Gather round, dear readers, for I've a story of calamity and woe befit for a dreary Saturday. While my posts normally have their roots in the tangled, wild recesses of my imagination, this story is anything but fiction, though it may sound engineered for a bad TV show starring Charlie Sheen.
As with any good story, I must begin at the beginning. Every year, The Ohio State University hosts its Denman Undergraduate Research Forum, which features a title so self-evident I don't think it requires much further explanation. Basically, picture three large gymnasiums packed with hundreds of precocious young academics standing in front of 3' x 4' posters describing their inevitably-incomprehensible research. As I have had the misfortune of conducting my own research during my college career, I had the misfortune of presenting at the Denman last year. Given my greater misfortune of completing(?) a senior thesis this year, I will be replicating that unhappy event yet again on Wednesday.
Having already completed my poster, I decided to be utterly sneaky and use the library's plotter printer on the weekend, before the teeming masses of procrastinating presenters form an enormous queue come Monday. However, when I awoke to an overcast, windy day, I was immediately put on guard.
You see, last year, I printed my poster on a very similar such day. As I'm too cheap to shell out $60+ for a poster I'm going to use once, I forswore the laminated, glossy poster for the $7.35 regular paper style. After printing off this behemoth sheet of paper, it promptly began to rain. Forty minutes and approximately thirteen copies of The Lantern later, I had bundled my fragile beauty in swaddling newspapers. Crisis averted.
Up to the time I left today for the library at 2:30pm, however, the threatening clouds hadn't spilled a drop. I checked weather.com. No rain forecasted. All right, let's do this. So I successfully print off my brand-spanking new poster and station myself by the front door. All clear. No drops in the sky. No drops on the ground. Estimated time to reach my car: four minutes. I head out at a brisk pace.
You've already guessed where this is going, of course. As I reach the far side of the Oval, the drops start to fall. Rat farts. I run to the nearest building, which happens to be the Faculty Club. Naturally, the Faculty Club is closed and locked on the weekend. So I huddle under its one-foot overhang as the sprinkling turns into a downpour. I had already spotted some drops on the poster, so I just shoved it in the corner of the door and shielded it bodily as I got drenched. To top it all off, my parking meter had less than ten minutes left.
Finally, it let up enough that I decided to risk running over to the next building to see if it was unlocked. As I ran, trying to hide the poster under my coat as much as possible, I spotted a trash can under the enormous stone overhang of the building's stoop. I opened the thing up and took out the half-full bag of refuse, hoping there would be an unused bag stashed underneath. Luckily, there was.
I pulled it out and opened it. As I was doing that maneuver where you try to bag an invisible object to get the bag to open, I glanced up to see a janitor staring at me from inside. I have no idea how long he'd been observing me, but if his look of extreme confusion is any indication, I think the safe answer is the whole damn time. Undeterred, I shoved my poster inside the bag and replaced the half-full one to its proper place. Refastening the lid on the garbage can, I gave the janitor a half salute. Presumably unamused, he simply returned to his duties and started pushing his cart of cleaning supplies down the hallway.
Surveying the damage from the safety of my home, the poster is not, as I had feared, completely ruined. The left side is a little the worse for wear, with some wrinkles and other evidence of re-dried paper. I'm just going to leave it, however, and present it proudly at the Denman as a testament to bad luck and even worse planning.
Oh, and my meter had expired and I arrived just as the officer finished writing the ticket. Okay, that part didn't really happen, but it would have been a great coda, right?
From the virtual desk of Ivan Zissou
dictated but not read
cth
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