard yourself and stop the fight.
It's always the same thing. Somebody wants to get in or get a beer. Somebody won't let them. The other guy gets personally offended; everyone steps in to break it up. There's lots of: "Yo, it's cool," "Yo what the fu--?" "Yo, bring it," "Yo, is there a problem?" "Yo, just calm down," "Yo, whatever," and especially lots of "Yo, this house sucks anyway." Then somebody gets one lucky punch in when nobody's expecting it and then everybody gets really really hard, and whoever did it gets dragged off by his friends all the while yelling back over their shoulders "Yeah! That's what you get!" as they run off.
Then for the next week or so everybody talks trash about the other guy, until one night they're all in some neutral basement together and they make up.Then the two hard guys are part of the same band and they will now go harass other people.
Meanwhile, life goes on as normal for everybody else: The rage guy is still in the basement hiccuping to himself, the ordinary people are just hanging out, and life is hunky dory. The hard guy is free to be belligerent another day.
Now, this opinion gives the impression that I don't really embrace the hard guy mentality, but pretty much every guy becomes a part of this sort of hard-guyness at one time or another, myself included. It's one of those things that doesn't really change anything or matter, and it's actually pretty lame, but it just happens every now and again to everyone. But I happen to think this summer will be a time of extreme hard-guyness, and I figured I would list symptoms for easy identification and prevention, or participation.
