Marcy is off to a roaring start, but I cannot proceed without coming clean about a shameful item from my past. Marcy is all about honesty and redemption and sensible shoes.
When I was in college, I had a roommate named Jeffrey. My friend Brian, who lived next door, had a roommate named K____, whose tanned good looks and preppie fashion sense left him resembling a mannequin that had lingered too long in the sun.
Jeffrey and I, evil outcasts that we were, had nothing in common with this golden boy, and despite the fact that we lived about five feet away, neither of us ever exchanged a word with him. We didn’t even know his last name, except via the nametag on his door, which read “K____ Spoot.” For an entire year, we were tantalized by the idea that someone’s last name could be Spoot, and not a day went by that we didn’t make some sort of private joke about this. “Nice boots,” we’d say, slurring the two words together. We were so extraordinarily clever.
At the end of the school year, I happened to be talking to Brian in his room and asked him how he liked living with K____ Spoot.
His reply was, “K____ Spoot? What are you talking about?”
“Are you drunk?” I demanded. “K____ Spoot? Your roommate?”
“I can’t believe you said that,” Brian said. “K____’s last name isn’t Spoot!”
Two semesters of silly wordplay flashed through my mind. Was it all for naught? How could I ever tell Jeffrey? “But, but, but that’s what it says on your door,” I whined. I showed him the nametag, which he had never noticed despite entering and leaving his room a dozen times a day.
“Oh, that’s funny, someone must have changed that for a prank,” said the good-natured, chronically unobservant Brian. “It should say Spoor, not Spoot. Someone changed the ‘r’ into a ‘t’.”
I was crushed, absolutely devastated. Jeffrey and I had spent a year making bad jokes about someone’s name, and it wasn’t even the right name. Lesson learned, I hung my head in shame. Really, the entire situation was its own punishment. Not only had we been living a lie, but we had missed the golden opportunity to make fun of someone whose last name was Spoor.
