I woke up to 47 new emails. I’m not that popular, am I?
I quickly gathered myself, put on my best pair of slippers, brushed all 28 of my teeth, tousled my bedhead just the way I like it and returned back to my computer.
47 emails? In nine hours? From 2 to 11 a.m.? In this economy?
Opening my inbox this time was going to be a momentous occasion and I wanted to give it its proper due. There couldn’t be any rushing into it. I stalled and surveyed my brain for possible answers as to the source of all the new messages.
Was it from a professor? Maybe, but what could they possibly have to say that ate up 47 emails?
Was I being peddled to by “pharmaceutical reps” who wanted to bolster my manhood? Could be, but I’m pretty responsive to those queries already, so they probably don’t have much more to say to me.
Perhaps it was every living U.S. president and the ghost of every dead U.S. president, plus Martin Sheen, Dennis Haysbert and Michael Douglas all waking me up to my true calling of leading our great nation, and if worse came to worst, to just play the part on TV.
“Am I going to make a good president?” I thought. “Probably not if it takes this long for me to check every email.”
It was time.
I journeyed into my inbox. The usual suspects were there. An email from a professor. A B-Line. But where’s the treasure trove? Where was the gold mine of emails I was promised …
Holy shit.
And there it was. A total of 41 emails from the Off Campus College Council listserv.
OC3, you are the bane of me.
The investigation commenced. What was going on off campus that needed so much attention? We already knew full well about alternate side parking — or at least the ticket on my windshield indicated that I knew about it. Was there a big robbery? Another tire-slashing bonanza?
It was none of that.
Apparently, a whole bunch of grad students convened in a secret underground lair and finally set forth their plan to annoy the living shit out of every off-campus resident. All at once, they queued up, and like a barrage of flaming arrows, pleaded their way out of the OC3 listserv.
But they showed a little too much of their hand, compromising the identity of their secret weapon.
“Reply All.”
There were cries from people like Tonya, who claimed she is “graduating in May and am not an undergraduate.”
And the unfortunate case of Azat, who doesn’t know “how I happened to be in this list without being asked.” Also, he is “not an undergrad either.”
Seriously, someone should have let Azat know what was up.
Some of them chose to pick a more colloquial poison, like Mona, who begged us all to “plz remove” her.
Sry Mona, idk how 2 do tht.
What did I stumble onto? My inbox hadn’t been ravaged like this since I was Jboy700, trolling AOL 3.0 for provocative chat rooms.
I thought about firing back. I really wanted to. But that’s exactly what those grad students wanted. They wanted me to throw oil on the fire that torched my inbox and left behind nothing but a stray B-Line.
Instead of doubling back and completely regretting my decision to live off campus, I licked my wounds and did some recon.
I spammed the emails, closed my computer and continued on with my young day.
Maybe in some alternate universe I’m an artificially well-endowed U.S. president. Or maybe I just play one on TV.