Knockando: The 2000 Knock Olympics and The Price Of Winning

In accordance with the Knockandian philosophy of “No occasion is too mundane if beer is involved”, Knockando held an annual event known as the Knock Olympics.  A two-day event, the Olympics was divided into the Indoor Events (Basketball, squash, pool, darts, drinking competitions) which ran on a Friday afternoon in August, and the Outdoor Events (Soccer, rugby, tennis, road running, tug-o-war) which would occur the next day.  The res was split into 5 teams –Teams were based on where you stayed in the building, e.g. Residents of the top floor of the residence’s Williams Hall were team “4^th Floor” – and competition was quite fierce.

During the 2000 Knock Olympics, competition was extremely fierce.  4^th Floor was engaged in a bitter struggle for top of the heap with their hated rivals C & D Units, and the difference between winner and second place was literally coming down to the single digits.  As such, extreme importance was placed on events where numbers counted, as 4^th Floor had a very slight headcount advantage over their nemeses. 

One such event was the road race.  Contestants ran a roughly 5-kilometre route, and points were assigned for the runners who finished on the podium – First place was worth 10 points – but teams received a single point for every runner who crossed the finish line within the allotted time.  Thus, teams made extra Goddamn sure to get everyone who was capable of standing on the road to score those extra few points. 

A group of intrepid and fearless gents from the 4^th Floor team – Including Goldberg, Spango, Dawoensh, Geaston, Benis, Pinhole and Fowlie – took to patrolling the corridors on a pre-dawn mission, knocking on doors to ensure that as many shoes would hit the tar for the road race as possible.  This was never an easy thing to do, given that it was on the second day of the Olympics, and the degree of difficulty was ratcheted up by the amount of drinking that went on the night before. 

Despite this, most of the 4^th Floor men had shown their mettle and already reported to the starting line, ready to run in service to their team and/or collapse on the side of the road and die, depending on their degree of hung-over-ness.  But one man who remained missing was the hard-drinking, hard-living Pafdog.  Pafdog was not to be found in his room, and it was soon determined that he had spent the night in the room of his older brother, Jace.  (Jace was on the residence House Committee, and thus had a much bigger and nicer room than his younger sibling)  The elder of the brothers was no slouch in the drinking department, either, and had simply failed to go to bed the night before due to beer-related reasons.  Loving his younger brother very much, Jace had bequeathed his keys to Pafdog for reasons that will soon become apparent.  Armed with this knowledge, our intrepid team of waker-uppers set off to make sure the baby brother fulfilled his duty to King and Country and Duck & Bull.

When they arrived at the door of Pafdog’s adopted room, the gentlemen were worried to note that no amount of frenetic knocking could raise a response from its occupant.  To whit:  Dawoensh was a robust Hollander who stood 1.94 metres tall and could probably hide a bowling ball in one of his outsized hands.  But even his giant, shovel-like hands slamming into the woodwork failed to rouse a response from within the room. 

Undaunted, Fowlie noted that the proximity of Jace’s room to the 4^th floor recreation room would allow him to climb out the rec room window and shimmy along the outside of the building to enter the room through its window.  (It should be noted here that Fowlie exhibited an alarming general disregard for the well-being of himself and most other human beings)  Ordinarily, there would be burglar bars to prevent such shenanigans, but Jace and his close friend Moobs had helpfully ripped these off the window frame during a drunken and spirited rendition of one of Marilyn Manson’s songs a few days earlier.  So, Fowlie undertook his reckless journey, unlocked the door from the inside and allowed his friends to enter.

The boys took full advantage of the opportunity.  They stormed the room, doing their utmost to make sure that even the dead would be roused and ready to run on 4^th Floor’s behalf.  They kicked the bed, flipped the light switch on and off, switched the stereo on and turned the volume up to full, and shouted at the top of their lungs.  Still, no movement from the formless lump under the duvet on the bed.

At this point, Goldberg decided to take the bull by the horns and expedite Pafdog’s awakening.  He marched up to the bed and whipped the covers off, exposing its occupant to the full fury of the brigade of Knockandians eager to get on the road.  Only, the occupant turned out to be occupants, plural.

On the bed was Pafdog, clothed only in far-too-revealing boxer shorts and thoroughly passed out despite the group’s best efforts.  But beside him lay a young lady named Luanne, well known to some members of Knock.  Luanne was clad only in the skin that the Good Lord had given her.

Ladies and Gentlemen, you have never heard a group of rowdy twenty-somethings fall silent as quickly as those gents did upon sighting Luanne’s bare form on that fateful August morn. 

In response to the light and noise that was now intruding upon her slumber, Luanne covered her face – And nothing else – And irritatedly muttered:  “Oh, go away!”

Ever the gentlemen, our now-dead-silent heroes complied with the lady’s wish, carefully replacing the bedclothes, turning off the stereo and lights and slowly and quietly backing out of the room into the corridor, making sure to close the door behind them.

Once back in the corridor, our protagonists stared at each other in dumbfounded silence for a further ten seconds.  Then smiles began forming, and a rousing chorus of “YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!!” broke out as high fives were exchanged with gusto, in tribute to their brother Pafdog and his noble conquest.

Pafdog was excused from running that day.