By Ian Williams
"Wednesday's Child"

The Daily Tar Heel
January 17, 1990

I recall a strange and hazy time about four and a half
years ago, fretting in the sweltering heat of room 244
Hinton James dorm, sitting stilted on my bed while the
rest of the dorm scurried outside. My suitemate from
Brevard was parading his Spittle Collection, a
particularly nauseating amass of his oral waste that
he kept in three 2-liter bottles over the door. My
roommate spoke in a dialect from Edenton that barely
passed for anything on our side of the language tree,
and the only things I had to wear in the 105-degree
weather were corduroy pants from my goofball private
high school. Tripping over the bricks, showing up for
classes in rooms miles away from where the classes
were actually taught, and getting lost by the water
tower, I might as well have had a huge placard wrapped
around my neck that said "Oh so clueless" and a number
to call in case anybody found me peeing in their yard.

But there was a time before this, an epoch so dark and
dreary that when I think of it, I see visions of
monks, tilted medieval heads, and plague victims. I
call it The Time When I Thought I Wanted To Go To
Duke.

For some unexplainable reasons having to do with
planet alignment or a chemical imbalance, I was pretty
well set on going to that fair university in Durham.
My high school in Virginia brainwashed us all into
thinking that if we didn't end up going to either
Duke, UVA, or one of the Ivys, we would surely end up
stocking Pampers at Wal-Mart or taking the toll on the
Chesapeake Bay Bridge. So off I scuttled to these
schools, all bushy-tailed, hoping to impress some
institutes of higher learning. By the time I got to
visiting Duke, however, the luster of college had
begun to dull into a bleak haze.

My tour guide's name was Lorna, no lie, and she spoke
in a loud, brash voice that seemed to shake the leaves
from the cute little shrubberies.

"... and on your left is Duke Chapel, the centerpiece of
our Gothic campus. Our university is considered by
many to be the most beautiful campus in America."

"Umm, excuse me," I said. "Where do all the kids
live?"

"The KIDS ?" she said in a voice of utter disdain
reserved only for parents whose child has just been
very, very naughty. "The DUKE STUDENT BODY mostly
lives in the buildings you are looking at right here,
with the beautiful Gothic architecture."

"Well, how hard are the classes here? Would I be
studying all the time?"

She fixed her cruel New Jersey gaze on my frightened
17-year-old soul. "Look, that's totally assuming you
even get in here at all. I know TONS of people that
would have given their left arm to get in here. And
not only that, but --oh HI, Thad!" Some senior named
Thad wearing Vuarnets and baggy Khaki shorts ambled up
with an evil Gleem smile.

"Leadin' the kids around, eh Lorna?" he said, then he
cackled like the frat Grinch.

"Yeah," she giggled, and the two whispered to each
other while exchanging muffled laughs.

I was herded into the cafeteria and stuck in a line
for pizza, while Lorna went off into the crowd with
some of her friends. A scowling guy slapped a piece of
rubber pepperoni pizza on my plate, and as I walked
across the room to sit down, I tripped on one of those
Beautiful Gothic little cherub things on the floor and
sent my pizza flying 20 feet onto the sweater of a
girl named Annabeth, a junior English major from
Bridgeport, Connecticut.

"OH MY GOD!" she squealed, and every face in the
entire joint looked right at me. Thad the Sunglasses
Man started to clap, and half of the cafeteria joined
in at my humiliation.

Suddenly I was back in third grade, and all the little
boys and girls were pointing and laughing at the
picture I had drawn of my family. Suddenly I was
sitting alone at the side of the blacktop while
everyone else got selected on the dodgeball team.
Suddenly I was lying in the Iowa snow, getting my ribs
kicked by five guys who thought I had stolen their
football. I had no escape at all.

And that's when I decided to go to Carolina. I had
never seen the place, never heard of Chapel Hill, and
I picked Hinton James because the brochure said it had
a laundry room. After a while I grew used to the town;
I didn't get lost behind the water tower, I learned
where Gardner Hall was, and I began to enjoy the
company of my suitemate, despite his spittle
collection. I also developed a taste for basketball,
and during the games I noticed that we had certain
heated rivalries. Whenever we played one of these
teams, I got tense and dug holes in the seat.

Now I realize that school spirit is a pretty goofy
thing to some people, and we don't really have a
reason to hate other institutions of higher learning,
but I'll tell you something-I hate Duke with an
infernal passion undying. I hate every leaf of every
tree of that sickening campus. I hate every fake
cherub 1930s Gothic piece of crap that litters the
buildings like hemorrhoidal testaments to their
imagined superiority. When I see those Dookie
boneheads shoepolishing their faces navy blue on
national television, squandering their parents' money
with their fratty elitist bad sportsmanship antics and
Saab stories, I want to puke all over Durham.

So this is my New Year's Request, boys of basketball:
tonight, I not only want you to win, I want Krzyzewski
calling home to his mommy with tears in his eyes. I
want Alaa Abdelnaby to throw up brick after brick. I
want Rick Fox to take Christian Laettner to the hoop
so many times that poor Christian will be dazed on the
bench with an Etch-a-Sketch and a box of 64 Crayola
Crayons. I want Bobby Hurley to trip on his shoelaces
and fly into a fat alumnus from Wilmington! Send Thad
and Lorna home with their blue tails between their
flegs! God bless them Tar Heel boys!