Page 256 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
My favorite busing trick was to stomp on the bowl side of a spoon that I would find lying face up on the floor (or, in truth, that I would have placed face up on the floor), in order, I hoped, to get it to flip up and rotate high into the air before falling into the utensil container of the busing cart. It was a move that, when it was successful (rarely, I admit), would be a real crowd pleaser.
My other male socializing was done principally at Phi Gam itself and entailed watching sports in the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Library, becoming a pretty good pool player, being an audience when Charlie, Mark, Sam, Roger, and others played a very complicated drinking game known as Whales Tales (which is still popular enough to rate a descrip- tion on webtender.com but was more complicated than the game therein described), and, best of all, becoming Recording Secretary for the house.
Now, the job of Recording Secretary was not at all to be confused in importance or required skill set with jobs having similar titles in high school or the corporate world. The job of Recording Secretary entailed being present at each weekly Goat and feigning the taking of minutes, with only the weekly awards being considered consequential and, thus, worthy of recording. The awards were the “Horn,” the “Bone,” and the “Boot.” The Horn would be presented to the brother who made the most conspicuous show of his social frustration, the Bone went to the brother whose date was considered to have been the least attractive of those in attendance during the prior weekend, and the Boot related to proficiency or, to be more precise, the absence of proficiency, when it came to holding alcohol, an award that could be earned only if the mer- itorious actions occurred in public—the larger the public, the greater the merit.
Even assuming that your Recording Secretary would not be paying appropriate heed at a particular Goat or had forgotten his pen, it was not a material problem to remember the winners of the three awards for the purpose of repeating the accolades for posterity at the next Goat. This was because the winners usually came from a select circle, many of whom were repeat achievers. Of course, special praise would be heaped on the winner of two or, better yet, all three of the awards in one
• 238 •