There was this freshman who, because of overcrowding, was allowed to room in the upperclassmen's dorm—and as you might imagine, his life was a living hell from the first day. It wasn't merely because he was a freshman, or merely because he was one of the most obnoxious and tiresome species of loser that anyone has ever met, but because he couldn't take a hint—no matter how un-subtle—that the rest of us didn't want to be bothered with him. He'd just stand there with a dumb look on his face, then chuckle and say "that was pretty funny what you said about my mother." Needless to say, his hair almost always looked like this.

... a style called "the Swirlie."

For those of you who aren't familiar with that particular 'do, you can find it only in men's dormitories, where the conditions are just right: filthier than a ghetto and less hospitable than a prison, hosed down every weekend with urine, vomit, semen, feces, phlegm, and probably a few other bodily fluids that can only be produced by someone with a particularly nasty venereal disease, then half-heartedly wiped down once per month by a government employee with a war surplus rag.

Incubator of tomorrow's ruling elite.

But most germane to the art of coiffure, every men's dormitory has a commode on the second floor in which someone took an acutely malodorous dump during a Vietnam war protest, and which has never been flushed since, and never so much as pissed in (or more aptly, "pissed at") from a distance of less than four feet. And if you can't figure out the rest—how that particular commode and that particular hairstyle are related—I leave you to guess. If you can't figure it out, you're a much kinder soul than I ...

... and you've yet to get yours.