Sometimes, the drunken truth can be the most sobering thing of all…
“I had a dream…” Is there really any other way to begin a tale of epic greatness? Of course not! And does every tale that begins like this end up being epically great? Meh. We’ll see.
Back in the summer of 2004, shortly after officially completing my undergraduate career at Kansas State for good, I had a dream that I had long hair. I don’t think there was anything special about this dream, nor was my hair particularly awesome, but I just woke up with this persistent nagging feeling “I need to grow my hair long.”
A few days later I was confident that this was exactly what I wanted to do, so I set about pursuing this newfound life goal of mine…by skipping my next haircut 6 weeks later. It turns out that you need a bit of patience if you want to have them luscious locks, so it’s good if you’re able to find a distraction to help you pass the time.
At first, my main distraction was repeatedly solving Rubik’s Cubes during my day job of solving cell phone customer’s billing problems. It wasn’t long before I realized that my brain was bored af at that job, and before I knew it, I had a new distraction, applying to grad school so I could fulfill a dream that, come to think of it, I never actually had in my life: becoming a Doctor of Physics.
Now, for anyone who has tried growing their hair out from a crew cut to a full lion’s mane, you probably know that there tends to be an awkward phase somewhere there in the middle (especially with my fairly curly hair, you kinda got to give up on the requirement that you’re stylin’ day in and day out).
Around February 2005, right when I was totally hitting peak awkwardness, I had a major breakthrough in my Doctor-of-Physics-non-dream/distraction. Hidden away in my spam folder, and thiiiiis close to being deleted without a second look, was an acceptance letter from the Department of Physics at the University of Florida. I hadn’t heard back from any of the other 3 schools I had applied to, so this was HUGE: I was going to get into grad school!
I was new to the grad school game, as I had never originally planned on doing anything of the sort with my life, and what I didn’t know before this moment is than an acceptance letter often will come with…A FREE TRIP TO FLORIDA! Well, not necessarily Florida, per se, but to wherever the fine institution of higher learning may be located, for a prospective grad student weekend. Pretty cool.
What wasn’t cool was the weekend I visited Gainesville happened to be the weekend that, for whatever God-awful reason, I was experimenting with using Nair as a longer-term solution for my facial hair. I vaguely recall that I had finally had it with shaving regularly, so decided to apply my genius-level problem-solving skills to the matter. On the other hand, I clearly recall that it made my face smell like a hot baloney sandwich–and it didn’t even work!
Fun fact, though, my ill-conceived adventures with Nair don’t actually have anything to do with the story. It’s just interesting to re-discover long-lost and/or repressed memories when one goes down the path of autobiographical exposition. But my hatred for my facial hair aside, I confess that I do indeed digress…
Despite the possibility that I reeked of old lunch pails, I hit it off pretty quickly with two other prospective students, Rebecca & Natasha. And, yes, the stereotypes are true: anyone named Natasha is probably Russian, so if you want name your kid Natasha but you’re a Proud American Patriot, just randomly change one of the ‘A’s to an ‘O’, and you should be good to go.1That sentence wasn’t supposed to sound that Russian, but I couldn’t help leave my typo in.
Anyways, back to the story. Given that I recently casually dropped the fact that I had multiple (simultaneous) girlfriends earlier in my life, you may think that this story is going to end with “…and that is how I became an Orgy Guy, kids.” But to that, let me reassure you:
Nope, me and my gal pals were strictly platonic. Anyways, that Saturday night a bunch of us went out and hit up the Gainesville bar scene, so naturally I was rollin’ two deep with my home girls.
At one point in the evening, after we each had had a moderate-yet-responsible amount of drinks, Natasha stopped what she was doing and started staring at me. She then leaned over and, practically yelling at me in her thick Russian accent over the thumping club beats, she said something that shook me to my core:
“You know you look just like Napoleon Dynamite, right?”2At one point in time I could remember what I thought she was saying. Due to her accent, the bar noise, and the ridiculous nature of her accusation, what I do recall is that it was something waaaaaaaay different.
Once I realized what she was saying, I gotta admit that I had to angrily disagree with her just a little bit on that point.
Nope. No way, no how. She apparently had gotten too comfortable with me and thought she could light-heartedly rile me up by invoking the nerdiest cultural icon of 2005. I mean, we were all physics nerds, but how dare she single me out as nerdier than the rest of us.
I told her she was clearly full of shit, because, for starters, I was blonde and Napoleon was a red-head, but she was unmoved by my argument. I looked to Rebecca to be a tie-breaker, but she just shrugged and mumbled, “Yeah, I guess I could kinda see it.”
I wasn’t completely butt-hurt over these accusations, but I did feel a little bit like they were picking on me, albeit in good fun. I got over it quickly enough, writing it off for the ridiculous claim that it was.
About an hour later, the ladies had finally managed to drag me on to the dance floor against my will. Against my will–because unlike Napoleon, I didn’t have the sweet moves of his that I’m about to show in you in GIF form:
But I was making the best of it, and thanks to the Power of Alcohol, was managing to have a pretty good time.
I was in the middle of groovin’, when out of nowhere from behind me I feel a hand on my shoulder. Since the only two people I actually knew in the whole town was right in front of me, I was a little confused as to exactly who the hell would be touching me without my consent.
I turned around to see it was none other than…two drunk dudes that I had never seen before in my life. While I was still trying to figure what the heck was happening, one of them blurted out:
“Napoleon Dynamite! Awesome!!!”
“NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” I screamed that way you scream when you realize that you’ve been in denial with a very uncomfortable truth about yourself.
I was like, “You too, really? Did these girls put you up to this? The Russian girl put you up to this, didn’t she? TELL ME THE TRUTH, YOU DRUNK UNDERAGE BUMS!”
“Nope, dude, I don’t know that girl. But what I do know is that you look exactly like Napoleon Dynamite. I just figured you had to be doing it on purpose. I mean, it’s not even Halloween, though, so that takes some commitment, my man.”
At that point in time, the other drunken guy chimed in, “Just one line–any line–from the movie that’s all we ask!”
Trying to swear at the cursed situation I found myself in, I turned my face to the side and let out a “Gosh…”
But before I could finish my mild oath, the small crowd around me erupted in cheers.
“OHMYGOD OHMYGOD OHMYGOD! That was AWESOOOOOOOOME!”
*Sigh* While I had strongly favored my theorem that this was all an elaborate Natasha-prank, as I scientist I had to respect a statistically significant number of unbiased observations.
I was awash in a confusing cocktail of emotions in regards to my self-identity, so once I got away from the cheering masses I ducked into the nearest bathroom, took a good hard look at myself in the mirror, and way-to-accurately recreated both parts from this iconic scene:
Content created on: 20 February 2021 (Saturday)
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