KaBump by Umphrey’s McGee
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/UM2008-02-11.mk6/um2008-02-11d2t05_64kb.mp3,http://www.archive.org/download/UM2008-02-11.mk6/um2008-02-11d2t06_64kb.mp3]
On Wednesday, from 1400 to 0400 on Thursday, Towers didn’t have power. Something about a transformer exploding…decepticons…I dunno. Whatever the case, that left all of us without TVs, computers, or lights (at least in our rooms). The lights in the halls still worked, and as the sun set people started moving into the halls.
For a while there were very few of us there (5 or 6 max) because UConn was playing Notre Dame, and I guess people care about those kinds of things. Those few of us who didn’t sat in the hall, killing time. We drew on the massive whiteboard I have in my room, I did a little reading, played banjo, talked. One of the girls sitting in the hall with us was complaining how it was the worst day of her life…
Folks started coming back from the game, so suddenly there were a lot of people with nothing to do. A few people just left, going to the library or a friend’s dorm. Everyone else decided to play a board game in the hall. I read instead, since it was one of those party pseudo-board games I can’t really stand. About an hour after that game was over, I realized and said to Dan, “I’m finally out of things to do.” I started tossing a stress ball against the wall.
After a little while I moved that out into the hall. I hit a bunch of people with it accidentally, and then not so accidentally, and that was when the first event of the night started. There was a group of people on either end of our hall, and we took turns hucking it as hard as we could at the other group. No rules, no goal, just pointless fun. Like the games we used to play in elementary school. That went on for a few hours, with people coming and going and coming back again or walking out unwittingly into the crossfire.
Finally everyone was tired of that, or had tired out their throwing arm (we were really whipping it) and it dissolved. Another pseudo-board game had started up, and other people were just milling around the hall. I suggested to the people just standing around that we should rolly-chair joust. Somehow, these people had gone to school for one or more years and had never rolly-chair jousted. So Dan and I brought our chairs out, and we were the first up. We didn’t really have anything to joust with, so we just held our arms out straight in front of us. We each went to one side, and then someone pushed us to give us some speed. My favourite description of it came from someone who didn’t even see it. He saw me and Josh (who was pushing me) back up against the end of the hall, and then we started, leaving his field of vision, and after two seconds of silence, there was a massive crash. He came around the corner and saw Dan and I on the ground laughing.
I’ve gotta admit, this was the most hardcore rolly-chair jousting I’ve ever done. Dan and I were facing each other when we hit, and I got his knee right in my thigh (I was limping around for a while – it still kinda hurts now) and he got the metal part of my chair against his shin (which actually drew blood). Neither of us cared too much about the pain, and we convinced (well, maybe forced) the folks who had pushed us to take our place for a second round. I liked this, because Josh came away with a footprint on his chest. For the record, my chair dew blood again. Battle chair.
The CAs said we really couldn’t do that anymore, since apparently it was loud enough that they could hear it on the first floor. It was getting late anyway, and I had to somehow wake up for class. I went to bed, and within an hour it sounded like most people had left the halls. That Wednesday night felt more like a Friday night than any Friday has so far.
