Based on a true story. (Literally, this is just something that happened to me.)
It was the night of the Homecoming football game, and all through the stadium, many students were stirring — and by stirring, I mean hooting and hollering and maybe also vaguely understanding the rules of football. Go T-Birds!
Like many others, I was fabulously decked out in my gold and blue — and by that, I mean I bought an overpriced visor right before the game in order to fit in because I lost that one t-shirt they gave me in first year (UBC Recreation, if you’re reading this, can I please have another? I am serious. Email me).
The game went smashingly, I think. You can read the article I’m sure we put out on it. Of course, the main point of Homecoming (for everyone who doesn’t understand what all the lines and numbers on the field are) is the afterparty. And so, after crushing a few (several) overpriced canned Moscow mules, holding up a sign that, fittingly, said “Go sports!,” it was time for me to get to the part of the evening where the true UBC spirit shines the brightest. Leaving the stadium a couple minutes into the last… quarter? Period? Inning? Down?... to appropriately prepare myself for the festivities to come, I walked the long, cold road all the way back to the heart of campus.
Naturally, I am speaking of The Gallery, where most everyone who was in need of a good libation also was. Like Thunderbirds, we flocked to the highest floor of our Nest to converse, to laugh, to squawk and to slurp up some vodka crans before we departed to whatever house or club would open its doors that night. What a time, what a life.
After appropriately, moderately, modestly chugging my drink, it was time to trek — nay — take flight and soar! — to my next location. This is when it happened.
I put one foot (do birds have feet? One claw) in front of the other, precariously wobbling down the steps of the Nest like a fledgling taking its first steps. I descended one flight. Then two. And then —
The dream was RUINED! The campus hero himself, the greatest inspiration I have ever known…
…WAS DEAD!
I fell to my knees, having made eye contact with THE MAN INSIDE THE MASCOT. Beheaded, the bird stood shocked, his cover revealed, the illusion permanently ruptured for all.
With a friend on either arm, lifting my shell shocked, limp self off the ground, I let out a cry one could only describe as animalistic, guttural and just plain disturbed. “HE’S NOT REAAAAAAAL.”
My heart, sufficiently wrenched. My jaw, so past the floor it was in the grave. My core beliefs, forever shook. I watched as he pulled the head back down over his own human hair.
Alas, it was too late. A single tear trickled down my face as he waved, with all the frantic guilt of a mall Santa caught smoking a cigarette.
It was too much to bear. Too great a fright. I saw the light, and then the darkness came in like the wing of a crow. Tomb est. Goodbye birdie. Fourth year? More like fourth deep-seeded transformative and life-ending FEAR.
I quacked.
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