The Monday after. A month-long basketball frenzy screeches to an agonizing, one-point halt, and a valiant but dejected student body puts on a brave face. Yes, just like any other day, we all put on our Panama Jack T-shirts and our tri-color-laced L.A. Gears and grab our trusty Jansport book bags with our favorite Milli Vanilli lyrics etched in them with pen ink, and carry on (interesting side note: RAMONA QUIMBY, AGE 38 has no idea what the kids are wearing these days). Yes, life goes on.
"Life goes on." No longer simply the Beatles' thirty-fifth best song (according to VH1's "Top One Hundred Songs Not Included On Any of Our Other Lists" hosted by Yasmine Bleeth), it's now our mantra. It's the charge that we've been given in the face of this disappointing stumbling block. We didn't reach the NCAA basketball championship game, but we journey on because, as a university family, we are the bigger man, and just getting a chance to participate was the biggest thrill we could have hoped for. And, of course, by adopting this positive attitude, there's no reason to tear down the teams that will be participating in the NCAA championship game.
For instance, there's no reason to call the University of Connecticut's team a bunch of uncultured mouth-breathers who have the collective IQ of a pillowcase full of warmed-over cream cheese. There's no reason to call the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets a squad full of hacks who may or may not have sold their souls to a malevolent deity back in Milwaukee in order to make it as far as they have. There's no reason to engage in personal attacks, either. For example, it would be wrong to suggest that even UConn forward Charlie Villanueva's eyebrows find him so reprehensible that they jumped off his face a few weeks ago and bet all their money on Vermont in the first round. Likewise, it would be completely unproductive to refer to GaTech center Luke Schenscher as a "lanky kangaroo who needs a haircut and a good beating," and no Duke student would ever dream of uttering such a statement. Now if you'll excuse her, RAMONA QUIMBY is going to take her sour grapes, allow them to ferment, get torn up on the wine that she learned how to make in prison and then relieve herself on Emeka Okafor's Land Cruiser.
OK, so RAMONA is bitter and a little depressed. Not as depressed as when she found out that Meredith Baxter-Birney had dropped the Birney, invalidating what was the greatest celebrity surname hyphenation in recorded history. And definitely not as depressed as she was last week when Playboy called to inform her that she would not be included in the "Girls of the ACC" pictorial because her test shots reminded Hugh Hefner of an aged Tom Berenger, "post-Major League, after he really let himself go." But RAMONA is depressed, nonetheless. Like most college hoops fans, the tournament had become such an integral part of her routine that the prospect of facing real life has become foreign and scary. Not as scary as the semi-nude glossy that got returned to RAMONA's Bryan Center mailbox, but scary, nonetheless.
In these troubling times, however, it is vital to return to the "life goes on" mantra. It's time to turn off the television and get some exercise. RAMONA herself has been known to work out a bit, because keeping in shape is important in the QUIMBY family. Most notably, RAMONA'S favorite cousin is Billy Blanks, the disgraced fitness guru who used Tae-Bo to show upscale young women that ineffective exercise and substandard self-defense techniques were not mutually exclusive. RAMONA herself tried the sport, but quit when she discovered that carrying Mace was a more effective way of keeping herself safe than any glorified form of Jazzercise.
RAMONA is the sporting sort, and prefers any sort of competitive pursuit to working out for the sake of working out. As a freshman, RAMONA organized vast games of hide and go seek that were taken as the ultimate status symbols on East Campus. One game ended badly when one student was found, malnourished and incoherent, in the Soc Psych second floor bathroom with several weeks worth of empty Starkist tuna cans. This student (who now plays for the Memphis Grizzlies) was never quite the same.
RAMONA now contents herself with weekly games of pick-up basketball, wherein she plays with an unbridled aggression unseen in the world of sports since Bill Laimbeer's puppy died. She throws her body around with abandon, and has earned the respect of her teammates and opponents. She has also, unfortunately, earned a nickname: Sweatball. She may be sweaty, and her team may be out of the Big Dance too early, but at the end of the day, Charlie Villanueva doesn't have eyebrows. Think about it.
RAMONA QUIMBY, AGE 38 was Eddie Sutton's prom date. Second base, but no further.
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