Real college legends and other tales to see the week out

Hello out there! Tommy can you hear me? That’s from The Who’s ground-breaking rock opera, “Tommy.” You, know, ” … the deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball.” That came out when I was in high school, or my between junior high and high school. Sometime back when I was a “yewt.” What’s a “yewt,” you might ask? That is, if you are the late actor Fred Gwynne. Sorry you have to watch “My Cousin VInny” if you don’t know.

The song Tommy reminds me of a guy I knew in college named Tommy who purported to be a deaf guy. The problem was, according to my friends who knew him better than I did, he really wasn’t deaf. He was one of those living college legends I guess every institution has. I knew several of those legends.

One such guy had parents who were paying his way to college and who bought a condo in which he resided. This guy didn’t work. He also didn’t go to class — for several years. We remained friends until he broke into the mobile home I lived in — climbed through the living room window while I slept — and stole my crappy TV and radio. I called the cops later that morning when I was at work and while I spoke to the cops, it came to me, SOB (we’ll use that as his name). It just popped in my head SOB was the type of person who would do that as a joke. It wasn’t that funny to me. It wasn’t because the TV or radio were of any great value. The problem as I saw it was that I used to sleep with a loaded .410 shotgun in the bedroom. I might have shot the SOB. I came up with what turned out to be a kind of cruel joke on him.

I called SOB and got his brother on the phone. I asked bro if SOB had stolen my stuff. He said “yeah.” I told him to tell SOB to meet me after work. I met the psycho, who gave me back my stuff. I told him I spoke with the police, who told me I should tell my friend to get some psychological help, that whoever did something like that had real emotional problems. I made the SOB cry. College kid. I know, that was mean.

This week I ended up working about 30 hours. I got home at 8 p.m. last night and 4:30 this afternoon. Only 30 hours and it seems like I work full-time. That is neither here nor somewhere else. Time for a sandwich.