Life-altering epiphanies aren’t common, so when we experience them they stand out far beyond other memories. I had a recent epiphany in a McDonald’s drive-through as a woman named Conchita was handing me a Big Mac and an extra-large ten-piece Chicken McNugget meal. This well rounded meal came at the tail end of a typical Monday that may or may not have involved 11 Busch Lights, two lips and approximately half a pack of cigarettes.
As I received my meal from Conchita, I stopped and pondered to myself, “I may possibly be an unhealthy person.” I’d like to tell you that I respectfully declined my food, but of course Conchita may as well have been giving Tyrone Biggums crack when she gave my drunk ass McDonald’s. Later, as I inhaled my final McNugget, I realized how unhealthy a lifestyle we lead as college students.
The typical Fairfield student cannot avoid unhealthy elements no matter how hard he or she tries. Think of the difference in diet between living at home and living at school. At home, there exists things like “fruit” and “vegetables”, strange exotic foods not found in college diets. At home, refrigerators are also stocked with food that hasn’t yet passed its expiration date, while many fridges in townhouses and beach houses should be harvested for penicillin.
As a senior, I can’t help but think of my classmates who have punished their bodies for more than 3 years as I have done, now all relegated to telling high school hero stories about how they used to have a six pack, run a 4.5 forty or run a five-minute mile. The only recent athletic achievements many of us have performed that are worth bragging about are 30-second keg stands or walking home past the third hump from The Grape at 1:30 a.m. If our internal organs had the ability to collectively strangle us to death for the atrocities we’ve committed towards them, Fairfield would have a graduating class of 36 people in 2007.
I almost feel worse for underclassmen, who still endure two violent gastrointestinal assaults per day from Barone. Dorm bathrooms across campus get stormed worse than the beaches of Normandy at about seven o’clock each night because of the preservative-laced cud served in our campus dining hall. Yet despite forced daily spells of diarrhea, I don’t feel the worst for underclassmen. I feel worse for the janitors forced to deal with the aftermath.
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