Waldo-ing

Last night while a good majority of our dorm fellows went out and did "cool things" like go to the concert or frequent the one club in town, or go to one of the many theme parties, my gang and I went to an open mic in a nearby town. We got terrified of some particularly zealous religious people and ended the evening early, coming home around 9:30. I'd just like to toss in the disclaimer that I'm a fairly religious person. I accept a majority of world views and don't judge anyone as I'd rather they not judge me. These people were somewhat insane. What we didn't know was that the open mic was housed and sponsored by a church group. The people then tried to pressure us to talk about beliefs in a sneaky sort of way and then challenged us if they weren't the same. I think the final straw for that night though was when the sweet grandmother got up and started reading her poetry, very aggressively.

After we escaped and rescued three of our classmates, three or four colleges in the region were there and we were all the only people the others knew, we made it back to the dorm and walked in on something just a bit more crazy.

Matt is an actor, YouTube comedy phenom and funny guy. He's also my neighbor. He told us before that he'd dressed up as Waldo from the book series Where's Waldo? for his senior class group picture and we all had a laugh about it. What we didn't expect was that after our already harrowing evening we'd walk in on him completely in costume and character as Waldo.

The point of this exercise?
"I'm going to walk around and confuse drunk people"

Worthy goal.

So Colleen grabbed her video camera, Kate, Julie and I changed into more appropriate running shoes and we followed him out to document the night of Waldo.

Overall, the reactions were limited to "hey its Waldo!" "dude, I found you!" and "its effing Waldo!". Matt informed us that none of these reactions were new and we nodded, double taking a moment later to wonder exactly how much data he had to back this up with. Throughout the night he poked his head in windows, got chased by several drunk people who wanted to catch him, experienced photo ops and ordered a grilled cheese sandwich from the pub in the student center, even paying for his meal in cash instead of with his meal plan card so he didn't give his real identity away.

The high point of the evening came as we found a perfect spot to stand by the student center with heavy foot traffic and a group of people recognized one of the guys standing with us. At this point, one of them ran up, gave Waldo a hug and a handshake and stated "I've been looking for you my whole life." That one, Matt told us later, was new.

Not long after, we decided to head back and found one of our friends watching the Princess and the Frog in our upstairs CA's room. We finished it with them and then put in Anastasia for about half an hour befo

re we all decided we were too tired to watch any longer, said our goodnights and goodbyes and went to bed, all around 12:30.