Just to Be Clear: At No Point During This Story Was Anyone Actually Stripped Naked

Yesterday's Prairie Fire/Garbage Bag story was told because it was b-day related, but there was another Little Man Stud story that popped into my mind first . . .

During the last semester of my Sophomore year, Little Man Stud overheard a group of us planning some nefarious and ill-fated scheme, and, wanting to be a part of it, came over to ask us the details. I believe it was Wrath who responded, although it very well could have been G'ovich: they're equally capable. Whichever one it was decided to grant Little Man's desire to be a part of our scheme by telling him that we had been hashing out the following plan: at precisely midnight we were going to grab him, strip him naked, tie him up, and leave him as a surprise for Flunky, who was then currently off on drill. This got the usual "No. Seriously? No. Really?" response from the Studling; the dubiousness was well-founded this time, since it was, of course, total B.S.

Fast-forward to later that evening: most of the usual lounge lizards had already headed off for the night, leaving basically the same group who had been involved in the aforementioned discussion. Glancing at the clock, Wrath announced that it was time, at which point we all rushed the Little Man. He went to the ground, crying "My ankle, my ankle!" Or possibly, it was his knee. Whatever. The point is, everyone backed off, at which point the big fibber took off like a shot, racing for the stairwell. G'ovich gave a brief chase, but the rest of us just laughed and laughed: we knew we'd never planned on actually doing anything to him.

I was gone most of the next day due to a BSU drama team trip; when I got back to Parker that evening G'ovich called me over to tell me that they had made a deal with the Mini-Stud: if he would tell everyone that we had stripped him and left him tied up in Flunky's room, we would all stop calling him Skippy.

So, the Skippy thing: basically, Wrath and G'ovich had been telling him that they held so much power in the dorm that they could give him a new name, and everyone would call him by it. Little Man Stud was (shockingly) doubtful of the claim, so the diabolical duo dubbed him Skippy and so he was known by one and all. Armed with the knowledge that the Skippy thing was going to be a thing of the past, I went on about my business for the evening, thinking nothing else of it. Until the next day, that is, when I got off the elevator onto the first floor and walked straight into a group of girls sitting in the lobby whose first words to me were "Can you believe Little Man Stud is going to go to the J-Board about you guys?"

Now, you must realize that, at this point, I had not yet had my morning caffeine, and was therefore not firing on all cylinders and so completely unable to make the connection between their question and my conversation with the Doc the previous evening. But, being a veteran of such random conversations after nearly two years of friendship with G'ovich, Wrath, Flunky, et al, I instantly responded "It's his word against ours," and then sat down, saying no more as I stalled, waiting for my neurons to start firing again.

My brain finally kicked in, and I quickly figured out that Little Man Stud had decided to play up the drama of our little arrangement, which shouldn't have surprised me: I'd seen evidence of him wanting to take jokes to their breaking point before. Apparently he had been going around telling everyone that he was so upset over our prank that he was going to turn us over to the dorm's Judicial Board. The act went on for a day or two, LMS acting like he was extremely ticked at us all, while we all played along . . . well up to a point: he eventually tried to talk us into staging a fake fight in the lobby, but we begged off. Robbed of the chance to have it escalate, Little Man Stud let the drama die off; not sure how long it was before everyone else found out it was all a scam.

My favorite part of the story is that when Little Man Stud told the girls about the situation, they were all pissed . . . at him. Yes, that's right, the girls were upset that Little Man Stud was going to turn us in for a little thing like stripping him naked and leaving him tied up in another guy's room. "It was just a joke," they said, "he shouldn't be so upset." Souls of compassion, those gals.