Michael Vail ’24

Staff Writer

Meet Jim Parent. Loyal crusader since ’63. Bleeding purple each day he lives. He feels refreshed to be back on campus this wonderful Family Weekend.

It’s still Friday, so his daughter has yet to return from her seven-hour morning biology lab. With all these new buildings around, he doesn’t know which way is left and which way is down. Luckily, he is not alone in this regard. He finds a group of parents just like him crowding in front of a doorway in the middle of a three-way intersection. He joins his new squad and chills with them for a while. In a perfectly unplanned but synchronized fashion, they all stand a distance from each other that is too dense to walk through but distant enough to maximize space utilization.

When the football game begins, Jim is sure to get the best spot in the house to cheer on the Crusaders. What a wild ride! It is one of the most exciting games of his life, with outstanding performances from both sides. The only major loss is that of the referees, who manage to receive Mass hatred. There is plenty of Halloween-themed fun all around, from skeletons dancing on the field during a play, to President Rougeau dressing up in a banana suit and stealing the football to relive his moment of fame one more time. 20,000 spectators hear him shout, “In your faces, Colgate! Get off my field,” to all the Fordham fans.

Let’s fast forward a bit. What’s this? A college Halloween party? During Family Weekend? Because they decided to make these two events overlap? What a brilliant idea!

Jim wanders into the dorm building with nowhere else to go, wondering why his daughter’s seven-hour morning biology lab is running past 10 pm. And what a sight to behold! Swarms of [SILLY] students drinking endless amounts of [APPLE JUICE]! And what’s more, Jim’s daughter is not at her biology lab, but at the center of the crowd, chugging the [APPLE JUICE]! Jim walks over to her, a stern look on his face. She sees him and they make eye contact.

“What are you doing?” he demands.

Her eyes magnetize to her feet. “Drinking… [APPLE JUICE].”

“That,” he responds, “is not drinking [APPLE JUICE]. This is how you drink [APPLE JUICE].”

And Jim drinks and drinks, college students chanting around him until he becomes the [SILLIEST] person in the room. He is crowned the king of the party, and requests to be called “Your Excellency” for the rest of his days.

Both Jim and his daughter forget the events of Family Weekend, due to the [JOYFUL] properties of the [APPLE JUICE]. For the next week, Jim has nightmares of a dancing President Rougeau in a banana suit.

Image from College of the Holy Cross