I hath caught the plague.

It's 9:42 pm. I should've been in bed an hour ago. But the DNC is this week, and I must see what Jon Stewart has to say about yesterday's events. Must have political witticisms...

Every year I've gotten sick on the first week of school. Since, as many know, skipping class is only for when you are hungover, not sick, I always make it there. Strangely, about half the class is missing the next week...

But I thought "Hey! I'm out of college now, however temporary that may be (Go Go LSAT/GRE study manuals!), so surely I'll be OK now." What I didn't consider is that with all the students coming back, this will be one of the busiest weeks of the year. So today I got to go to work with a 103 fever, speak with a bunch of freshmen, meet the Volunteer Corps group, and appear on live television at the Live 5! (Motto: I'm too sick to think of something clever.) noon broadcast. Video posted later. I felt like a whore. The college is sponsoring the drive almost in name only, but I got to make it sound like this was a great opportunity for freshman to get involved with the community. As involved as one can get by dumping two cans of diced pineapple into a cardboard box. Maybe it'll get some students to our office and we can show them how to do some real good in the world. I don't know.

And now, story time.

Two years ago when I was an RA (or, as my friend's know it, Neil's Alcoholic Period.), I didn't exactly get along with my Staff Resident--a student supervisor. We weren't enemies, but we definitely weren't friends. This was made worse by the fact that I thought he was treating me unfairly with regard to his actions towards other RAs, and I'm a petty petty person, so I never really addressed the issue with him. That following summer, he invited all the remaining staff out to his house for some sort of picnic. I went out of the temptation for free food. It turns out that he had once been employed in the same position as my summer job, and he hated my boss as much as I did. I believe his words were "I wouldn't exactly consider him a person." From there on we were a lot better.

Now my SR, Ben, was about to get married. As a joke I had a mutual friend who was going to the wedding bring the happy couple 3 gallons of cranberry juice. (Confused? Visit here: http://www.honeymooncystitis.com/ Cranberry juice is a home remedy.) Here is where the fun begins.

There was another Neil invited to that wedding. My friend didn't put my last name on the gift tag. The happy couple thought the other Neil had given it. The other Neil hadn't gone to the wedding, and hadn't given a gift. When he received a thank-you note from the couple, he thought they were being sarcastic and didn't talk to them for months. A year later when I asked them if they enjoyed the cranberry juice, their jaws dropped in surprise. It all made sense.

Fast forward a year. An old friend of mine is driving across the nation visiting potential graduate schools, and camping along the way. He stops in Montana (approximately 1,500 miles away from Indiana). The car next to him has Purdue tags. He asks the campers if, out of the 40,000 students at Purdue, had they met a Neil Hudelson. Their reply? "Tell him thank you for the cranberry juice."

And that's the way it was.