Blue devil daze

So I got a pfrosh this weekend—this wrestler dude I called Rocky. He was pretty chill, but seemed like one of those built guys that pack on muscle to cover up their missing personality. I mean he’s definitely first round cut material if he rushes next year, but he was alright by his own accord. Over my two nights with him I learned how to be the best host possible: It’s not about being nice or showing off the campus. Being a great host is just about showing your kid how f***ing sweet you are.

When he got to my room Friday night, I knew Rocky had been inundated with the same questions 100 times that day, so I didn’t bore him with trite formalities like “What do you plan on studying?” or “What’s your name?” No, first things first: I needed to get him some alcohol ASAP, because otherwise this kid was definitely gonna be super awk. I didn’t want him out there meeting girls and talking to my friends sober… What kind of Duke experience would that be? I mean I have a responsibility to represent myself and this school accurately. Still, I knew he was a young’n so I went easy on him and just busted out the Malibu.

As we took shots, Rocky insisted on having that lame scripted conversation about what to expect if he came here despite my attempts to show him all the dope stuff I’ve stolen from the Allen Building. So I played along and explained the basics of coming to Duke: “Before you arrive, the school offers you the opportunity to join a cult. These cults hold week-long initiations before orientation week and they’re pretty fun as long as you get into one of the two legit ones. Then when you get here for O-week you’ll meet your FAC, who’s an upperclassman that you help move in early. That’s pretty much the extent of your relationship unless he notices you’ve got hot friends, then he’ll probably invite you to some parties.”

“In that first week you’ll group up with freshmen in your dorm who will be your placeholder friends for a couple months until you join a frat” (or in my pfrosh’s case, probably an SLG… if he’s lucky). “Then I’m told the next seven semesters fly by and you spend the rest of your life suffering from a severe case of nostalgia that can only be soothed by giving the school loads of money.”

“Oh. Neat.” Rocky replied. I poured him another shot hoping it would help him stop saying things like “neat.”

Saturday I took Rocky to the gardens to show him there’s a s*t-ton of chill spots to smoke weed. Now whenever you smoke with somebody new it’s important to test out their sense of humor. So as we walked past the little Asian house I put my hand on the small of this kid’s back, turned to him real slow, and as a smile creeped across my face I asked, “So… you tryna get one of those unofficial graduation requirements out of the way right now?”

The bewildered look on his face told me he didn’t get the reference. I wasn’t really gonna serve Rocky that Kung Pao dickin’; I was just trying to see if the kid could take a joke. But when he asked me for an explanation it made him subordinate to me, and that’s when it dawned on me: You gotta use as much Duke slang as possible when talking to visiting kids. Pfroshes don’t know all the lingo, inside jokes and acronyms that we take for granted as part of everyday life here, and that’s something that should be exploited. These kids have never been to the BC or LSRC. GDI, YBTT and DTD aren’t yet terms loaded with judgment for them. Their hook-up lexicons don’t include Duke staples like DFMO, DTF or .ppt. All these letters have no meaning for pfroshes yet, so we just sound like a bunch of really sweet dyslexic kids reciting the alphabet.

These high-schoolers come to Duke for a couple days to get a feel for our school and if you’re their host, whether you like it or not, the main thing they’re getting a feel for is you (just make sure you report that s--t within a year). So be your best self for the short time your pfrosh is with you. Rocky and I may only have been paired together because we share a race, but over the course of one weekend we learned a lot about each other. I learned that even huge wrestler guys start college like gasping newborns, totally dependent on their host. And Rocky learned that I’m f*king sweet.