The Devil goes to Duke

The funny thing is, before today, I’d never told any one I was the devil.

For 5 million years I’d been moving from body to body, eating souls and convincing the world I didn’t exist (pretty great trick huh?). Until August that is, when I got stuck.

During O-week I was spreading some mayhem in this freshman dude’s body, when I came down with a crippling case of mono. After hearing Maya Angelou’s moving speech, I, like many other students, waited outside the chapel for a chance to shake Ms. Angelou’s hand and swallow her soul. The handshake was sturdy but when I leaned in for the soul-swallow, her soul got stuck at the top of my constricted throat. It tasted like mothballs, hairspray, banana pudding and wisdom. Ever since, I’ve been unable to possess new bodies, or use any of my dark powers. I can’t even read the minds of squirrels anymore (not that there was much worth reading in there). A week after my arrival, I found myself stuck at Duke as a totally average body with no special powers. It sucked.

It took me a bit of adjusting, but last semester I learned a lot about how to do evil the old-fashioned human way. So when I heard I could get my own column over Christmas break, I jumped at the opportunity to share my wisdom. And my first topic was staring me right in the face while I was trying to text …

PARENTS ARE SO ANNOYING!

I’ve never dealt with parents before. In the past if someone resembled a parent, I’d just devour their soul and feed their meat to my hellhounds. I miss those days.

At night on break I realized that I had no labs and no practice in the morning. So naturally I had to find everybody and go get drunk with them. I’m only at Duke for four years; I can’t just be wasting three weeks of time letting everybody go get drunk without me. Then I’d have to hear about it at the Marketplace the next day and feel like a loser. No thanks.

So first night back I was leaving the house for Chris’ party, when my mom seriously grew the balls to ask me where I was going! I’ve been captaining my own ship for the last four months and now all of a sudden she thinks I report to her and her manballs? I didn’t feel like sitting her down to explain that the vagueness of 18-year-olds’ social invitations is fundamental to making every night an unplanned odyssey of self-discovery, so I just said, “I don’t know yet.” Plus I knew she didn’t want me going to over to Chris’ cause me and Chris always just like to get stupid high.

Then, as if my wiener wasn’t cooked enough, my dad busted out his apron and continued grilling me raw. “Are you thinking about joining my old fraternity? Those boys sure knew how to take the party to Funkytown.” I don’t know what the hell Funkytown is but I’m sure it’s no Rack City.

I guess my dad’s frat used to be tight, but their promise of Super Smash Brotherhood just fails to compete in today’s market, where several other frats promise me scorchingly hot girls. So I gave dad the old “I’m still feeling out my options” line and I think he bought it for now. That’s one problem on the back burner.

But the worst part about parents is how ungrateful they are. For Christmas my parents—who are supposed to love me—got me a Kindle Fire. What did I ever do to these buttq****s? A Kindle?!? For those of you lucky enough to have never been in the same room with a Kindle, here’s a description from Amazon’s website: “It’s a retarded iPad for books.”

It even comes with a one-month subscription to Amazon Prime, which is a “service” that lets me pay money to stream movies I already download for free. It’s called prime because there are zero factors that make me want to buy it (excluding one and itself). I’ve spent the last four months tirelessly figuring out ways to avoid reading books, and how do my parents reward my hard work? With a fancy book. The only thing Kindles have on regular books is that if you wait long enough they’ll die, which coincidentally, is the only thing my parents have on my friends. Books suck. Moving on.

There are obviously a lot of reasons to dread coming back to school (like how school sucks), but the silver lining is that there are no prying parents around asking you to join their lame club or give you terrible gifts.

So, for any college parents reading this, here’s a message from your kid: As long as I’m living under the school’s roof, which I presume my grades pay for, it’s my rules.

@Monday_Devil tweets: Parents just don’t understand. Grandparents just don’t stand.

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