Freshman Antics

I fulfilled the obligations of my freshman year in a small college town that was a bit of a throw back to the 1950's. The town itself was centered on a traditional square with the courthouse at one end and the hardware store and old movie house at the other. Old Main, built before the turn of the century dominated the view from every vantage point, and it was surrounded by buildings for the various schools and dormitories up and down the hills. The school was definitely the life-blood of the community. In fact, the streets rolled up when the students were gone, and most residents either worked at the school, or had attended there and just not grown enough to leave.

One crisp fall evening, while I was dutifully studying some political science text, I heard voices from men wandering in the parking lot outside my dorm room. I looked out to see hundreds of draft age young men milling around with some purpose, but without direction. There was no obvious leader, but as I watched, the crowd swelled and began murmuring, no, chanting. Chanting in a low monotone. Chanting in rhythmic unison. Chanting, "panties . . . panties . . . panties . . ."

Soon, the crowd swirled some as if stirred, and then, some one yelled, "girls dorms!"

That did it. It was as if the swarm suddenly had both leadership and direction, and the army surged, like the typhoon wave of a perfect storm towards the other side of campus where the girls lived. The young men continuted the chant in the same monotone, but it built, throbbing towards a frenzy.

By the time the crowd arrived on the lawn of Lantana Hall, the chant was more like a touchdown roar. In response, seemingly thrilled young women flung open the french windows of their second story dorm rooms laughing, as if they had fully expected the invasion because it had been described in the campus life section of the school catalog. They began tossing out various items of undergarments of every size, shape and color imaginable. Some granny panties, some bikinis, some even monogrammed with the day of the week or initials (a few even included a hastily written phone number, but whether the number actually belonged to the garment owner or someone else, who knows?).

Then, the rain of underwear stopped as suddenly as it began. The men cheered. The women laughed. The surge moved to the next dorm, rebuilding the chant and repeating the process. Over the course of a couple of hours, every campus princess was given a fair opportunity to make an offering.

After the festivities, my roommates returned with their prizes, the most memorable of which was a faux tiger skin pajama suit clearly designed to cover everything from toe to neck. It was even zippered from the ankle to the collar bone. I saw this tiger suit leap from the seventh story window of the high rise dorm where upperclass-women lived. It soared a bit like a kite until it landed on my roommate, and then, for a few weeks, it adorned the wall of our room along with about 10 other trophies from the evening. Sadly, it was the closest my roommate got to a woman that entire semester.

©2007 David R. Childress. All Rights Reserved.