Category: Rats!

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During my senior year of college, I roomed with Val, who was (and still is) Jewish. Every year, at Hanukkah, she’d light her menorah, despite the rules against candles in the dorms. The only year this was a problem was the year she used sub-standard candles that went limp when they melted, then toppled off the menorah and into her wicker trash basket. Which was filled with paper.

Val was an interesting roommate. She kept a pet bull snake named “Houdini” in her dorm room, but thankfully not the year we roomed together. Houdini got out of his aquarium one day and slid under the dorm room door, out into the girls’ part of the dorm. You can imagine the excitement this caused. However, Val was short and very cute, so I think when she went to see the Vice Commandant about Houdini’s escapade, she just sort of smiled, laughed, and shrugged, and in return the Vice Commandant (Col. Vanderpyle, I believe), just sort of shook his head and started laughing too. This of course, led me to believe that Val was pure evil because she could get away with anything. In fact, to this day, if you asked me to describe Val, I was say she was cute, and short, and evil. Very evil.

And apparently still an officer in the Air Force! See what being a cadet can do for you?

Wherever you are, Shorty, I hope you and your family have a happy Hanukkah.

Normally, I post the cartoon and then I offer the commentary. Today I’m doing it the other way around, and I want to explain why. On Thursday, Officer Deriek W. Crouse was shot and killed at Virginia Tech. I was horrified to hear this news. His death, at the time of this writing, appears to have been completely senseless, and it’s made even more tragic in light of the fact that Officer Crouse was married with five children. I’m having a hard time understanding how something like this could have happened at a campus I remember as being peaceful and laid back during my college days so many years ago.

The cartoon below was originally on December 8th, 1990. The very next day, I would go to a party and kiss my future husband for the first time. It was one of the best times of my life. It was about a week before the start of exams, and during that week, the VTCC instituted 23-hour quiet time. There was no talking in the hallways, no music, no horsing around, just 23 straight hours of studying. Until 6PM, that is.

From 6PM until 7PM, the hallways in Rasche and Brodie were a riot. We pulled out water guns and shaving cream pies, we blasted our stereos until the glass in the dorm windows started to shake. We threw water balloons and ate pizza, sometimes doing both activities at once. Then at 7PM we would return to our desks and get back to studying as hard as we could.

When I pulled this cartoon out of the pile last week, I clapped my hands with glee. I couldn’t wait to post this. Now, it seems so sad to look at. My heart goes out to Officer Crouse’s family. I cannot begin to say how heartsick I am over this man’s death. My thoughts are with his family.

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Wow. This cartoon is just a few days over 22 years old. I can tell it was drawn during those mad last few weeks before exams because A) I actually wrote the date I drew this on the comic, and B) I didn’t bother with tiny details like correctly spelling “Henry” or putting all four legs on the chair, which can only mean I was feeling very lazy or I was too swamped by end-of-term homework to care.

I’m dedicating this week’s cartoon to Mich, who is currently finishing up her degree in Civil Engineering, though I doubt she feels very civil at this point. I remember those days, trying to crank out those last few stupid papers that really had nothing to do with what I planned to spend the rest of my life working on. I remember the caffeine-fueled all-nighters and the urge to destroy everything around my with a baseball bat. But mostly I remember the blissful moment when it was all over and I could just collapse in bed and go to sleep for a bit.

It will come, Mich. It will come. I promise. Until then, hang in there. You’re almost done.

A quick note, I will be shilling for my Zazzle shop from now until Doomsday, or the end of the holidays, which ever happens last. So stop by the Cynical Woman Zazzle shop and buy Zombie Santa Christmas cards! Yay, Zombie Santa! Or buy something else that I made there and give it to somebody you love, or at least marginally like, as a gift! If you like robots or zombies, or octopi with gears for brains, then there’s something there you want to buy. Support the Cynical Woman or she will give you her cooties of doooooooooooom!!!!!!

(And yes, I am seriously considering making a “Cooties of Doom!” t-shirt, but don’t know when I’ll have that done yet.)

