Who is that guy on the left? What is that guy in the middle fixin' to do?
This image, recently unearthed on Facebook, shows a young Aggie about to "dunk" his ring in a pitcher of beer. The guy on the left is going to time the precise number of seconds (or, rather, minutes) it takes the fellow to drink the beer (by himself) and retrieve the ring.
A few numbers:
A full-size pitcher of beer contains 60 ounces, or five beers. (The guy in the photo above may or may not be dunking his ring in a 32-ounce mini-pitcher, it's hard for me to make that call.)
The Aggie tradition (when I was in school) was that you dunk the ring, then consume the beer in the number of seconds corresponding to your class year. For me, that was 93 seconds.
Now that's 5 beers at 18.6 seconds per clip. It doesn't usually happen that way. The foam builds up, reverses course, bad thangs happen.
Of my Corps buddies, the dozen of us, only one person (as I recall) managed to down that pitcher of beer in 93 seconds.
But the unlikelihood of that happening DOES NOT STOP Aggies from trying. (Although, I don't know what they do now. 110 seconds? 10 seconds?)
In fact, if you have a particular aversion to, say, puke, ring-dunking night at the Dixie Chicken is one of the most disgusting spectacles you will ever encounter, unless you take up a career in some field like Decapitations R Us.
Now, it's true, Aggieland does have more than its share of grizzled beer bums who consider 5 beers to be, well, breakfast (we'll get to me in a second), but there are also plenty of sorority girls who get giggly off one wine cooler who get their magic Aggie-power rings and suddenly think they are going to guzzle down five beers.
PUKE! BARF!
Yuck.
Although some are more civilized. One young lady I knew opted to dunk her ring in 94 minutes rather than seconds. This is because: A. she is smart. B. she did not care to puke.
Me neither. I dunked my ring in a pitcher of Lone Star and guzzled until the foam started to rise (I was on pace until about halfway). Then I finished it up at the leisurely time of 3 minutes and 58 seconds.
Now if that doesn't seem to be a time worthy of a serious beer drinker (and it is 5 beers at less than a minute a piece), keep in mind that I kept my empty pitcher, caught a ride back to the dorm to store the pitcher in my room, caught a ride back to Northgate, and KEPT ON PARTYING. All night.
Anyway, back to the original questions.
That guy on the left is me. Yeah, I'll be damned. Was I ever that skinny? Did I think I was fat back then? Look at that hair!
That guy in the middle is a fellow named Mark, whom I worked with at the Aggie newspaper, The Battalion. We were friendly, but not best buds or anything. Why I'm the one next to him with the watch, I do not know.
Well, I do know.
He probably walked into the office and said "Hey, who wants to go have beer with me?"
And there I am.