In the school newspaper once a week is a feature called Police Beat in which all of the serious or funny police reports of the week are published to the campus. A bunch of Tre-Dub fellas got the idear in their heads to achieve everlasting fame and vainglory by getting their deeds published in that omniread chronicle. This wish coincidentally coincided with the abduction of the treasured Rubber Band Ball from the loving hands of a Tre-Dubber, Jarett Waite (aka. Tater Pal). Unlike Ali-Baba, the female miscreants required more than a mere password for admittance to their Heritage Halls fortress. Our love for the rubber band ball was great but none of us was willing to go to Bugs Bunnytile proportions to covertly enter the female stronghold. Retribution was our weapon, Vengeance our breath, Revenge our bread and honey. Brooktynn and her vile henchwomen would pay for their sinister crimes and in the process we, Tre-Dub, would gain immortality in the annals of heaven and the Daily Universe Police Beat.
The plan was simple. We made our round collecting the things we would need in our quest. A stick. A hammock. A box. A football. Patch. And a newspaper for inspiration. The posse left at the death of daylight and journied under disguise of carefree banter for as is taught in Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar, a smile is the best disguise.
Upon arrival at the duckpond we split into teams. One group kept watch on the police station on the other side of the road and pretended to play football. The other entered the dark gully, darkened further by their intentions. How bleak is the shimmer of stardom when it drives single-purposed men such as we to deeds so dastardly as these. Our innocent pray lay in the gully.
It is amazing how humorous retrospect can be. When I look back on Tre-Dubbers in the ditch hunting with primeviel stick and net, Patch leading the pack in the dense chill of dusk, I see the homour of the universe. The ducks in the gully swam, ran, and flew for their lives from sticks and hammocks even while the men hunting them feared pigs hunting them with guns, batons and patrol cars. Ducks caught in the sparkle of a flashlight did not pause as the men would have had the police spotlight illuminated their travesties. Tis a peculiar game this world of ours, and we are but the pawns and the tigers all the while switching roles and tumbling over benches; like a game of tag in a short yellow bus.
We did not catch a duck that day. Neither did we catch the tail of a star that would drag us through the constolations to eternity. Neither were we caught by the piglets that would lock us up for youth. Are youth and eternity so far apart?
Our quest for fame and retribution did not end there. Like a rottweiler on a bull's hamstring, we were attached and hanging on for the ride of our lives. In this particuliar part of the story I like to refer to a bathos sentiment Bette Midler sang a thousand times, "God is watching us/ from a distance." I believe Bette was onto something there and I still believe she sang that to us. You see, just as our hearts hung in our Deseret Industry sneakers something not too short of miraculous happened. I can remember it like it was yesterday. It was Provo, Utah, sometime in late November or early December. Imagine our ecstacy when, just as our mortal weapons of sticks and nets, boxes and a wet and disheartened Patch, failed, God gave us a new weapon with which to wreak vengeance on those who stole his emminence, the Tre-Dub rubber band ball. It snowed that day.
Once again we were in a position to both tag the chicks who pissed us off in the face with a snowball, and achieve neverending vainglory and anonomous popularity (the Police Beat doesn't print names). Because God provided us with snow we decided to compliment our arsenal with hymns composed to celebrate a pagan holiday on which non-pagans celebrate the birth of God's son. "Deck the Halls" we would.
Armed with a snowball per hand we set off to cause a civil disturbance. First, on a trial run, we stormed a girls' hall and tagged everyone inside to the rewarding dulcimer scream in unison from all the victims within. The sound was almost amorous but we were out for blood and our sardonic countenences proclaimed our intentions to any who cared to behold.
Upon crossing the road to rearm in privacy a lass looked at Carl wrong. Tre-dub does not take well to disrespect so Carl asked the lass her name so he could put her in line, or get her number. If she had answered with her name we would know which intention Carl had in mind, but instead she responded with, "Why do you want to know?" All formalities plummeted with that gauntletine comment and Carl embarked on the offensive. "Because this snowball has your name on it." "Whatever," the lass responded, but the fear in her cornea was almost audible on the cold winter night. If there's one thing Carl doesn't like it's a valley girl (unless she's cute). "You have five seconds to run...4...3...2...1..." The snowball flew into the back of the fleeing girl, and had it been a glaciel iceball rather than a feble sphere of compacted powder, the lass would have been sorry.
The journey continued as the Tre-dubbers rearmed and set out for their primary target, Fugal Hall. Visiting hours permitted the men to enter the stronghold, but the keep would still be tightly inaccessable. Donning piety the Tre-dubbers' true intentions were buried beneath a moribund mask of flushed cheeks, pursed lips, and eyes raised toward their weaponsmith in heaven. Hands behind backs the carolers surged into Deck the Halls with Gusto. Consourses of angels certainly looked down on the Tre-dubbers that night; whether with yearning to join the melodious tenor and bass symphony below, or with scolding brows for the hidden intention no man may know. All that is known is upon the end of the song N8 belched out, "Deck the halls boys!" upon which the wrath was unfurled. Never will that night die. One could make a masterpiece of young lovers' doe eyes widening more in surprise at the unexpected conclusion to the holiday paean. Yound men questing for glory leapt to defense of the maidens but their chase was for lesser glory, and the Tre-dub had already achieved its.
We did not make the paper. The ingrates did not even call the police. Jamieson "THE EDGE" Greer and Tater Pal sought revenge not with water fowl but with bovine organs. A simple dose of cow tongue in the microwave and baby squid scattered in diverse locations throughout the apartment prompted the speedy return of Rodrigo, the rubber band ball. Carl got the number of the lass who's destiny was written in his snowball but his untimely departure tore him from her. N8, aka the amazing singing guy, continued to sing, but lives with the memory that his finest hour is behind him. The other Tre-dubbers live on. Perhaps we are without a duck mascot. Perhaps the rubber band ball suffered tortures we will never know. None of this will change that night. On that snowny night in late November- early December we got our revenge. We got our rubber band ball. Perhaps now, with this recounting of our tale, we will achieve our immortality...