The Price of Pledgeship

As Pledge Commander, I've had to make sacrifices. I've stopped going to many classes. I don't do my homework. And many nights, I don't sleep in my bed. I've given up any hope of a normal life or a face that girls might find attractive in order to watch all thirty episodes of the canceled television show Jericho with my pledges.

However, I have found that being Pledge Commander has a different price - my dignity. Not that I had dignity before, but I feel like when other people see me, they feel my dignity slipping away, and I don't have time to stop them and say, "I lost my dignity long ago. It's too late for me - save yourself," so somedays I feel it just as strongly as the first day it left, that time Lewis Chase ratted me out to Stephanie Broderick for writing that anonymous love note in second grade.

Every time I go to Wal-Mart, I relive that day when Lewis Chase told me that Stephanie would much rather be with him than with me (right before she left town; to this day I still can't find her on Facebook. Do you know how many Stephanie Broderick's there are in the continental U.S. alone? At least ten, because you can only view ten at a time, and I wasn't about to page through the whole list). For pledgeship, I've had to buy the oddest things. 200 squirt guns. Fifty pounds of flour. Fifty dollars worth of panty hose. A hacksaw and several gallons of industrial strength lime. Okay, I made that third one up.

Saturday, in the check out line with seven bottles of spray paint, ten rolls of masking tape, and seventy Hanes V-necks, Arkansas radio personality Rick Schaeffer (see picture: the original Hotness) pulled in behind me. He gave me the stink voice, which is the FM equivalent of the stink eye. In return, I told him not to sound so smug, with your fifty pounds of animal feed. What are you doing, running a cock fight?

I may have not said that, but it still feels terrible to have a minor local celebrity infer that you're losing your dignity.