Over winter break in January 1986, I had four wisdom teeth removed. They were all impacted, so they knocked me out with some intravenous Valium. They put the needle in and said “Now count backwards from ten.” I think I got to eight….. I woke up with four teeth sitting on the bib covering my chest.
Bruce had his wisdom teeth out the same day. They evening I went over to his house and we mixed up rum smoothies, took our Tylenol 3s, and listened to music. He’d just gotten the new Inxs album. I remember being in his basement, stretched out in a La-z-boy recliner and feeling no pain, while this song played.
Salisbury State College had an unusually long winter term. We finished the fall semester the week before Christmas and the spring semester didn’t start until the second week of February. To fill the time, the college ran a four-week winter term. You could take up to two classes, each one five days a week for one-and-a-half hours each.
Winter term was called (by the students) Party term. Except for classes, the campus was pretty much closed down; the dorms, student center, and cafeteria and other buildings locked up tight. Those students who attended the winter term stayed off campus. Because it was such a small group of people, by the end of the first week, everybody had run into almost everybody else. Parties every night and drunken debauchery ensued.
Although he was only a year behind me in high school, Bruce and I didn’t have much to do with each other until college. When he arrived as a freshman (I was a sophomore), I ran into him at registration and showed him around. We ended up becoming pretty good friends (although it’s now been more than 20 years since I’ve seen or spoken to him).
Bruce already lived off base with two roommates who weren’t attending the Winter term, so I took one of the spots and a guy named whose name I can’t remember (a brother to one of the roommates) took the other. This guy was getting back into college after some time off. He’d been at Salisbury for a year or so, then transferred to the University of Miami, but ran into some “snow” trouble and returned north. He, like my first college roommate Chris, was also on on the lacrosse team. Although the season hadn’t started yet, most of the team was attending Winter term. They got together every morning to workout and on Saturday mornings had a scrimmage.
This guy used to pump himself up for the scrimmage by putting The Blues Brothers album on the stereo and blasting it before he left. His game started at 8:00 a.m. So every Saturday for 4 weeks, Bruce and I were unpleasantly jolted awake around 7:00 a.m. by Rubber Biscuit blaring - and I mean BLARING - through the house. We asked the guy more than once to stop waking us up, but he ignored us. He had a way of turning it around, making us into jerks because all he wanted to do was play the song a few times to get pumped for his game. By the end of the term, I hated this song. And him too.
The term ended, the regular spring semester started, and I moved back into the dorms. Bruce’s roommates returned to the house. The lacrosse guy had been unable to get into the dorms and ended up rooming with his brother and staying in the house with Bruce.
Bruce later told me that the first Saturday of the semester, this guy started up with his Rubber Biscuit ritual. Bruce got out of bed, walked over to the stereo, removed the record, snapped it in half, and went back to bed.
