Saturday, November 9, 2013

Saving Spree Day


The country's being run by pirates and nincompoops, we're cooking the planet, I haven't seen the third season of Downton Abbey but I already know who dies, and now I find out that Spree Day is in trouble.

Not many people would miss Spree Day itself, but it's a troubling trend. Spree Day is celebrated at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, my alma mater (Latin for "nourishing mother," which is  apt, assuming your mother provides you with pot and Quaaludes). It's a spring day on which all classes are cancelled, and no one is supposed to know about it until it happens. You can call up the administration office on any given likely morning and ask if it's Spree Day, and if it is, you say (as I recall) "far fucking out" and hang up, and then you spend the rest of the day lounging on the lawn in front of the quad and throwing Frisbees and somebody sticks his speakers out the window and cranks up early Beatles, which makes everyone nostalgic for their youth, which was six years ago, and there's plenty of cheap pot and sex, so basically it's like every other day except for there being no classes. Which is a really big deal. It's like Saturday. Or Sunday! And how often do those happen? Let me get my slide rule.

But now, according to my alumni newsletter, the kids have gone and wrecked Spree Day, and they're thinking of doing away with it. There's drunkenness. And vandalism. And sexual aggression. The administration thinks maybe if they encouraged the clubs to hold fun events like Midnight Bagel Breakfast on Spree Day, it might cut down on the raping. Back in the day, we didn't even have clubs.

Genuine hippies c. 1971. Photo by Linda Freedman
I'm trying to break it down, how kids could have changed so much in forty years. Sexual aggression was unknown. When the entire student body says "yes" all the time there isn't much call for it. Sure, there were downsides, but as long as everyone had herpes it wasn't such a big deal. Girls would have sex if the guy had a car and was willing to drive them somewhere in the morning, and guys would have sex if, well, if they didn't have anything better to do for the next five minutes.

I read an article in the paper that helped explain it. Apparently no one gets care packages in college anymore. Oh, they do, in a sense, but it will not be homemade brownies in a brown paper package tied up with string. It will be a Gift Pak from an outfit such as from-mom.com with an assortment of store cookies and laundry soap and snack crackers and maybe some condoms. The kids are rootless.
Mac, Clark U's entire police force 1974

We were warm and comfortable in our original fur, neither in debt nor in Vietnam, and our shoebox of brownies smelled like Mom and her apron and the oven-warm kitchen and love. Now the students are waxed and shorn and perpetually irritated by stubble, and they open their care package to find satisfaction that lasts only as long as a baggie of Cheezits and the slim warmth of a vision of Mom clicking "ship" at the stoplight. The pot is too expensive and too strong for anyone's good, so they get drunk instead. The only thing being cooked is the planet, and the country is being run by pirates and nincompoops.

I don't know what to do about any of this, but the first step has got to be more affordable pot. And way more brownies.

52 comments:

  1. I don't have the answer either, but I'm very much in favour of more brownies, with or without frosting. I was thinking of making a batch last week, now I know I have to.

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    1. Have you ever seen those brownie pans that look like a mouse maze so you can have nothing but edge pieces?

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    2. I was always a middle piece girl, myself.

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    3. My all-time favourite way to eat a brownie is with a generous slathering of butter on top, instead of icing.

      This is so decadent (to me, anyway) that I haven't had one in about 20 years. And I haven't had a regular brownie in quite some time. What is WRONG with me?? I need to make brownies, stat.

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    4. Yes. If it helps your self-esteem, Dave has been known to add butter to bacon.

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    5. brownies with rich choc frosting and a dollop of whipped cream....yum!

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    6. I went off wheat three months ago. Y'all go on without me. (sigh)

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  2. The problem is that it's not only OUR country being run by pirates and nincompoops, but it seems to me like it's the whole world. Glad I'm old is all I have to say about that.

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    1. I fear you and I will yet live long enough to see some really bad stuff. We hike too much.

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    2. Murr, I took your first phrase as separate from the rest of your comment and was trying to figure out what was so darn scary about DJan. Don't tell me, I'm inclined to guess.

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    3. Oh I can see how that happened! Whoops!

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  3. I tell myself, they're all in this together. Solve the problems, or not. Like DJan, I'm glad I'm old.

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  4. You have made me very glad that my kids are out of college!!

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    1. You should also be glad they didn't tell you what they were up to.

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  5. I'm not glad I'm "old" ('cause I'm not, Murr, are you??). I wish I could go back to 1970 and really appreciate what my life was like in those college days. (Remember what we thought about the government THEN?) Ditto for 1984 when I was raising a toddler, and 2002 when she was a college student. I expect to say the same about 2013 in 10 years or so. You gotta grab onto the good stuff...do I smell brownies?

