Like some kind of odd, six legged monster, the trio hobbled their way down a side street and onto the main campus of Sitwell Community College. It was a cool Spring night and students were bustling about, posting trivial nonsense on their Lifebox pages and getting offended over anything and everything.
“Brit,” Paul said as he huffed and puffed. “Where the hell are we going?”
“Beta Zeta Theta,” Britney replied.
“The sorority house?” Paul asked.
“All the other buildings are locked down for the night,” Britney said. “It’s our only shot.”
“They’ll never let him shit there,” Paul lamented.
“Why?” Britney asked.
Chad perked up and burped. “Because I totally nailed seventy-five percent of them and never called any of them back! Woot woot! Party in Chaddy’s pants, y’all!”
“Oh God,” Britney said as she caught a whiff of Chad’s silent but deadly blast. “That smells like a party no one’s going to anytime soon, trust me.”
“Don’t hate the player, babe,” Chad said. His stomach gurgled, he heaved, and the trio stopped. Chad shook his head. “False alarm.” The trio moved on.
“Only seventy-five percent?” Britney asked. “You’re showing restraint as you enter decade two of your quest for an associate’s degree.”
“Nah baby,” Chad said. “It’s cuz the other twenty-five percent were straight up uggos! Chad don’t do no dogs, baby! Woof, woof, arr arr arrrrrwoooooo!”
The trio passed all sorts of student groups. The peaceniks were strumming banjos under a tree. The cool kids were smoking joints. The nerds were playing an elaborate, card based roleplaying game involving dragons, swords, and ill-tempered elves.
“Britney!” Chad yelled.
“I’m here,” Britney said.
“Britney,” Chad said as he farted loudly. “I want you to know I have learned the error of my ways.”
“Whatever, Chad,” Britney said.
“No, really baby,” Chad said. “When I told you that I’d love you forever and then walked right on over to Jenny Sinclair’s room to get a handy that was totally uncool of me. Way, way uncool.”
“It’s all in the past,” Britney said.
“It wasn’t even a good one!” Chad said. “Her hand was all dry and calloused! And she had a bottle of lotion sitting there right there on the nightstand and I nudged my head toward it but she didn’t take the hint so the whole time I was like, ‘This must be like what it feels like to stick your junk inside a tube of sandpaper.’”
Britney sighed. “Just try not to speak.”
Chad ignored the advice. “Babe, if I live through this, I want you to take me back and I swear I’ll be a better man.”
“Not happening,” Britney said.
“Please?” Chad asked.
“Never,” Britney answered.
“Pretty please?” Chad asked.
“No,” Britney replied.
The scene became way more crowded as the trio reached the center of the campus. There, a massive rally was underway. On a prefabricated stage, a young woman wearing thick glasses, a butch haircut, combat boots and a Che Guevara t-shirt was shouting furiously to the crowd.
Britney spotted the banner hanging above the speaker’s head. It read: “The Everything is Super Offensive and Racist and Sexist So Don’t Invade My Safe Space Without a Trigger Warning or Else You Are Literally Hitler Rally.”
“Oh my God,” Britney said. “I forgot that was tonight.”
“It’s the seventh one this month,” Paul said. “After awhile, you lose track.”
“Everything is super offensive and racist and sexist!” the speaker shouted into a bullhorn.
“What about flowers?” a random member of the crowd asked.
“Sexist!” the speaker shouted. “Men try to give them to us to distract us from the fact that they are all scumbag perverts trying to rule our lives because they think their penises give them a God given right to do so!”
“Don’t say, ‘God’ please!” a second crowd member said. “As an atheist, any reference to a deity offends me.”
“I’m sorry!” the speaker shouted into her bullhorn.
“It’s cool,” the atheist said. “Just stay woke.”
“But does everyone see how we are all discriminatory piles of garbage without even realizing it?” the speaker asked. “Like I said, ‘everything is super offensive and racist and sexist!”
“What about pizza?” a third member of the crowd asked.
Without even taking a second to think about the question, the speaker launched into an angry tirade. “Pizza is one of the most ethnically discriminatory foods imaginable. Think about all the hard working Italians who came to this country and put so much hard work and labor to build our cities and infrastructure and how do we repay them? By culturally appropriating their cuisine. It should be a hate crime punished by death if you eat a piece of pizza without showing proof that you are a person of Italian ancestry. If you are not Italian and you eat pizza anyway, then you are literally worse than Hitler!”
“That’s true,” a fourth member of the crowd said. “My Dad eats burritos all the time and he isn’t even Mexican and I’ve always felt he’s literally worse than Hitler.”
Britney, Paul and Chad worked their way through the crowd, bumping into protestors left and right as they tried to pass through.
“What about staplers?” a fifth member of the crowd asked.
“What?” the speaker asked through her bullhorn.
“Staplers,” the protestor asked as she pantomimed using a stapler with her hand. “You know, the thing you keep on your desk to attach pieces of paper together.
