Among the men of Shen also lived The Admiral. I think one of the guys in the room across the hall from
me named him that. Because it sounded good with his last name "Atwell" probably. I'm not certain if he was on our
floor all of the time, or never, because I rarely saw him. When I did it was an event,
"Hey Jeremy!" I'd shout.
"Hi," he'd answer. Always say "hi" in his sheepish smiling voice.
"How's it goin' Jeremy?" I'd ask.
"Good," he'd answer. He'd always answer with good. He never seemed to have an answer any more
complicated that, "Good". Which is something I guess all of us were kind of jealous of in a backwards kind of way.
The rest of us weren't good all the time. Sometimes we were wretched, had baggage, or generally wanted to beat up
Fealko just because he looked like he needed a good beating.
Fealko always deserves a good beating. During October break, me and Lukey still hung around school,
'cause we had no friends, and had to stay in the dorms because we couldn't get home either. We noticed that
Fealko's room was empty. We knew that because he seemed to stop sneaking up on us and breathing sweet nothings
into our ears.
"Let's bust into Fealko's room and trash it," I said to Lukey.
"Yeah," said Luke, "we could dump all the stuff all over, and make a mess of it." Being the spiritual ones
in the hall, we felt we had to do the right thing.
"My room is next to his," I said, "so my dresser connects to the back of his dresser."
Using this piece of knowledge we pulled my drawers out of the dresser, and could see the draws in Fealko's
room.
"Lukey," I said, "Do you think you're skinny enough to fit between the wall boards?"
We looked at them, they looked pretty tight, but maybe he could fit. So I grabbed Luke's feet and
wheelbarrowed him into my dresser, in hopes that I could shove him into Fealko's room.
"How's it going?" I asked Luke. I heard some mumbles, so I shoved him in a bit further.
"Are you getting in?" I asked Luke again, I heard some more mumbles, so I shoved him in a good bit futher
and pretty hard this time. He didn't wait around for me to ask how he was doing, and screeched something awful
loud. I slowly wheelbarrowed him back out.
"Not gonna fit in, huh?" I asked.
"Nope," said Luke, rubbing his head. He was gonna have to put ice on that thing. But he didn't.
Injuries are battle scars on First Shen. Signs of great manhood.
"Hey guys see this scar."
"Yeah, wow, how'd you get it man?"
"I got it killing a wild board with my bear fists!"
"Wow, that's so cool."
"Hey, check this one out man, see how it looks like a skull?"
"Yeah, that's awesome!"
"Hey guys," said Lukey as he walked in from outside, "Check out how I ripped half my face off."
Wow.
"You look like you've been damaged," I said.
"We were playing frisbee," said Francis, "and Luke went for the frisbee and ran his face into the tree."
Wow. Chicks were gonna start looking at him with awe. He had a scar. I needed a scar. I do have one
little scar behind my right ear from a miniture golfing accident. But I've yet to attract women using my scar.
Frisbee seems to be one of the best things around Houghton, if you have a scar or not though. We would
go out there and practice like it was going to be the Olympics. Francis and Luke would go out and run laps back and
forth across the field-hockey field for hours passing the frisbee back and forth. Once in a while I'd come out and
play too, but never could quite get the handle of it.
See sports have always been a matter of fear for me. I'm afraid of anything that gets thrown at me. I'll
scream like a little child. Overcoming that and even catching a frisbee takes a lot of psyching up to do. I think often
my fear of sports comes in as more of a fear of being hated by everyone. Because sometimes I'm just so bad, that I
know I'm ticking off who ever is on my team, and making them mutter to themselves, "I hate him, I hate him," when
I so want to be liked, I'd rather sit on the side, or try not to get in the way. Of course, usually when I get over that
fear, I become not so bad, and move into the mediocre category.
I suppose a lot of everything, is just getting over being afraid of it, and just screaming "ahhh." loudly. Not
one of those signs of reliefh, "Ahhh," a scream, AHHH! Just letting out any sign of being an
intelligent person, and giving up all your pride to relive yourself.
"AH!" I screamed at Luke.
"AHHH!" he screamed back.
"AHHHHHHH!" we both screamed in terrorized unison. Somehow those
noises were able to liberate us from the small quiet lives we lived infront of our computers. Those screams of anger
at everything are what let us loose, to be wild, if only for a few seconds. We had to do something, since we didn't
have any hair on our chests.
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