Guys, you gotta hear this. Last year, there was this freshman, he lived on the ground floor. And he kept to himself, just stayed in his room. He'd say hello if you spoke to him, but he never quite looked you in the eye, you know?

OK. So one night we got some shrooms. Primo shrooms. And a few of us did some in my room. Then we went downstairs to Schuyler's,. And he had some vodka, so we drank that and then did more shrooms.

Someone said, “Hey, where's your neighbor?” And Schuyler said, “Where do you think he is? Hibernating. We probably won't see him until next Spring.” And we all laughed. But someone else said, “That's rude”. And someone else agreed. “Yeah, what's he think we are? Trolls?” And we all began to hunch over and make troll sounds until finally someone said, “Let's scare the bear!” and before we knew it we were all in the hallway and then we opened this guy's door without even knocking. He was reading and he started to say something but before he could, we all grabbed hold of him and dragged him out in the hallway and started dancing around him chanting, “Let's scare the bear! Let's scare the bear!” And I guess we did. 'Cause all he could do was curl up in a ball, covering his head and hoping we wouldn't hurt him.

Which was stupid, right? We weren't going to hurt him. We just wanted to scare him a little.

Anyway after a while it got boring, so we left him there and all went back to Schuyler's room.

But let me tell you that was funny. We were laughing about it for days.

He left soon after that, at the end of the semester.

I wish I could remember the kid's name. What was it again?

Oh yeah. Jerome.

Jerome. Better known as the Bear.

Copyright 2011 James B. Chevallier