“Oh!” the speaker said. “Staplers are by far the most offensive of all office products. I mean, why are we trying to bind pieces of paper down when pieces of paper, just like people, shouldn’t be tied down. If you use a stapler then you better start goose-stepping yourself out of here because you are literally worse than Hitler!”
The crowd cheered and clapped.
“And who decided that pieces of paper have to be white, anyway?” the speaker asked. “We’re all so used to writing on white pieces of paper with black pens, but why can’t pieces of paper be black and pens be white? Everyone in the office supply industry should drop whatever they are doing and address this injustice of epic proportions but they won’t because they’re all literally worse than Hitler!”
More applause. The trio had almost reached the edge of the crowd and were about to break free when Paul had to go and open his mouth.
“The ink,” Paul said.
The crowd gasped. The speaker looked toward Paul and raised her bullhorn to her mouth. “Excuse me?”
Paul coughed into his hand to clear his throat. “Umm…the ink?”
Britney closed her eyes and winced. “Damn it Paul, now is not the time!”
Chad burped and farted in unison.
“What about it?” the speaker asked.
“In order to make paper black, you’d have to dip it in a black dye,” Paul said. “That would not be cost effective and also a waste of precious resources. Further, white paper is one of the most easily recycled materials, but if the paper is covered with ink then that makes it more difficult to recycle, thus generating unnecessarily damage to the environment.”
A quiet hush consumed the crowd. Everyone stared at the trio.
“What have you done, Paul?” Britney asked. “What have you done?”
Paul swallowed hard. “I’m so sorry.”
The speaker’s nostrils flared. She gritted her teethed and seethed with rage. “He exercised independent thought! Get him!”
Chad hurled his guts all over the grass, but before he could wipe off his mouth, he was being dragged across campus but his friend and ex. Over a hundred irate protestors were in hot pursuit, shaking their fists and hurling expletive laden threats sprinkled with the words “tolerance” and “understanding.”
“You and your big mouth,” Britney said.
“I said I was sorry!” Paul cried.
“My feelings were hurt beyond repair!” a sixth random protester shouted. “I’ll suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome for the rest of my life now!”
“I’m sorry!” Paul shouted back to the random protester with alleged PTSD. “Your feelings are valid and I was inconsiderate!”
“What about me?” a seventh random protester yelled. “I’ll need to pet a therapy dog and stay within the lines of my therapy coloring books for the next six months before I begin the healing process over this!”
“I’m sorry!” Paul shouted back. “I’ll buy you some crayons, I swear!”
“Come back here!” the speaker shouted into her bullhorn. “Making me run is offensive to me because I don’t identify as a runner and that makes you literally worse than Hitler!”
The trio reached the entrance to the Beta Theta Zeta sorority house. The front door was locked, but through the glass they could see a blonde sitting at the front desk, bebopping her head back and forth as she listened to music through a pair of earbuds in her ears.
“Oh thank God, it’s Lilly!” Britney said as she banged on the door. “I have English Lit with her. Lilly! Lilly, let us in!”
Lilly was too far into her jams to pay attention to the door. She mouthed the words to Stank Daddy’s latest single and swayed her head back and forth. “Stank Daddy in the house, gonna smack a bitch…”
Paul turned his head and died a little inside as the crowd of unruly protestors drew near. Somehow, they’d managed to get ahold of flaming torches and pitchforks.
“Incoming social justice warriors!” Paul shouted as he joined Britney in banging on the door. “For the love of God, Lilly, let us in!”
Chad farted, then pulled out his cellphone. “I got this.”
The drunk thumbed through his contacts, then handed the phone to Britney.
“Her too?” Britney asked as she pushed a button on the phone marked, “Hot Blonde, Decent Face, OK Ass.”
“Yup,” Chad replied.
“You’re a pig,” Britney said as she waited for Lilly’s phone to ring.
“I know,” Chad said.
Lilly’s voice came through on Chad’s phone. “Squee! O-M-G Chad, you finally called me back!”
Britney mustered up all of her lung capacity and shouted into the phone, “Let us in, bitch!”
Lilly looked at the front door. She spotted the trio and the incoming unruly mob. She hit a button under her desk.
The door buzzed open. Paul, Britney and Chad ducked into the sorority and shut the door just in time to watch one protestor after another slam themselves up against the glass.
“I am offended by this!” a seventh random protestor said.
“Glass is offensive!” an eighth random protestor said. “It allows me to see who victimized me and ruined my life with inappropriate speech but doesn’t allow me to kick their ass. Whoever invented glass is literally worse than Hitler.”
The speaker pushed her way through the crowd and tried the door handle. The door was locked once more. She lifted up her bullhorn. “Sorry everyone. It looks like we won’t be able to rip those three limb from limb and bathe in their blood tonight. Everyone go home, get some sleep, and meet back here tomorrow morning for the anti-violence rally.”
Bookshelf Battle 