Spring Break ToothK15

My parents have this incomparable talent of ruining birthdays and vacations of mine.

On my birthday, during my junior year of high school, my parents sold my first car at one of our moderately successfully garage sales.

On my birthday, during my senior year of high school, my parents had me scheduled to have my wisdom teeth extracted.

During the first week of my summer vacation before college, my parents sold my all-time favorite cardinal red Jeep Grand Cherokee (my second car).

During my family’s vacation to Punta Cana—the first we had taken in seven years—my mom accidentally deleted the entire digital photo album, and thus thwarted my attempt to utilize all the perfectly Instagrammable photos we (I) had taken.

In addition to these many parentally inflicted calamities, it felt like every time I was coming home I was going to appointments or getting shots or blood drawn.

I was fine with the fact that this year most of my peers would be setting sail for places like the Bahamas or Panama City Beach, hashtagging #SpringBreak2K15 and attending concerts on the beach, while I watched SVU and Dr. Oz with my mom.

But, in relation to my own health, the only plan I had for break was possibly landscaping the newly blossomed shrubbery that was my unibrow.

However, for my parents, this vacation was no different.

On Friday, March 10^th, I was scheduled to have a root canal procedure. The dentist was reluctant to tell me the official title of what I considered to be a major surgery since I was probing each nurse as to whether or not anyone has died from this on his or her watch.

Maybe my parents had inadvertently overlooked the fact that I was 500 miles from home and genuinely cherished the few times I was able to come home to New Jersey.

Probably not.

I tried pleading with my dad to cancel it by relating it to how scuba divers can’t fly after scuba diving. I said that it was unhealthy to get a root canal because I was flying back to North Carolina the next day and the pressure would heighten the chances of my mouth possibly exploding. He didn’t buy it — probably because I told him this root canal was not as bad as spending his day off with him.

When I finally sat in the chair to get this procedure done, I tried calming myself down. The only thing that made it hard was the fact of what song was playing: The First Cut is the Deepest.

Thankfully, I survived.

– Written by Ryan Schocket

Birdman

After a nine-hour car ride of my dad nonstop talking—something I legitimately categorize under “cruel and unusual punishment”—we had arrived back at Chapel Hill. My dad’s doing the usual: talking to strangers, bossing me around, and his favorite, micromanaging the whole move-in situation. I love my dad, but he is a special character.

I manage to tear him away from the unenthused parking attendant with whom he’s started a conversation (“You better not ticket us, ok?”). Wearing his favorite pair of New Balance shoes and sporting his trademark mullet-afro hairstyle combination, he begins unloading the car. He calls me ugly and swear he’s “not sure if he loves me,” and I remind him that he’s close to being a classifiable midget.

Naturally, we have to abide by his authoritatively rigid methodology of bringing stuff in. “We each bring in three bags. We save the cases of water for last. Let’s make this a two-trip process, ok?” I roll my eyes, paying him little attention.

A few more moments of contention ensue before we finally get everything in my apartment. I beg him to leave, offering to pay for a hotel room or the next plane back to New Jersey. Then, I pretend I have a stomachache, and he puts away all my clothes and belongings. He acts like he’s doing me a favor, which he is, but I know he’s reveling in the glory of having control of where my things go, in what order, and the overall setup of my room. Doing so, he still continues to talk, and I beg for a two-minute break from his voice.

After everything is squared away, we decide to go to dinner on Franklin Street. I hand my dad the keys, since I know he’ll want to drive my car. We walk out the side entrance of my apartment building, when the best thing happened.

We are walking side by side when all of a sudden, a flock of four to five birds dive down and violently start pecking at my dad. He screams, and so do I. It was like something out of Hitchcock’s The Birds.

“WHAT IS HAPPENING?” he screams distressingly.

“I don’t know!” I reply.

We managed to get away from the bloodthirsty beasts with wings by seeking asylum in my Honda Civic. My dad is still traumatized, especially since he seemed to be the main target of the attackers. After a few minutes of regaining composure, I hear the ring of my dad’s phone (He keeps it on the loudest volume, since his hearing basically qualifies him for a hearing aid.).

It’s my mom. It’s hard to tell her the story without laughing, since I keep remembering the now permanently engrained image in my head of my dad being attacked by birds. She bursts out laughing and offers a rather sound theory for the attack. “Ryan,” she says with a sudden tone of solemnity, “I think those birds thought your father’s head was their nest…”

And honestly, it’s hard to argue with that theory.

Written by Ryan Schocket

It Started Like Any Other Day…

I was only about a month into my first, and need I say last, Econ lecture of my college career.  It was my first semester here at Carolina and the biggest class I had ever been in.  A lecture hall containing over 400 students all striving for that “A” and a 4.0 GPA.  I never would have expected that economics would have taught me so much more than markets, economies, and small businesses.

It all started as a normal day when I walked into my ten a.m. Tuesday/Thursday economics class.  I sat in my normal spot and prepared for the information I was expected to absorb.  I had no idea what was coming my way in less than an hour from entering that room.

As Professor Conway always did, he paced up and down each aisle as he lectured on topics for the week.  This particular day he was applying economic concepts to the Rolling Stones concerts and ticket sales.  As Conway walks past my row toward the back, I suddenly here a sound that I’d never heard before.

It sounded like a crazed bird who’d just been captured!  As anyone would do, I turned around to see what the ruckus was about.  To mine and my classmates’ surprise came four men running into my class wearing nothing but silly Halloween masks to cover their faces.  They paraded around the room for a few moments while running past my professor (whose face was blood red with embarrassment).  No word was said amongst my class aside from the screaming of the streakers.

I’d heard about the planned streaking that occurred around finals time at Davis Library but I never expected to experience that in the middle of my classroom.  Needless to say, I now have one of the most interesting college memories of all of my friends.  Since I started here at Carolina, every day has always started as any other day, but has never ended in the same way that it started and you know what?!  I’m perfectly okay with that!

– Written by Kendra Orr