smorgishborg of sport and secret agents

It is always nice to visit your Alma Mater. Walking down those halls that you spent four years studying and stressing, remind you of everything that you have accomplished and how far you have come. As for me, returning to my university has always brought back memories of the wonderful friends and the experiences shared there. My last visit to the University of California, Irvine I did not expect to see anyone that I knew, but as I was walking down the zigzag hallways beneath the old student center, I crossed paths with Michael Knox. He was sitting on a bench with two of our old girlfriends and I contemplated stopping, but the crowd was so thick that it kept pushing me along. Finally, I broke free from the mob and felt bad for not saying hello, so I fought the crowd like a Salmon swimming upstream back to the bench where they were seated. We reminisced back to our freshman year and talked about what we were doing now. As it turns out, Mike was now a professional umpire for the major leagues and made bank. He said that it sort of fell into his lap and he was loving it. There was a game that night and he mentioned that he could get me in the dugout, so I jumped at the chance. Who wouldn’t want to watch a major league game from the dugout?

The game that night was great and it was really interesting seeing a friend be the umpire. However, in the last inning Mike was injured and had to stop. There was only one out left in the game and they didn’t know what to do. Mike suggested that I ump for the final out even though I had no idea what to do. Everyone loved the idea, so I got my gear on and went out there. I took my place behind home plate, but the game did not continue as normal. There was a new rule that I had never heard about. The pitcher was allowed one chance to lob the ball, softball style, and if he hit the plate, the game would be over and that team would win. The pitcher lobbed the ball up and it hit the plate, so I said, “Strike!” This, apparently, was the wrong thing to say because everyone looked at me and said that I did it wrong. I was supposed to put my finger in the air and twirl it (like you do when you say “Whoop-Dee-Doo!”) So, I did that and the pitcher got very upset with me. He said that I was making fun of the game because I did not twirl my finger correctly and then the whole team started yelling at me. They started acting like a mob, getting all riled up, and then started to chase me! I fled the stadium and down the street. I think that it was pure adrenaline that allowed me to outrun these professional athletes, but I finally lost them as I ducked into the gymnasium of some random high school.

As I entered the gym, I saw crowds of people that were watching two competitions going on at once. There was rhythmic gymnastics and a basketball spinning contest currently under way. Apparently I was a member of the cheerleading squad because they came up to me frantically asking me where was and had my uniform that I needed to change into right then. I changed and saw that Leland Brown was on my squad with me. When I was ready to cheer he jumped up very excitedly and was ready to go. I was the captain, so I lead our first cheer, but Leland kept trying to change the cheer and was off-beat. I was getting very frustrated that our cheers were not going as rehearsed and began looking for a way out of this. I heard over the PA announcing the next rhythmic gymnast would be Kyle Smigelski, but he was nowhere to be found. I was so fed up with my current situation that I decided to jump up and grab a basketball to spin in the contest, while doing rhythmic gymnastics, combining the two competitions in Kyle’s place. I got on the floor, still dressed as a cheerleader, and found that no matter how hard I tried, I could not get that basketball to spin on my finger for more than a tenth of a second. The fact that I was doing gymnastics at the same time was definitely not helping the situation. As I finished my routine, there were only one of two people clapping and I heard a couple of coughs, so I slunk slowly off the floor back to my place with the cheerleading squad. Upon discovering that I was not Kyle, the head judge came over to scold me and I could not help but laugh at him. He was getting nowhere with me, so he eventually left.

As I was sitting in the stands the competition area was rushed by my fraternity, Kappa Sigma, and another, Sigma Alpha Epsilon. They broke into a game of “Smear the Queer,” which got the crowd excited and everyone began cheering wildly. At times the football that they were using would get thrown into the stands and the crowd would throw it back down to the players or toss it around the stadium like a beach ball at a baseball game. Everyone was enjoying the good fun, when the floor of the gym opened up exposing a pool underneath that all the players fell into, just like in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Once the pool was revealed everyone decided that a good swim meet was in order. I walked down to where the starting blocks were and I ran into Ihab Iskandar from my fraternity. He was trying to tie a tie, but had it upside-down so I told him that he needed to flip it over if he wanted to tie it correctly. My dad was right there, so he offered to help and I walked outside of the gym.

Outside the gym, Sean Connery was waiting for me and began to explain a very secret mission that I was to help him with. Apparently, there was a bathroom underneath this gymnasium that was completely plated in gold. Back in ancient times, this bathroom was used by royalty and was run by one-thousand Singaporean geisha. It was hidden, but he had two of the four keys to a device that would open the secret stairwell to the bathroom. I suddenly remembered that I already knew all about this mission, but I was a double agent working for another country also. The Czech Republic had commissioned me to contact Sean Connery because they already had two of the keys and knew that he had the others. A man that I was working with from the Czech Republic came up to us and discretely handed me the keys. He asked me about the president and I was supposed to answer in code. If the mission was going as planned I would tell him that I liked the president, but instead I said, “George Bush is gay,” and he took this as a sign that my identity had been compromised, so he took off running. Now that we had all four keys, Sean Connery opened up the remote device, which had four slots filled with liquid nitrogen. He deposited his two keys and I dropped mine in there as well. As we did this, the outside corner of the gymnasium rotated, exposing a stairwell going below. I was supposed to wait for Sofia Milos, from CSI: Miami, before entering the golden bathroom, so I stayed at the entrance. Sean decided that he would go on ahead, and as he started down the stairwell, the entire structure collapsed in on top of him and the golden bathroom was sealed up forever.