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    1. I still feel about the same as when I was eight. There's some evidence, however, that I'm not.

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    2. I'm kind of stuck at 19, myself. It's a damn fine age, I find.

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    3. Oh that was one of my WORST years! But it looks great on you.

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    4. My kitchen smelled like brownies this morning, now it smells like home made chicken vegetable soup. I loved being 37. Was a fabulous year but i can't remember why.

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    5. I'm completely lost now, but on the other hand it smells great in here.

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  6. 'Scuse me while I go eat myself into a homemade-brownie stupor. Brownies are always the answer.

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    1. And unexpected brownies in a box are even better.

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  7. The problemI have with pot is that it leaves little holes in my memories. The late 60s are like a lace doily for me. But I can totally get around brownies! Still, won't that contribute to heating the planet?

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  8. OMG!!! This has been my rant since my kid ran off to college! I got the letter and read the stuff in the box list. Could I make Cheetos in my kitchen? I still B.S. (bake and ship) and just might send this blog post to my starving kid! :)

    We are not doomed!!!!! Grab a fist full of brownies and take back the compost heap we call Washington DC! Refuse to live in Apathy Heights!!!

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    1. I'd send Obama a box of brownies but I'm ALMOST CERTAIN they wouldn't get to him. Pretty sure.

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  9. "perpetually irritated by stubble" --- Murr, I think you may have unearthed the exact cause of this crap attitude flying around the globe... that, and the weird glorification of hyper-competition, divas, and egomaniacal assholes in the media (e.g."reality" shows and their protagonists).

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    1. If that was what we did INSTEAD of war, that would be one thing.

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  10. Sigh. I loved my care packages - which were a mixture of home baked (quite different to home grown) and extra treats.
    And a perpetual stubble itch would make the best of us prone to bad behaviour. And I don't think the best of us wear the look in question.

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    1. I didn't shave anything while I was a hippie, and then I shaved stuff for a few decades but not as often as society dictates. And now all my hair has fallen out. Well, close. I am not stubbly.

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  11. Hash brown(ie)s! That's yer answer!

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    1. You have a gift for getting right to the heart of the solution.

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    2. Here! Here! Never hear of anyone using that lovely drug any more. Maybe that's why we're all pissed off at each other.

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  12. I enjoyed making care packages for my daughter so much that I wished I could start a business doing just that. Now that such businesses flourish, I see how sad that is. Especially when Mom clicks "send" AT THE STOPLIGHT. Telling detail, that.

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    1. Busy, busy mom. Of course Daddy never sent brownies either.

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  13. I can't believe you didn't mention students defecating in washers and dryers, knowing your penchant for poop. But yes, more/better/cheaper pot preferably inside the brownies baked by mom would be the answer to a lot of things. Kerry should have brought some to the Iran nuclear talks.

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    1. Oh Jayne. Really? This is indeed news to me. But not news I want to look up. What is wrong with those kids? They'd have to wash their clothes all over again, and that's a quarter. Oh. They don't wash their clothes, and it's not a quarter.

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  14. We could have solved the world's problems then and you have shown that we still can. I'll bring the munchies!

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    1. It's probably a sign that it's too close to dinnertime, but I find myself wanting you to enumerate the particular munchies.

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  15. I will take some brownies minus the pot. I prefer milk chocolate!!!

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    1. The cool thing about pot is everyone's cool with you not having any if you don't want it. That's different with alcoholics.

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    1. I've learned that if the brownies taste more like compost than chocolate, you might be best off taking little bites.

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  17. Oh my. Sudden nostalgia for college & 1968. Pot and "Gimme Shelter" wafting on the breeze. You could just walk into the party house and be served whether anyone knew you or not. Sit down & mellow out. Many days were Spree Day. Far fucking out indeed.

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    1. I still think Gimme Shelter is the greatest dancing song of all time. For, you know, that kind of dancing.

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    2. It may just be the greatest song of any kind of all time. And that's the truth.

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  18. "Apparently no one gets care packages in college anymore. Oh, they do, in a sense, but it will not be homemade brownies in a brown paper package tied up with string. It will be a Gift Pak from an outfit such as from-mom.com with an assortment of store cookies and laundry soap and snack crackers and maybe some condoms. The kids are rootless."

    Unfortunately - that's absolutely true and incredibly sad.

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    1. To tell the truth I probably would have liked a gift pak also, but there was no way in hell (I mean heck) she'd have shelled out for it.

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  19. Yes give up wheat but NO never the brownies. King Arthur will supply you with a gluten free mix. or use this recipe.
    http://allrecipes.com/recipe/gluten-free-fudge-brownies/

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    1. Hmm. I've found that once you get enough hash in them you can't really tell they're brownies anymore. Of course we had cheap stuff.

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