Share your favorite memory of attending WSU on its 129th birthday

For 129 years, nestled among rolling, golden hills of wheat and lentils, Washington State University has sat, perched atop College Hill in a little town named after a railroad magnate.

Today, it’s Ol’ Wazzu’s birthday! Cake was even served.

As we have done intermittently throughout the years, we want to celebrate the birthday of Washington State (née Washington Agricultural College and School of Science, née State College of Washington) with your favorite memory of attending there. It doesn’t have to be class or campus related, but trying to keep it to something non-sports related would be superb. I’ll even volunteer to go first (names have been omitted to protect the innocent)!

During my freshman year, I’d been assigned a roommate and, luckily, did alright in that lottery. We got along, played video games, had meals together and the like. However, at the time I was not as prodigious an imbiber as I would become; quite the opposite of my roommate.

Flash forward to finals week of spring semester. My roommate’s last final is at noon on Tuesday, after which he proceeded to waltz into our room and announce he would be getting “obliterated beyond all belief” and not coming back until 3 a.m.. He was doing this out of a courtesy, he said, so I could plan to stay at my then-girlfriend’s for the night, as both she and I had finals to continue to study for. It was a courtesy I certainly appreciated as my most difficult final awaited the following morning.

Flash forward to about 8:30 p.m.. I was still studying in my room, figuring I had plenty of time to leave before he returned.

Dear reader, I did not.

My roommate swung the door to our dorm room open and fell onto the floor, proudly proclaiming “I GOT F—ING OBLITERATED, DUDE.” When I reminded him that the sun had freshly set and it was nowhere near the middle of the night appointment he had made for his return, he looked at me, paused, and said “...sorry for partying”.

Touche.

After several minutes of struggling to change into gym shorts, he gave up and flopped into bed in the buff. His thunderous snores shacking the foundation of our building, I decided to take my leave early, leaving him to his hours long drunken slumber.

I could not, however, let this early intrusion back in our room after such a grand pronouncement of drinking prowess go unpunished.

Before leaving, I grabbed a friend down the hall, asking if he would help move my roommate’s bed into the hallway. I would not be so cruel as to leave him without a key to get back into our room on his bed, but the hilarity of a fully nude man with half of one butt cheek protruding from a poorly worn comforter must be shared.

Slowly, so as to not wake him, we moved my roommate’s bed to the door frame for the tricky business of pivoting it correctly to get it into the hall. He rustled momentarily, and we quickly jumped back, as two burglars stealing the Hope Diamond might when an unexpected security laser flashes in front of them. We deftly moved about half of the bed, and my roommate, into the hallway before the movement became too much. He awoke, looked around, and then up and me and uttered words I will never forget:

“If you don’t put me back in our room, I’ll kick your f—ing ass.”

He lay his head back down and, gingerly, we returned him to the room for a peaceful rest, interrupted only, according to my sources, by a 1:30 a.m. vomit session the likes of which many had never heard before or since.

He’s married and has a little boy now. Cute kid.

So, that’s my story. What about you?