Tiger Beat, Chapter 3: Questicle's B.S.

Welcome back amigos, for the grand and exciting(ish) conclusion to the Tiger Beat Chronicles, wherein my baby brother gets drunk, gets his degree, and gets drunk again, in that order. Onward!

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Saturday morning, the dawn of The Day, found the inhabitants of Questicle's apartment less than chipper and hangin' a little lower than usual. I was fully awake, all fidgety and jangly like a six-year-old on Christmas, at 7am--and unhappily so. Have you ever been awake in the single digits of the morning in a college apartment? It's like being hopelessly marooned on a desert island that some previous castaway pre-scented with beer and sorority girl pheromones. I busied myself texting LB and chugging environmentally unsound amounts of water to combat the previous night's chugging calamities, glad that I had abstained from the vodka shots that had been passed around circa 1am.

Questicle, however, had drunk deeply from the pitcher of fun the previous night, including the aforementioned vodka shots, and was not exactly en bonne forme upon the arrival of the morning star. When I finally forced him to peel himself off the sheets and consider consciousness, it became obvious that the only thing that would drag him out of The Land Before Time was a salty greasebomb and strong coffee. In other words, a bag from Bojangles.

Have you ever had Bojangles before? Broadening my search a bit, have you ever had a chicken biscuit before? Somehow, despite a lifetime spent studying the finer points of grits, red-eye gravy, and biscuits with sausage gravy, I had never had one. I was fully prepared to hand over my chicken biscuit v-card, and Macy (both tiny AND fabulous!) was well equipped to punch it for me: She knew how to get to the nearest Bojangles. So off we rode, in search of grease and enlightenment!

And what a mixed bag of victory we brought back. Win: Delicious chicken biscuits for all! Fail: Apparently Questicle wanted a bacon-egg biscuit instead of a chicken biscuit, and apparently Bojangles felt like we only deserved two of the three biscuits we gave them dollars for. My first ever chicken biscuit was actually a demi-biscuit, shared with Macy, while Questicle plowed through his biscuit and attempted to stick the straw in his Diet Coke directly into a vein. After twenty minutes and 6,000 calories, we finally felt ready to shower and mosey over to the Coliseum to watch The University bestow a B.S. on Questicle.

After getting choked up the first of six times watching Questicle process in with the rest of the class, and professors in a progression of sillier and sillier academic hats, I settled in for a graduation ceremony longer than Elton John's career. Clemson has a charming dedication to allowing each and every university graduate the opportunity to shake the hand of the president of the university himself, before snagging his diploma in front of 20,000 of his closest friends. I, for one, would much prefer if the president would make house calls to give out these handshakes, since watching him glad-hand 1,099 graduates, in addition to the one I personally showed up for was, to say the least: boring, mind-numbing, excruciating, tedious, leaden, exhausting, drool-inducing, and in summary, enough to make me (and everyone else in the arena) wish that I could voluntarily slip into a deep, dark coma.

I tried everything to stay focused. I gave up. I tried everything to stay awake. I gave up. I experimented in trying to sleep with my eyes open. I became concerned that if I were able to accomplish such a feat, gnats would land on my eyeballs. I eventually became bored enough to stop caring, only to discover that I am not capable of sleeping with my eyes open, gnats or no gnats.

Finally, at long last, Questicle mounted and crossed the stage to shake the hand of the president of the university. He later said that when he got there, he was smiling so big that the president said to him, grasping his hand, "It feels good, doesn't it?" Questicle grinned even bigger and replied, "yes sir, it does!"

Damn, little Questicle, I'm so proud of you I'm tearing up even now. How awesome! But, if I may request, please don't graduate again. I seriously can't sit through another Festival of REM Sleep.

After three more hours, much more unnecessary academic hoopla, and the conferring of degrees on people I don't care that I don't know, we were released again into the wild. Mom and Dad had brought a giant amount of pork barbecue and all the fixins for a dinner at Questicle's apartment, so we headed back to celebrate, making a pit stop for beer. Macy and I, dazed and hungry from camping out in the arena for four hours, made the mistake of going into the grocery store with Questicle, and we stumbled deliriously upon the chip aisle. We set upon it like buzzards on a dead lamb, eventually dragging six different bags of random-ass chips, including one made with real live olives, out of the store behind us.

What? Going comatose burns calories!

Back at Questicle's apartment we ravaged the chips and food that Mom and Dad had brought, oggling Questicle's diploma and working hard to ensure that no barbecue survived the night. Questicle and Macy were gearing up for another vodka-infused pong-fest, and were lobbying hard for me to stay another night so I could smack more of their friends' faces with stanky pong-balls. Everyone loves the party girl!

Ultimately, because I am old, lame, and nowhere close to as cool as you undoubtedly think I am, I decided to spend the night on the floor of Mom and Dad's hotel room, where I fell asleep at 10:15 watching Dr. Gregory House harass his staff into solving another epic medical mystery. I wished I could have partied another night with the Questicle crowd, but as the responsible older child, I knew I had to be back at work bright and early Monday morning.

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Thanks for tuning in for the conclusion of the Tiger Beat Chronicles! Now I can start telling you all of the other words that have been rumbling around my head while I tried to stop procrastinating and just finish the stupid Tiger Beat Chronicles, dammit. Tomorrow. I will tell you tomorrow.