As I sat in the Carpenter Reading Room overlooking the Chapel, the rain began to pour down and "Explosions in the Sky" played on my iPod, forcing me to have a cliched, movie-like reflective moment about my summer.
Summer is a time of hot women in bathing suits, no school, beaches and pools (with hot women in bathing suits), camps and badass movies (as you can tell by my tagline I kinda liked "The Dark Knight"). A time for skinny-dipping (one of my past times, although my tan lines beg to differ), cruises, beers with lime in it (even Bud Light this time around!) and allowing our minds to relax and forget everything we learned in school.
But to Dukies summer is a valuable time to build your resume and do something cool for the world. Like helping Somalian refugees that lost limbs to land mines. Or winning a bronze medal at the Beijing Summer Olympics in fencing (congratulations Becca Ward). Some even worked with companies that find new ways to ensnare the lower class in the vicious cycle of poverty by helping establish a corporatist social structure in Latin American nations. Those are my favorite.
My summer went a little differently.
I waited tables at Applebee's, your friendly, "Neighborhood" Grill & Bar, in Greenville, S.C.
I dealt with wonderful people. One coworker was a 50-year-old career waitress with a tongue ring who constantly reminded me that LSD is a wonderful drug. Another was a high school dropout who claimed she was "too smart for school." I told her I was a student at Duke University and she asked, "What is that?" One young man would do lines of coke while dropping a deuce. All would complain about having to work so many hours, then complain about how they did not get enough hours and needed to make more money.
Not to mention the customers. One lady ordered a "Hawaiian Chicken Salad" which doesn't exist, so I prompted, "Do you mean the 'Oriental Chicken Salad?'" to which she replied, "I knew it was from another country!" And she was one of my more intelligent-sounding customers. Some even made Forrest Gump look like Good Will Hunting.
The job is very mundane. Ask for orders, deliver the food, bring the check. So I thought of ways I could spice things up. With one table I acted like a butler, using a British accent and replying, "As you wish" to each of their requests. Another, I acted like a washout stand-up comedian, delivering horrendous jokes and announcing I would be here all night. And you better believe I was singing along every time the Backstreet Boys came on the radio. Some of my more homophobic tables seemed to dislike that. Especially when I began to take off my shirt and give a lap dance to the kid in the high chair.
In-between the shifts, I made sure I spent my time well. I reread the last Harry Potter. And rewatched all the movies. I became an expert at using TiVo to maximize the number of sitcom reruns I could watch. I can play all the Rock Band instruments on expert, and I don't even like playing Rock Band. I watched the Olympics, then watched the reruns of the same events two hours later. Let's just say I now truly understand the song "Longview" by Green Day.
So when people ask what I did this summer, I kindly reply absolutely nothing of any worth. But I hope I made some people smile along the way. But the summer was nonetheless valuable. I took away one great lesson:
Don't drop out of school and become a waiter at Applebee's for the rest of your life.
Drew Everson is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs every other Friday.
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