Secret Santa. You know the drill. Draw someone’s name, get them a gift. My freshman year in college we had Valentine’s Pals. Each of us in the dorm (about 50 people, though of course not all participated) filled out a sheet of paper with our name, and a few insights into our still-forming personalities for our “pal” to help them get us something we’d like for Valentine’s Day. The survey asked things like your favorite food, favorite color, hobbies, likes, dislikes. You get it. Mine probably said something college-chick-esque such as “writing/reading poetry” and the color black.
The day came for us to draw names and I drew my upstairs neighbor Alex. Alex was a sophomore majoring in music who played the sax (actually he could play anything and had perfect pitch, the jerk – but I digress) and was on the college soccer team. He was a friend of mine. Part of the group of dormies I hung out with. Cynical sarcastic sense of humor like mine. Which is good because of what happened when I read his survey. After his name where all the personal info was supposed to go he had written one line: Ask Stefan. Stefan was Alex’s roommate and very good friend. So I asked Stefan. And Stefan said Alex had told him nothing about the survey. So I wrote a note (in generic block letters) to Alex introducing myself as his secret Valentine pal and politely requested answers to the survey questions so that I could be the best Valentine Pal a person could be. The next time I spoke to Stefan, he still had no answer, so I got a little irked.
I wrote another note. With my left hand. It conveyed a little of my frustration and again requested he tell Stefan ANYTHING so I could be a good Valentine Pal. What did I get? Nada. And so it began.
Over the course of the week leading up to Valentine’s Day, I wrote Alex one letter a day…MINIMUM. I used different handwriting. I asked other people to write notes for me. I sprayed other girls’ perfume on notes and slipped them under his door. My letters got more and more threatening. The message was the same: Tell Stefan SOMETHING. And yet, he told Stefan nothing, so I took that as a personal affront to my being his pal and went to war. Rusty razorblades were referenced. I had my next door neighbor Jonathan write a love letter to Alex and Jonathan went further than I expected. The letter got a little steamy, and there was a bearskin rug in front of the fire… word back from Stefan on that one was that when Alex finished reading that letter he looked up and said in a slightly worried tone, “I wonder if this is a guy.”
I borrowed tapes from a large number of people in the dorm and made a kind of medley mix for Alex. It was only 2 minutes long, but it spliced together many songs starting with “Welcome to the jungle”. I was going for a letter in music and I only remember a little of it so I will try to tell you what it said.
“Welcome to the jungle. We’ve got fun ‘n games. We got everything you want, Honey we know the names. We are the people that can find whatever you may need. If you got the money, honey, we got your disease. …I wanna watch you bleed.
“Sweet child of mine
“Don’t touch me, I’m a real live wire. Psycho killer. Q’est-ce que c’est…better run run run run, run run run away
“Oh you’re going straight to hell for that one (Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam)
“So sing us a song you’re the piano man…”
Okay I cannot remember any more songs but there were many and I was quite proud. I walked by Alex and Stefan’s room, heard the music, and poked my head in. I was waved in by a very excited Alex who was playing the tape over and over again. He was trying to figure out if the person who had made the tape was a pro because the splices on occasion were extremely close… Inside I smiled and thanked my dual cassette player and lightning fast reflexes (and apparent good sense of timing).
Next stop, a scavenger hunt. Alex got a note with his first location which revealed the letters ICA and his second location. The locations were all over our college. Things like “the tree in the middle of the path” and “the middle sink of House 6’s 3rd floor bathroom”. (Thing was, there were only two sinks in that bathroom so the clue taped to the back of each of those sinks read “This isn’t the middle sink, dummy”). After running all around our college, Alex returned to his room to find a lollipop taped to his door. When he assembled the clues he had a message that read, “I CANT BELIEVE YOU WASTED ALL THIS TIME ON THIS STUPID HUNT YOU BIG SUCKER”
Another night Stefan and I were hanging out while Alex was at band practice (one of the 2-3 bands he was in) and we started playing with Stefan’s computer to see if we could get it to talk. Lo and behold…we could. We, meaning Stefan. This was 1992 so we were uber excited. We had to figure out weird spellings to get the computer to say what we wanted. The name “Alex” was especially difficult and I think we eventually got it sounding as close as we could by spelling “YAhl lix” or something weird like that. We got a great message that said something to the effect of (read in zero inflection monotone computer voice) “Hell low there YAhl lix. Look. I have taken over your machine. Am I in your dreams yet? Or in your night mares ha ha ha ha ha. You should tell Steff On what you want, Yahl lix. I like saying your name. YAhl lix. YAhl Lix. YAhl Lix….” And from there we resourcefully got it onto the answering machine. This was the kind of answering machine with a cassette tape and we had the hardest time getting the message on there AND making the machine think it had a message so that it would flash. It worked, and when Alex heard it he got big eyed and asked Stefan, “Does your computer talk?” To which Stefan replied (without lying), “I wish.” Alex was truly baffled.
And I am truly tired. I tortured this guy for a week, and I can’t write it all in one sitting. So I share this with you right now, and will continue the story later. Good night. Sleep well. Happy belated Valentine’s Day.
Shelby, I had no idea how devious you were! =)
Oh. My. God.
I had forgotten about this.
Hi, Chelb!