Many of you have asked for an update as to what type of zany things have been occurring at Deseret Towers (motto: “Auschwitz, but with Room Inspection”) over the past few weeks, particularly on the fourth floor of Q-Hall, where I live. Well, I am pleased to report that everyone is still loony.
Example #1: I recently poked my head into Braden and Clay’s room and found Braden and Clay both on the floor, and Jared, from down the hall, on one of the beds. All three of them were laughing hysterically at: nothing. I know it was nothing because they had done it before. Clay thinks Braden has a very funny laugh, and Braden thinks the same of Clay, so anytime one of them laughs at something, it sets the other one off, which just makes it worse for the first one, and so on, until one or both of them passes out. And usually, whoever is unlucky enough to be in the room at the time gets caught in the trap as well. This time it was Jared, but in the past, it has been such people as my roommate Shawn, Alen, Milo, Adam, and some general authorities.
So this in itself was not particularly strange to me, because it had happened before. In fact, one time it happened in church. I am not making this up. We were all in a Sunday School class, with Clay and Braden sitting at opposite ends of the room, when one of them began to laugh quite hard at something that was said (you know how funny those Sunday School teachers can be), which set the other one off. I, personally, was terrified. I was immediately overcome by an overwhelming sense of impending doom, because the class was almost over, and I knew there was no way in the world they could contain themselves for the course of a closing prayer. As any long-time member of the LDS Church can tell you, anything that was funny before a prayer becomes even funnier during one.
But back to that night in Braden and Clay’s room. What WAS a little strange was that Jared was dressed like a surgeon. That’s right, a surgeon. I don’t know why, except that everyone on my floor is, as I mentioned earlier, loony.
Example #2: The other day, while Braden and Clay were both out, someone stole their door.
Read that again if you want. I’ll wait.
* * * (these asterisks indicate the passage of time)
That’s right, their door. It was missing for a couple hours, and we considered putting a picture of it on some flyers with the headline “MISSING,” but it turned up again before we had the chance. As it happens, two other guys on the floor had stolen it as a joke, and they eventually decided that the joke was over and they may as well as give it back. Another factor in their decision may have been that the head resident threatened to call the police.
(By the way, I suspect the reason they did it was so that they could get their names mentioned in my column, so for that very reason, I am not going to say what their names are. I will not be manipulated.)
So that’s how things currently are on the fourth floor. More updates will follow as soon as I find out who took my bed.
(Eric D. Snider is a freshman at BYU. He is from Lake Elsinore, Calif., where he often laughed and pointed at total strangers for no reason.)
Comparing Deseret Towers to a concentration camp in the first paragraph: In poor taste? Yes. Did I get angry letters because of it? No. Did I get angry letters in response to other columns because of far, far, more harmless and mild stuff than that? Oh my, yes.
I rarely discussed actual LDS Church-related things in the column, even though I knew 90 percent of my readers were LDS. It wasn't a conscious decision; I just didn't do it very often. This column was a rare exception.
It occurs to me that if I were writing this column today, I would have written the tag thusly: "He is from Lake Elsinore, Calif., where he was often pointed and laughed at by total strangers for no reason." I was a lot more high-and-mighty in those days, whereas now I like to make it clear that I think I'm as big a dork as anybody else.
