The other title for this post was going to be “Stranger in a Strange Land”, but I’ll save that for a rainy day.
You’re not going to believe this. So I was coming into the building a short while ago, and saw in the distance someone getting into the elevator and I noticed something curious so quickened my pace a touch to make sure I could get into the elevator to get a closer look.
Sure enough, it was as I suspected. She was normal-looking (by USC standards, of course; “all the children are above average”, to quote Garrison Keillor) and did not appear to be afflicted by a madness of any sort that I can see (not that there’s anything wrong with that), except for the fact that she was walking a small pet on a leash, and the pet was a stuffed animal!
I considered this for a second or two and then thought:
(1) This is no more odd than the half-barefoot/half-roller-blade guy. (JoAnne threatened to blog about him)
(2) Hey, alternative lifestyles, cvj! Go with the flow.
So I decided to ask in a friendly way (as one would do with someone with a live pet) “So what’s his or her name?”. I expected her to calmly tell me fluffy’s name and then my floor would come up, and I would chalk it up to experience. After all, there is a trend that the fashion-conscious young female Hollywood stars (same age as her) have of carrying around those tiny mice-called-dogs as pets, and this ball of wool is probably just as smart, so why not?
Well, she looked at me as though I was nuts and said: “It does not have a name, it’s a Bruin”. I looked at it again and saw that it was a little stuffed bear with “UCLA” written on its chest. It was all filthy from being dragged around all day on this leash. Ah. See earlier post.
Silly me.
-cvj
[Update: You might like to know that Tommy Trojan is safely encased in a protective shield. I took his photo earlier today and he is safe. No sign of the guards that will stand vigil by him all night (I kid you not). Also, ljs sent me a photo of the "fucla" t-shirt. Thanks! (Helps if you compare it to a certain official UCLA shirt....) ljs also sent me a photo of another UCLA bear (larger than the one I saw) hanging by its paw from her office window. Uh...thanks. Poor bear. This is just cruel! It's cold out there today...
Hmmm...in the interests of balance and all that, this would be a good time for people to recall some of the more amusing atrocities that have been performed on Tommy over the ages by our friends from across town.]
December 2nd, 2005 at 4:03 pm
clifford, check outside my window on the mcclintock side….
December 2nd, 2005 at 4:28 pm
sorry…can’t. Left campus for the day. Do let me have a picture.
-cvj
December 2nd, 2005 at 4:45 pm
Clifford, you have finally, truly been indoctrinated into the USC football experience! This is why teaching at a sports minded university can be so much fun. : ) By the way, I seem to recall dragging a small stuffed bear around campus back in the day. My roommate had a t-shirt that said “I used to go to UCLA, but then my father got a job.” Oh, the cruelty.
December 2nd, 2005 at 4:55 pm
Cathy…that’s hilarious! I also just heard from ljs that there is a “fucla” t-shirt being worn a lot around campus. [Update..picture added]
-cvj
December 2nd, 2005 at 5:23 pm
Perfect opportunity to get the word out to take a moment in the public voting for the Heisman Award. Reggie Bush needs your vote..a Bruin is ahead of him on this and that is not good for us Trojans! Go to http://www.voteforheisman.com/vote3.php and follow the steps. The top three vote getters will receive the equivalent of one first, second or third place vote in the official balloting.
Fight On…Beat the Bruins!!!
December 2nd, 2005 at 5:51 pm
If you haven’t already seen it, check out Reggie’s high school highlight reel.
December 2nd, 2005 at 6:10 pm
WOW…. had not seen it, thanks RPM.
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:14 pm
[...] (Regular readers of this blog will recognize Scooter, my loyal plush puppy.) Unfortunately, I was unable to rescue any plushies with my underground bear-road because ravenous Stanford students had taken them all the previous day. I was particularly amused last year because I recognized the same thing happening down south in the other big public school vs. private school rivalry in California. To top it off, I heard about this nowhere else than on a cute post on Cosmic Variance where string theorist Clifford Johnson mistakes the noose around a plush bruin for a leash and things a student is taking her teddy bear for a walk (she was actually dragging it behind her). [...]
December 2nd, 2006 at 3:34 am
[...] I would say a lot more about the articles, but time is not on my side, so I will instead leave you with a blog post I wrote (“Drag the Bear”) on December 2nd last year, upon encountering something strange on campus: [...]