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Back in September, through a series of clerical errors on the part of the Office of Residential Life, Michael Jenks '11 was forced to live in a single in Jameson House in Keeney Quad. Completely isolated from his fellow seniors, Jenks has since been surrounded by vivacious freshmen who, unlike himself, have yet to be worn down by the coarse sands of time.
"I'm still quite perturbed about this whole situation," said a curmudgeonly Jenks as he furrowed his brow and fixed his face into a Clint Eastwood-like scowl. "Quite perturbed. And a little tired and hungry. Say, where'd I put that warm milk?"
Most of Jenks frustration has come from the seemingly constant disturbances of his freshmen neighbors. "Kids these days have no sense of morals, no taste," ranted Jenks as he thumbed his poster of 2008 presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich. "These good-for-nothing punks, these hooligans, sit around all day blasting their Ke$has and watching their 3 dimensional moving pictures. Back in my day, when I was a freshman, I walked 5 miles in the snow just to watch a moving picture show in 2 dimensions. Length and width. The way it was meant to be."
When asked about his older neighbor, Matty Burrows '14 replied, "You mean Old Man Jenks? That guy's a fossil, man. Last week, I saw him trying to learn the Soulja Boy dance while struggling with Windows Vista for two hours. I mean, who has a desktop PC these days? Tablet computing is the way of the future, son. He's practically Cretaceous."
"I can't get this danged Vista to work," fumed Jenks as he pounded on the keyboard with only his two index fingers. "They said it was going to have an updated graphical user interface and more R-A-M. But what the Sweeney Todd does that mean? It's been four years with this Vista and I can barely check my e-mail and go on the Google. It just never seems like this doggone contraption is doing what I tell it to."
Every day, after his mid-mid-morning nap and before his mid-morning nap, Jenks writes "a sternly worded piece of electronic mail to Res Life about [his] living situation."
Jenks has yet to receive a response. But, according to the senior, that may be due to the fact that "Res Life is run by a bunch of gosh darn incompetent - uh, hold that thought, my bladder's acting up again, shouldn't have drank all that warm milk."
"It does help prevent osteoporosis though," he added as he rushed to the men's room.
One instance that particularly irked Jenks occurred two nights ago when an errant beer pong ball rolled into his doorway as he was quietly watching an episode of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' on his portable DVD player.
"The other night, we were playing beer pong across the hall and the ball accidentally went flying into Mr. Jenks' room and I went to go get it," said Melanie Cedeno '14. "But he refused to give it back to me, called me a 'Smirnoff Ice-drinking floozy with loose morals and a tight skirt' and told me to 'get off his newly manicured lawn.'"
"Well then she called me an 'old war-mongering prude with a weird poster of the Keebler Elf on the campaign trail,'" retorted Jenks. "I don't think I'm a prude. It's just that back in my day, there was a certain way a lady was expected to carry herself. You know: whorish but not like a total whore. Anyway, it doesn't matter 'cause now I've got another ping pong ball to add to my collection," chuckled Jenks as he placed the ball in his bin of literally hundreds of other toys, knick-knacks and newfangled whosawhatsits.
"Also, that's not an elf," added Jenks. "He's the man who should be the president of these here United States of America. These kids have no respect for their elders."
However, in spite of his hardened demeanor and relative aversion to technology, Jenks isn't totally cold and cantankerous. "I know I may come off like Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace, but I'm really not. I don't hate these kids. In fact, I see a lot of myself in them. It wasn't so long ago that I used to be just like them. Except for that Matty Burrows character. He's a rotten little shit."
