There was a period in my life where every week on Thursday, I would be asked to briefly describe a "lens shaping experience" in my life. The idea is that everyone sees life through a lens that shapes their interpretations of experiences, people, ideologies and any other aspects of living. Now, any logical person would consider this concept, and realize after the slightest amount of thought that any given experience in life would shape a persons lens. The idea behind this exercise, however, wasn't to enlighten us on the existence of lens shaping experiences, as much as it was to force us to recognize them. In that spirit, I intend to regularly post descriptions of events in my life, and the shape my lens has taken as a result.
During my first year at Ohio Northern, I did not live where I lived. My parents were paying for a room in an on-campus dorm which had a bed, my computer, and my then-small movie collection, but I didn't spend any time there. Shortly after arriving at Ohio Northern, I located someone I knew from high school remotely well, and latched on to him and his lifestyle. He was a member of the fraternity that I would soon pledge, and in which I would grow through my college experience. He lived in the fraternity's house, and I quickly developed friendships with everyone else who lived there. Before long, even though I slept in my campus dorm room, I lived at the house of Sigma Theta Epsilon.
What I mean by this is that every day, after class, I would make my way to the house (which we affectionately called it,) instead of going to my room. I would eat the food we got from Taco Bell there, hang out with the guys, and sometimes even got schoolwork done there. I became enough of a fixture in the house that when a terrible ice storm hit Ada, and all the power was gone from the town, closing down the school and requiring the students to evacuate to home, the guys waited an extra 3 hours for me to arrive before they left.
Needless to say, I loved spending my time at the house. The guys in the house, however, didn't always have the greatest of interpersonal relationships. On one particular evening, the house manager was angry at the residents of the house who were neglecting to do their chores. As a means of punishment, he decided to disconnect both the cable and internet from the house until the chores had been done.
Now, the reasonable, responsible thing to do as a resident of the house (technically,) would have been to have simply done the chores and get our provisions back. My closest friends and I, however, decided that this would be giving in to the oppressive ways of authority, and we would have absolutely none of that. We, therefore, decided to borrow an alumni brother's DVD collection of the TV show Viva La Bam, and watch that for the remainder of the day.
Later in the day- probably around 9 or 10 in the evening- I decided to write a short paper I had due the following day. I borrowed a brother's computer, and began to write. About 5 minutes into my room I heard a huge commotion from outside the room. There was rustling from the other side of the wall, followed by the loud thumping of someone running down the stairs. This person was screaming as he ran, and I immediately identified him as a brother we called Baseball. Whatever he was excited about, I decided it was in my best interest to stay at my borrowed computer, and finish my paper.
Although I wasn't there, I have heard the story a million times. As it turns out, Baseball was obeying the warning carried out by the house manager, and had been cleaning out a fridge we kept in an upstairs common room. In the process, he came across several expired items, but none so wild as a half gallon of milk, completely unopened, that had expired in February. This whole event happened in late May. As I sat diligently writing, I plot was taking shape beneath my feet.
When Baseball showed his new found treasure to the other brothers, they decided that something fantastic needed to be done with it. The obvious solution was to break the jug to spill its putrefied contents in a creative way. After a short period of deliberation, the brothers involved decided that the jug needed to be launched into the parking lot of the Hardees restaurant behind the house.
The idea was to build a contraption that would launch the payload in a beautiful trajectory to hopefully hit some kind of target. They ventured into the house's basement, which was, and remains to this day, filled with an incredible variety of things. They emerged with a sawhorse, a 2x4 plank, a short length of binding twine and a cinder block. All of this was used to construct a catapult. They positioned the wood on the sawhorse, put the milk on the low end, tied the cinder block to the high end with the twine, thinking that it would help their aim, and attempted to lob the block onto the end.
The first attempted resulted in an overshot of the cinder block. It hit at the fulcrum of their lever and somehow rolled off without breaking the milk. A second attempt with the same set up saw the cinder block hit precisely where it had been intended. The integrity of the wood, however, hadn't been taken into account. The 2x4 snapped down the middle, and the milk barely moved. They also attempted to launch the milk with a similar set up using a PVC pipe instead of wood. This resulted in the PVC pipe bending down to the ground, and the milk once again remaining unmoved.
At this point, Timmy, the alumni brother from whom we had borrowed the DVDs, started getting frustrated. He grabbed a wood splitting maul from the side of the house, and took a run at the milk jug in a manner resembling the 90s comedy classic Happy Gilmore. During his run, the head flew off the maul, and he ended up whacking the jug with the handle. Not much really happens when you whack a jug with a wooden handle when you had intended on hitting it with a heavy metal axe head. In the words of Timmy in his own written reflection of this whole event: "this milk would not die."
Finally, Timmy decided to return to the short length of twine. He tied it around the end of the jug, and whirled the whole thing around his head as if he were an Olympic hammer thrower. I feel now is a good time to remind you that I had not actually been there for this event, but the image of Timmy whirling that milk around his head that i have in my mind could be baked onto an ancient Greek vase. He released the milk and it flew perfectly over the fence right into the corner.
The boys took turns moving toward the impact zone and breathing deep, daring and cajoling one another to see who could withstand the stench for the longest. It is my understanding that Timmy was the champion of this contest, after having read what he had written on the subject.
It was right around that time when I was finishing up my paper. It was also right around that time that one of the brothers- the one I had known in high school- decided that I needed to experience their terrible smell. He came in the house just as I was coming down the stairs and told me I needed to come with him. He brought me out behind the house where everyone was standing, and told me to stand for as long as I could with my hand on the corner of the fence (the opposite side from where the milk had hit.) I shrugged my left shoulder, true to habit, and stood by the fence. A few seconds in, the others started to look disappointed. I smelled nothing, and was incredibly confused. They told me the entire story of the milk, the failed attempts, and the dares to stand in its stench. I had not just missed the action; I had missed the smell altogether.
I was very disappointed to have missed this event. It was talked about for the entire remainder of my college experience. In fact, it's still talked about. I had missed possibly the most memorable thing with which I had been involved.
Since I had driven my car to the house at some point, and wanted to get my car back to the parking lot by my dorm room, I drove back to campus that night. It's only a mile, but sometimes I wanted to have my transportation nearby. I do enjoy driving, after all. When I got out of my car, I paused for a moment to look at the stars. I do that often. As I paused, I noticed something strange. There was an odd scent on the air that smelled just a little like curdled milk.
Sometimes, doing the proper thing means missing the things you would otherwise have remembered most. When there's something worth distraction, get distracted by it. There will be time to be responsible afterward.
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