The Saga Saga

I’m going to share a story that falls into the “you had to be there” category to a certain degree. I will attempt to convey what happened with enough descriptive detail so that you have the feeling you were there – even if you were not. Some of the friends that I keep in touch with these days actually were there. I am certain you will remember this event. It was maybe the funniest thing I have ever seen personally. Again – you kind of had to be there.

Anyway – here goes.

It was the spring of 1984. I was a freshman at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. I was living in a 10-story cesspool called Kellum Hall. Somewhere between five and six hundred kids lived there. The people were great. I made a lot of good friends there and we all kind of looked out for each other. The facilities were plain and utilitarian. Rooms were a little larger than a refrigerator box and there were two people in each one. The bathrooms were the community style and were located midway along each hallway. It was a typical college dormitory. It was a dump. I did have a great roommate at that time. He was neat, clean, respectful of my things, loved much of the same music I did, shared my sense of humor (most of the time) and was generally a really good guy. We became roommates our second semester of our freshman year because each of us had nightmarish original roommates. My original one was a giant kleptomaniac who removed warts from his bulbous thighs with fingernail clippers. (True.) My new roommate’s old roommate was just a mean person that generally made everyone around him miserable. I’m not sure of all of the details there, but I know it was a bad experience for my new roommate. Even though it’s getting very clumsy to write like this, I am going to let my “good” roommate remain anonymous. Those of you reading this who were there at the time know who he is and understand why I am going to avoid using his name. If he wants to post a reply to this blog entry and take credit for this story, then that’s his call.

My roommate and I were part of a group of dorm dwellers who called ourselves the Kellum Lounge Rats. There were about 10 or 12 of us and we could generally be found in variously sized subsets hanging out in the dorm lounge at any given time of day or night. We usually ate lunch together on the weekends at a place called Saga down in the Student Union. It was a cafeteria style eatery that had a little magnetic card reader box at the door. You came in, ran your card through the reader and - “PING” – a little chime would sound and you were granted access to the wonderful sustenance offered by Saga.

Now that you know what Saga was, I feel the need to share a little bit about the general opinion of the place. It was cheap. You could eat all you wanted. It was convenient for those of us without cars. It served exceptionally poor quality food. Many comments about this place could be found scrawled on the walls of bathroom stalls around campus. They were penned there, no doubt, by victims of explosive diarrhea courtesy of Saga. The best Saga joke I ever saw on a bathroom wall said this, ‘SAGA – Soviet Attempt to Gag Americans”. Very clever. This was during the Cold War days so any Russian joke was fitting. This one was especially clever in my opinion, given the fact that the author probably had to write the words one at a time in between searing abdominal cramps.

OK – back to the actual place on that particular sunny spring day in Tallahassee. When our little group got there, we found the main part of the dining room was pretty full. There were no open tables large enough to seat us all. Fortunately, there was a kind of overflow area on the far side of the cafeteria where no one was sitting. There was a large, long table there we could claim. This part of the cafeteria was separated from the main room by a wall running nearly the entire length of the room. There were large round openings in the wall about 3 feet wide. Hanging plants adorned each one.

We all sat down and began to eat. I don’t remember what all was on the menu that day, but I do know there was mashed potatoes and gravy. You will understand why I remember that once you read the rest of this story.

One of the best (and palatable) treats at Saga was the ice cream bar. You could go up there and get a scoop of ice cream and then top it off with hot fudge, caramel, peanuts, whipped cream, sprinkles and a variety of other things. Since it was actually pretty good stuff, most of us eschewed the microscopic ice cream bowls at the bar in favor of the larger salad bowls from the salad bar. You could really load one of these things up. We were all sitting around the big table finishing off our ice cream creations when I started to notice that my roommate was mixing up a huge mess in his bowl. He had not eaten all of his ice cream and had decided to mix in the mashed potatoes, gravy and any other assorted leftover foodstuffs on his plate. It was perfectly hideous. He was just kind of silently sculpting it into a goopy mound when he looked around the table at his friends and said something like, “How much will you guys give me to throw this bowl through one of those holes in the wall?” After about two seconds of stunned silence, we all started digging through our pockets for spare change to put in the pot. You have to understand that my roommate was not a violent or overly rebellious person. This was kind of out of character, yet he seemed sincere. We, his so-called friends, were more than happy to contribute to his delinquency by encouraging him into an act of vandalism.

When it was all said and done, we had scrounged up about twelve dollars or so. We had conditions, though. My roommate was to hold off on the goop toss until we were all the way over to the exit door by the cashier. That way we would have front seats to view the spectacle and a quick exit that would exonerate us from any guilt in the incident. My roommate would dart out the back door of the cafeteria after the deed was done and make his escape that way.

With breathless anticipation, we all got up from the table, dropped off our dirty dishes on the conveyor belt that led to the kitchen and walked over to the exit door. When I turned around, I realized that our view was perfect and we were in for a real show. I could see my roommate standing up at the table. He had his arm drawn back just like a medieval catapult preparing to launch a missile at a castle wall. His face was screwed into a sort of grimace one sees on the face of a pugilist about to deliver a mighty roundhouse punch to his foe. Then he did it. The catapult was released and the black melamine bowl with it’s payload of leftovers whizzed through the opening in the wall, narrowly missing the hanging plant.

Now. Before I conclude this story, let us ponder such things as fate, karma and luck. You may not believe in any of these things, but something almost supernatural was at work this day I tell you. I was there. I saw it. I have witnesses. Some of them might even comment on this post. This really happened. Continue pondering for a moment before you read the next paragraph.

OK. We’re back to the story now. As I said, the bowl just barely missed the macramé plant hanger, but that’s just the first miracle. The second miracle is that the contents of the bowl retained their shape and place in the bowl throughout the entire flight of the projectile as it arced its way to its target. Oh, yeah. That’s the other part. The target. Fate? Karma? Luck? Who knows? The bowl flew, goop first, smack into the center of my roommate’s old roommate’s chest where it exploded in a rain of various carbohydrate-laden organic material. It was gorgeous. A direct hit. The victim’s arms came up in kind of a reflex-driven response, but they provided no protection. He was covered.

I looked up from the aftermath to gaze at my roommate with new found honor and respect. He was already gone. The back door of the cafeteria was almost completely closed, slowed by the pneumatic door-closer attached to it. This delay was nearly very unfortunate. There were some really big, burly guys sitting fairly close to ground zero. They were not as amused by recent events as me and my friends were. I feared I would faint from loss of breath induced by laughter. The others in my party were in a similar condition. The burly guys were not so handicapped and leaped to their feet just in time to see the door closing. In a flash they were in pursuit of my roommate. Luck (or karma or fate or whatever) was on my roommate’s side, however. He ran like a jackrabbit all the way back to the dorm and eluded his pursuers. They gave up the chase when they realized he had gotten out of sight.

When I got back to my room, my roommate was there – a little nervous and worried that he had been identified, but with a virtual badge of honor from his friends, and 12 bucks.

By the way - if you are reading this, my old roomie buddy, the guy who kept calling the room and saying things like “I know who you are Ice Cream Man” for the next several days was not me, but I know who it was. Drop me a line sometime and I’ll spill the beans on him.