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Pastimes : Laughter is the Best Medicine - Tell us a joke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Rabbit who wrote (24252)	7/31/2002 8:11:25 PM
From: Arthur Radley	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 62550

Rabbit, Speaking of college days, the following is one of my college adventures. Before reading...remember that today, I'm a Dude and was also a Dude in college. (:>) Chapter 17 "The Purloined Umbrella" After my calamitous date with the Goddess, I returned my sister’s car and told her I wouldn’t be needing it in the future. With all the fervor of a reformed sinner, I was going to re-dedicate myself to my studies. No more trying to be the campus bon vivant. No more lusting after a date with a champion coed. In fact, no more lust at all. Now I yearned for the life of a hermit. And I hoped never again to encounter a campus cop. Resigned to a monkish life, at least until things could blow over, I tried to muddle along on my own and ignore the superficial opinions of my fellow students. That proved to be a sound strategy, especially when it came to a small but nettlesome problem that plagues most males on college campuses in the South: how to arm one's self against those frequent rainy days during the school year. In the South, it is a given that almost every week there will be a sudden shower in the middle of the day. The downpour always starts as you are heading for the Student Center to enjoy a game of gin rummy or hearts. If, by some chance, you aren't on your way to the Student Center then the deluge descends when it's time for a meal in the Dining Hall. Yet, according to my most un-scientific survey, only five out of every 1,000 male college students bother to purchase an umbrella; and fewer than one out those five will remember to bring it with him on the way to class. In my era, the consequences of being rained on were even more devastating than in today's era of the "blow-dry" look. When I was in school, we sported slick-looking hairdos requiring ample applications of Brylcream, a whitish hair glob with the atomic weight of crude oil. If doused by an unexpected rain storm, the average college guy's head instantly would be transformed into something resembling volcanic mud. Mindful of this, I used some of my limited resources to buy one of those traditional black umbrellas, the broad and manly kind British diplomats carry everywhere. More than once it saved my Brylcreamed hair from dissolving into a river of grease. Invariably, however, whenever I left my black umbrella in the entrance to the Student Center or the Dining Hall, it would be gone when I returned. It seems that male students who have never owned an umbrella in their entire lives for some reason cannot resist taking the first black umbrella they see, so long as it belongs to someone else. This is an exclusively male thing, a phenomenon, perhaps, that anthropologists need to study for a few decades, like they used to do with the taboos of Polynesian islanders. One day, I caught a fellow student taking my umbrella. He was caught rain-handed, you might say. When I confronted him, he defended himself by explaining that once upon a time he had owned a black umbrella of his own, but someone had taken it. He hadn't bothered to replace it because he realized that someone else soon would take it the next time he left it to drip-dry in a campus building. What's more, the umbrella thief added, he was sure this umbrella (mine) would be taken, too, if either one of us left it unattended for even a moment. So, he reasoned, it wasn't really like stealing my umbrella. The umbrella was bound to disappear, anyway. He just wanted to borrow it for a few hours before someone else purloined it for good. He was right, of course. After losing three or four more umbrellas to other male classmates, I hit on a novel solution that I attributed to my new-found disdain for what the pretty college girls might think of me. I made a trip to Rosenberg's, the local department store, and straight away headed for the "Accessories" department. For the rest of my years on campus, my Brylcreamed hair and I stayed dry. Never again did I lose an umbrella to a thieving male student. And, if I do say so myself, whenever it rained I cut a rather bold figure as I dashed across the campus. Best of all, none of the men tried to "borrow” my bright pink umbrella with the frilly tassels and the little fuzzy balls hanging on the end