That Time I Almost Got Kicked Out Of College

I've alluded to this post a few times, & now it's time for y'all to experience the wonder.

Are you ready?

It was literally a day before Spring Break my second year at Toccoa. I was driving down the main road with Ij (short for Italian Job, a name Alexa gave him because he looks Italian but he isn't) when he got a call from his hysterical girlfriend, LL. Apparently, she had been called to meet with one of the deans of the school because someone had read LL's Xanga in which she wrote about a get-together at The Mayor of Creepsville's house where there was some alcohol consumed; that person then printed off a copy of the post & gave it to the dean. Since we attended a school that rewarded this kind of behavior. Drinking was a big no-no regardless of age or whether or not you lived on campus. The most common form of punishment for such a heinous activity was a crap-ton of gratis (which, as I have mentioned before, is like community service around campus), suspension, or expulsion. So obviously, LL being really upset was understandable. I felt really bad for her.

That is until about 2 hours later when I got a text from Christian, who was currently the SGA president: the dean wanted to speak to me. Shit. I still had about an hour left of my shift (back in the day when I was a host at Applebee's & thought working lunch was good), & that entire time I almost had an anxiety attack. I had no idea whether I was going to be forced to testify LL or anyone else, or whether I had been thrown under the bus as well. Either way, I hurried over to the school after work to go ahead & get it over with...

Now, the dean is a reasonably nice person. He has a very... calming demeanor. I sat down & he told me how he had already spoken to LL about her Xanga post, & then went into reading quotes from it. This was when I learned that LL included all of the names of the people who had been at the party (of which I was included). Now, I can understand why she would think it was ok to put our names. I mean, it was 2008 & homeslice was still writing on Xanga. Nobody had been reading that shit for years. But seriously?! You're going to post on a public forum that anyone can read that you had been drinking & include the names of everyone there? Idiot.

The kicker? I didn't even drink that time. I wasn't even going to go because it was at The Mayor of Creepsville's house (THAT'S going to be a fun post...) but I had gotten in a fight with my dad (who I was living with at the time since he was working in the same town I went to college) & left to hang out with Ij. I stayed maybe an hour & smoked one cigarette. And all of this crap was happening to me.

Sometimes I make really bad choices.

I explained all of this to the dean, who didn't seem mad at all. I didn't like that. I need the other person to react one way or the other so I can react. I obviously don't do well making my own choices. He was just really quiet. And that's when I started talking...running my mouth about how I thought I had a drinking problem because I would physically feel pain if I didn't drink. How it ran on both sides of my family. How I could just drink & drink & be drunk but not stop or get sick.

Jesus.

That was when the entire mood of the meeting changed. Now he wanted to fix me. Well, at least I didn't think I would get kicked out anymore! So there was that. He decided to have weekly accountability meetings with me to make sure I was overcoming my plight as a potential alcoholic. I thought that wouldn't be so bad. But then the mood changed to one slightly more ominous. This was when the dean wanted me to tell him who Ij was (only his first name was in the Xanga post). I didn't want to do it. I really didn't want to be a snake. But I knew I had no choice because it would potentially get me in more trouble, plus the fact that I knew he probably already knew. So I told him.

He talked to Ij later that day, as well as the other 3 guys involved (The Mayor of Creepsville, a ginger kid that may not have any functioning brain cells, & the guy who died earlier this year). They set up a meeting for all of us to get together after Spring Break, & basically all that ended up being was the dean & another dean telling us why we were wrong for drinking & The Mayor of Creepsville trying to debate them. While everyone got involved for the most part, I kept my mouth shut.

I was surprised, but none of us got suspended, expelled, or at the very least gratis. It was just really odd how it all worked out, especially when we were basically completely screwed. In fact, there was a group of people who got busted for drinking around the same time & they all got a lot of gratis & weren't allowed to play on their respective sports teams for the rest of the year. I know they may have been held to a higher standard, but I was really involved on SGA & the dean did mention that I may need to be removed if my behavior didn't change. But that was that.

In the end, I distanced myself from that group. LL left school at the end of that semester. I continued to keep my distance from The Mayor of Creepsville. I also avoided the dead guy because he was an ass. The ginger? We never really hung out much anyway. Ij ended up getting kicked out the next year because of alcohol (& because The Mayor of Creepsville sucks).

I ended up going about a month without drinking, until this horrible night when Ij & LL had sex in my dad's bed. I also continued going to the accountability meetings until I realized that all the dean wanted was to use me as a narc since he knew that while I didn't hang out with people much, I knew a lot of what was happening with people. So I quit going.

And Spring Break? It was decent fun in Daytona until I kind of realized that one of the only reasons I was invited was because I had a car. Assholes.