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I post this as a warning to all you cadets getting ready to head home for Thanksgiving. Remember, you still have to fit into your uniform when you get back to school!

Enjoy your holiday break 😉

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Ah, the joys of shaving cream pies. There’s nothing like hitting an upper classman with a pie, so long as you hit the right upper classman.

Back in my day, we had to get permission to pie an upper classman, and the person we got that permission from had to be of a higher rank than the person we pied, so it was very important that you pied your intended target and not some other upper classman. Otherwise, you might wind up in a bit of trouble. Of course, the upper classman who gave you permission might get in trouble too, even if you did get your target right. I can recall one evening we pied our battalion XO as she was coming up the stairs with a freshly delivered pizza. We creamed her and the pizza, and when we were done, she demanded to know who gave us permission.

“The battalion CO, ma’am!” we all chirped.

“I am so going to kill him!” she growled, and then she disappeared down the hall to the battalion CO’s room. A bit of screaming soon followed, and a little while later, the battalion CO came out into the hall wearing a shaving cream pizza.

“Ladies,” he told my buds and I as he wiped pizza sauce and shaving cream from his face, “Never, EVER tell the battalion XO who gave you permission to pie her!”

So, remember two things. Always hit the right target and never give away vital information to the enemy.

The end.

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I think someone took offense at a cartoon I posted earlier this month wherein I called Irwin a hypocrit. Apparently they thought I was calling all upper classmen cadets hypocrits. That wasn’t the case then and it’s not the case today. Fact is, most upper classmen are working hard to become the kind of officers we need in the military today, the kind who know how much work it’s going to be to lead in a combat zone, and they know hypocrisy won’t cut it when they get commissioned.

However, having said that, I have run across my share of hypocrits amongst upperclassmen cadets, and was a hypocrit on occasion myself. Like the above cartoon, I always thought that if you were going to be in the Corps of Cadets, you needed to do what was asked or get the hell out. It’s a lot of work being a cadet, but you get out of it what you put into it. It’s an honor and a privilege to be part of the VTCC.

It’s just that at on some days… Well, you know what days I mean. The days when you get up at 4AM to trudge all the way through the freezing cold out to Lane Stadium to run stadium steps for an hour and then when you’re completely exhausted you have to trudge all the way back to the cadet dorms and grab breakfast and throw on the uniform so you can make it to that three hour lab at 8AM and then you have a paper to write and two tests to study for and ROTC lab after that and oh, don’t forget evening formation and there’s an AUSA meeting you have to attend where you’re planning a fund raiser, and did we mention you’ve got guard detail tonight? Yeah, on those days, it’s hard to remember that you yourself said, “Do it or get out.”

The thing is, the rest of your life is going to be like that. In fact, it will be even worse. Right now, you cadets are single and in college. Believe it or not, your life is easy and you have relatively few responsibilities. In a few more years though, you’ll be in the military, going on deployment. You’ll have a spouse and kids and a house to take care of. There will be PTA meetings and parent-teacher conferences and math homework that your oldest child just does not understand and you majored in Military History because you never understood math either. There will be school bake sales to prepare for and your front yard desperately needs to be mowed and have you put up your Halloween decorations yet? Oh, and you still need to sit down with your husband or wife to discuss upgrading the flood insurance on the house and don’t forget you volunteered to help out with the Girl Scouts this weekend and on and on and on and on…

It. Never. Ends. And there will be plenty of days were you will think, “I wanted to do this, I chose to do this, and by thunder I’m doing it! And people who can’t handle the pressure shouldn’t have kids/a spouse/a home/a military career!” And then there will be days when you will look at your life and think, “I would really just like to go back to bed now and stay there…”

But that’s life. It’s terribly, terribly busy and it will keep throwing challenges and responsibilities at you until the day you die. Then and only then do you get to go back to bed and stay there. But until that day comes along, I suggest you keep moving. And indulge in a little hypocritical whining every now and then, because if you don’t, you’ll most like have a massive stroke and die.

In any event, have fun this weekend!