From virtually the beginning of the year, I heard all sorts of stories of the majesty that is Green Key. Upperclassmen of all sorts referred to Winter Carnival as a "walk in the park" compared to the insanity of Green Key. Homecoming? Pure child's play. For all of Spring term, like a kid in a candy store, my eyeballs grew bigger and bigger in anticipation of the final prize of eight or nine weeks of intense procrastination and faux-studying.
And then it was here! The Green Key issue of The D came out, and I started foaming at the mouth as I read column after column of Green Key praise. This was supposed to be college life at its best.
In all fairness, living up to that sort of hype is quite an undertaking. My Green Key weekend, far from being the "Titanic" I had been envisioning since September, turned into something more along the lines of "Godzilla."
The weekend started promisingly enough when someone took my bike. Granted, my $80 K-Mart Huffy is a top prize on any thief's list, so I understand it's in high demand, but it still put me in a foul mood to start things off.
A midnight visit to Dick's House was phase II of the weekend's festivities. After the nurse informed me that I had "something," I returned to my room, shaking and twitching like it was going out of style. I don't blame her for the lack of a diagnosis -- hypochondriac that I am, the best explanation I can usually come up with for what ails me is "me no feel good," making the job difficult for even the best Dick's House nurse -- but she didn't even give me any drugs! Dick's House just wasn't living up to its reputation that night, to my dismay.
By Friday night I could barely talk. Not wanting to miss out on the whole premise of Green Key, I tried to force down some daiquiris, which were soothing to the throat but not as much to the stomach full of drugs. This supposed "pre-game" ended up being most of the game for me, as I was pretty much out of commission the rest of the evening.
I hoped my anticlimactic Friday night would give way to something a little more Green Key-esque on Saturday. I tried to give myself a chance to rest up so I'd be ready to go, and the process of resting up ended up constituting my entire Saturday. Through a bedroom window in RipWoodSmith, as I went in and out of consciousness, I caught some of the sounds and energy of the AD lawn party. That was about as close as I got to the spirit of Green Key.
I managed to drag myself out of bed Saturday night, reminding myself that I'd been waiting for this weekend all term, and I wasn't about to let it go by unappreciated. Over the course of the next couple hours some of the alcohol-inspired displays of love I witnessed almost made me go blind, and I was once again unable to speak after killing my voice singing along to every song at Sigma Nu.
Saturday was over and Sunday came, and I woke up to the refreshing feeling of being even sicker than I had been the previous few days. Lucky me, the one and only time I get sick all year long happens to coincide exactly with the one moment I had been waiting for all year long. But I got up, went outside for some air, and found that what was supposed to be a beach was just the regular old Green. No bikinis, no Frisbees, no masses of people trying their best to do absolutely nothing. Just some light drizzle and the foul stench of a rotting Godzilla carcass, a Green Key weekend dead and buried.
This was not Green Key's fault. It was the weather's fault and the fault of my mysterious and conveniently timed illness. But any way it's sliced, Green Key was not what it was supposed to be. But it won't stop me from dreaming! After all, Green Key 2001 is only 360 days away, and I can't wait. I hear it's gonna be great!
