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In This Issue

• Columbia Dry Humps for Gaia
• Springtime, Nipples Everywhere
• Lerner Daycare Creates Funny Smell
• Letters to the Editor(s)
• Meta-Clubs on Rampage
• Lion's Cock Viable Alternative to Human's
• God to Spend Summer in Boca
• Odwalla Bars Make Us Do Dirty, Dirty Things
• Naked and Loving It
• Has It Been Eight Years Already?
• Shades for a Bright Summer
• Emeritus: Greek for "Fat and Old"
• Horoscopes-A-Plenty
• A Salute to Business-Casual Racism
• THEY Watch
• Wacky Fun Whitey
• The Staff of 17.9
• Take Back the Night - Gone Wild!

At about this time of my freshman year, I found myself faced with a dilemma. Live at home with the ‘rents, or stay in New York? "I'm not telling you what to do," says Mom, "but I want you to come home!" Okay, but you said you weren't telling me what to do, so you won't be seeing your little girl until next Thanksgiving. By the way, can I have two thousand dollars?

It seemed to be a choice between checking in with Mom quarter-hourly or having to get a job. But what kind of job could I, a spoiled CC English major with no useful skills, expect? Was there someone in New York who would pay me to write well-organized five hundred word papers on the importance of guest friendship in The Odyssey? (If there is, contact me care of this paper.)

My solution: transform the lounge on my floor into a summer day camp. There is big money in this, trust me. Parents of college students may beg their children to come home, but people with little kids will pay just about anything to get rid of them. I postered the campus, expecting maybe fifteen responses. By mid-May ten had come in. On the first day, fifty-four showed up. "I thought it'd be easier to just register now," one of the mothers explained, "you know, since I was going to be here anyway.

There was no way I could have all those kids in the dorm, but I was in no position to turn away business. So I calmly put the forty-four unexpected checks in my pocket, and headed with my tiny followers over to Lerner, where I figured I could just let them run around on the ramps all day. Trying to lead fifty-four small children around is something like herding pigeons. You have to run after them, kick them, and bribe them with birdseed. Fortunately, they were short enough to run under the turnstiles.

My "just let the kids run loose" plan quickly proved woefully inadequate. They were all over the place, running under people's legs and somersaulting down ramps, knocking one defenseless girl right off of her platform sandals. It was pretty funny, but security was starting to get suspicious. So I got some tarps from the student club area, and while I was there I serendipitously happened to find a really long hose hooked up to a faucet. So I spread the tarps out on the ramps and brought as many kids as I could upstairs in the elevators. Easier said than done. The kids pressed all the buttons, and they had yet to become jaded by the elevator's "electric eye" technology. "Please allow the doors to close," the elevator said. "Please, allow the doors to close! Hey! Could you please control your fucking kids! God, I need a Percocet."

When I finally got a good number of them up to the top of Lerner, I pointed the hose down the ramp and shouted, "Slip 'n slide!" The reaction was immediate. Suddenly there were kids zooming down the ramps on their bellies, shrieking gleefully, and flying smack dab into the walls at the ends of the ramps.

The wave of water, predictably, caught security's attention when it reached campus level. As I was trying to jerry-rig a safety net for the kids out of plastic cutlery from Ferris Booth, a security officer came over and asked me if I was responsible. I don't know what he was thinking. I certainly don't look very responsible. But before I got a chance to respond, a baby went skidding by on his diapered bottom, and, with surprising dexterity, grabbed the wire railing and swung himself safely around the corner. "Oh gosh, that just looks like so much fun!" said the security officer. "Never mind. Don't worry about it. Slip 'n sliiiide! Wheeeee!" And with that, he dove down the ramp laughing.

Eventually the kids washed up at the bottom. Well, fifty-one of them anyway. Three of them are still lost somewhere in the bowels of Lerner. I realized that daycare wasn't for me, and the next day I went out to look for a job as a waitress. Maybe it's not quite as wet and wild, but it pays the bills.