State Patty's Day

Being from Ann Arbor, I had never heard of State Patty’s Day before coming to Penn State. For the first month of class, every time I saw a shirt, I assumed it was a miss-print for St. Patty’s Day. Eventually I pieced together a mental image of State Patty’s Day, formed from many a story of upperclassmen I’ve gotten to know. From mounted police to armored cars, the stories made it sound like State College was displaced to a third world militaristic state for the weekend. However, I was excited to form my own stories of State Patty’s to tell to clueless freshmen next year.

            I didn’t have any friends visiting for the holiday, so I decided to just take an easy weekend. My Friday night I worked on homework until about 8:30, showered, and then headed over to my friends dorm for some grand theft auto in his room. After wasting an hour on that, we decided to visit a friend of his in State College Park. We had to catch the N bus at College and Allen, so we decided to walk down College Ave for shits and giggles. We witnessed large groups of people dressed in green garb, pounding on windows and doors of closed businesses for no apparent reason. I mean, who wouldn’t want to break into a clothes store at 10 pm on a Friday night? Once on the bus, we stopped just before the IST building on Atherton Ave to drop some riders off. At this stop, a large group of people made to board the bus. However, they were stopped by the bus driver, who instructed them they had to pay for their ride. Then one of them asked, to no one in particular, “Does this bus take us to frat row? Does this bus go to frat row? Can I take this bus to frat row?” His only reply was shouts of, “Get off the bus!”

            Arriving at State College Park, we disembarked and walked across an icy parking lot towards the building. We passed a drunk who had fallen on the ice, and refused his girlfriend’s protests to get up and start acting normal. Once at my friend’s friend’s apartment, we just chilled out and watched a western hockey league game. The apartment had a party that started at 6:00 pm that day, but by the time we got there (10:30 pm) it had mostly died down, and everyone had left. The host was drunk as a skunk, and trying to debate whether to open his bottle of champagne. After about two hours, he settled on opening it, on the constituency that we finished it that night. He also made it his goal to drink enough to wake up drunk the next morning, and as a result, he drank almost all the champagne. We left the apartment at 1:00 in the morning, and I went to bed after that.

            Saturday morning I woke up, showered, ate, and went downtown around 10:30 am to purchase a bike I found on craigslist. On the short walk down Garner across College, I passed someone who was struggling to stand on their own. They resorted to leaning up against McLanahan’s, and occasionally flopping an arm around. This was at 10:30 in the morning. I then vowed to walk around downtown in approximately twelve hours, just to see what all the fuss was about.

            During the day, I visited a friend in University Gateway. This was at about 2:00 pm. As I got off the elevator on the fifth floor, I was greeted by a puddle of partially dried vomit that led across the floor and up a wall to an open window. I guess whoever it came from just couldn’t hold it. Stepping around the orange sticky liquid, I made my way into my friends room on the east side of the building. This is the side that faces the Meridian apartment complex. On this side of the building, just about every other window had people leaning out of it, shouting to people around them, people in the opposite building, people walking by, or just shouting in general. Numerous items were thrown from windows, including full beer cans, water bottles, and red plastic cups. At one point, a girl in a room on the top floor of the Meridian stood up on her windowsill, bent over forward, and leaned the top half of her body out of the window. She stayed in this position for nearly twenty minutes, all the while people were yelling at her not to jump. I wasn’t afraid of suicide, but seeing how intoxicated she was, I could see her tripping and accidentally falling through the open window. Again, this was at 2:00 in the afternoon.

            I ended up eating out that night, and then seeing Harry Potter 7 in the HUB. After that, I went back to my room and freshened up. Then I made my way back downtown, and tried to keep an open mind about what I would see. At first, it seemed like the whole student population of the university had left their residences and where walking the streets. However, this couldn’t be true, because almost every balcony lining Beaver Ave was crowded with even more people. The town was packed with more people than it could support. I had an easier time walking the streets of New York City, the largest city in the country, than walking down Beaver Ave on Saturday night. Personally, I didn’t see anyone I knew, but several people acted quite friendly to me. The most memorable occurred when a girl tripped into me while we were going opposite ways. She was very apologetic, and tried to prove she was sorry by giving me an awkwardly long and tight hug. After we pulled apart, she put her hand around my neck, looked me dead in the eyes, and managed to slur out, “I’m so sorry, it’s going to be ok. You know that, right? Everything’s going to be ok. You don’t have to worry, it’s going to be ok.” I assured her that I was fine, and continued on my way back to my room. I had seen enough.