The Mohan Chronicles - The River Day Incident

The crack staff here at For Lack Of A Better Title, used their top secret photo progression software to determine what Mohan would look like here in 2010 and the best they could come up with is something resembling, Mr. Erik Estrada.

River Day at Marist College is a tradition.  Get as drunk as possible in a 3-4 hour span.  If you were 21 yrs old, you could attend this Bacchanalian extravaganza.  Just beer and wine coolers, thankfully no hard alcohol.  Enter Vigo.  He was definitely of age and was going, but like any other Saturday in college, he woke up late.  Marist College officials tried to keep it under control.  It started early in the day (around 1 or 2 PM) and ended early (by 5 PM).  Also, like any other Saturday in college, I was headed over to the townhouse to hangout.  Most of the house was on it's way out or already gone to do their weekend plans.  We'd all reconvene later that evening at some point.  

The only two people in the house were Jim and myself.  We were in the middle of our best 253 game series between the Boston Bruins and New York Rangers in NHL 93 for Sega Genesis.  We didn't exactly "play," we actually got inebriated and had the computer play itself, while we did play by play.  We also wouldn't talk to anyone unless it was between periods, while we were taking our break and smoking cigarettes.

Jim and I had just finished our games for that day.  Since, it was April and warmer, I maneuvered his chair onto the outside porch so we could just take in the sun.  Then it happened...Vigo came lumbering up the back hill towards the townhouses.  We knew he was really drunk, because this is not the way you would normally get to the townhouses, so booze brain was lost.  He also said upon seeing us, "Oh, I live there," pointing at us.  I quickly got Jim in the house, we both knew this was going be interesting.  Hearing us coming into the main house, Mohan suddenly appears from his and Jim's room.  Jim and I looked at each other, wondering when he got home.  He slipped past us during one of the games.  My intoxicated brain tries to sober itself up, by sending off a coherent thought...A very drunk Vigo is about to come home and Mohan is standing right in front of you, what do you think is going to happen?  In my mind I warned Mohan, but that warning never came out of my mouth.

Vigo busts through the main door of the house.  Laughing and talking to whomever he can see.  Jim and I go into distract mode.  How was River Day, I heard you got there late?  Vigo responds with the, "What did you expect?  It starts too early, I had to play catch up, so I'd grab a wine cooler or two and drink those while stood in line for a beer."  The first of many "oh shits" is muttered between Jim and myself.  How much did you drink?  Vigo's response, "I don't know, I did that for like 3 hours straight."  Another, look of panic between the two of us.  Just then, Mohan walks back into the main room.  Vigo smells blood.  "Hey, Mohan come over here I wanna try something."  Jim asks me "what I'm going to do?"  I respond, "nothing, Vigo is 6'3" and about 300 lbs and I'm not."  Jim's response was, "well that makes two of us, I'm in wheelchair here."  

What Vigo wants to try is simple, at least in a drunk person's mind.  I'm going to hold this couch cushion in front Mohan's face, to see if I can punch it hard enough to knock him over.  Brilliant.  Except, as you know when you're drunk, you move slower, plus gravity is involved, so the cushion falls.  Can you see where this is going?  Blam! Vigo let's Mohan have it (fist meets face).  Mohan is laughing, because I think he's scared and rightfully so.  Vigo abandons the punching of the cushion and just starts wailing on him with it instead.  Vigo grows tired of this and I get him to go upstairs to his room.  Where he proceeds to play Chuck Yeager's Flight Simulator on his computer until he makes himself sick and has to crawl to the bathroom.  Then he makes it to his bed where he passes out at 6:30 PM.

I head downstairs to do damage control.  I talk to Jim about Mohan, who quickly fled the scene.  Jim said, "Mohan had fun, but didn't want to play that game again with Vigo."  Tragedy averted, no one is pressing charges. 

The Mohan Chronicles

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away, well, not too far away, Poughkeepsie, NY.  I was a student at Marist College.  I was friends with a group of guys that lived in a townhouse on campus.  I didn't live there technically, but was around and slept there enough, that I did.  We had all known each other from the year before or even longer in some cases.  We all thought we were hilarious, as well as each other.  The main group of guys lived up stairs in the three bedrooms there and were like a fraternity, without all the pomp and circumstance.  We had the same or similar interests and did most things together.  There were two rooms downstairs and the guys down there pretty much kept to themselves.  In one room, were a couple of guys on the football team.  I was friendly with them and got a couple of free haircuts that semester.  Always good to know someone that cuts hair.  I didn't know the guys in the second room, they were like ghosts, except when they came home drunk.  Normally, this would be the end of the bedrooms, but this townhouse was handicap accessible, so there was a bedroom on the main floor.

Jim was the guy in that bedroom.  He had MS and got the disease early in his life, as he was already in an automated wheelchair at 19.  We quickly became good friends, due to our mutual loves of music, sports and girls.  We just got each other, almost instantly.  I'd stand on the back of his chair and we'd cruise around campus.  He also loved coming to my radio show.  I'd put him on air and we'd make fun of each others favorite bands/musicians.  So when we all heard there would be a new roommate moving into Jim's room, we got a little curious.  We had heard the new guy coming into the house was being kicked out of current house due to the fact that he harassed girls.  Whoa, wait a second!  You want to throw a guy into a house with a bunch of guys that aren't exactly skilled with the ladies.  Except at the time for Eli, I'll give you your props if you read this.  So on top of the obvious, you want to make it harder for all of us to ever have girls come over.  What did we ever do to you?

Enter...Mohan.  He kinda looked like this guy, minus the porn-stache, but just as smarmy looking and an equally sharp dresser.

You could mix in a little classic Erik Estrada as well.  He sounded like he learned to speak English by watching game shows in the mid-70's.  Which could be the truth, I never had the heart to ask him.  So, we were initially nice to him.  We tried to give him the benefit of just bad info.  Then the first strike against him happened. 

Jim had lost the key to his room early in first semester.  Since, he was the only one in his room at the time, it was no big deal, he left his door unlocked all the time.  Nobody would ever mess with his stuff anyways.  Mohan moves in and Jim tells him about the lost key.  Jim explains, that all the guys are cool and nobody ever goes into the bedroom unless he's home.  Mohan agrees to leave it unlocked.  One day, I'm hanging out at the house and Jim comes bombing in.  He needs to pick a book up before his next class in 20 minutes, no time to talk, we'll hangout later.  Jim goes to open his door and it's, locked.  Jim starts freaking out.  Vigo, one of the housemates and I, go to work.  He grabs a butter knife and pops the bolts on the hinges, as I hold the door.  The door comes right off and Jim can enter his room.  Jim thanks us and books out, to get to his class.  About, a half hour later, Mohan comes home.  He asks why the door is off the hinges.  We explain the story and the fact that we were too lazy to put it back on.  We oblige him and repair the door, but also remind him not to lock it.  He agrees. 

Needless to say, Mohan would "forget" to leave the door unlocked, often.  It got to the point where we figured he was messing with Jim.  You don't mess with a handicapped kid in wheelchair that can't fight back.  It's just not cool, in my eyes.  Besides, we're the only ones that were allowed to mess with him.  By this time, you could just pop the door off by hand.  We had done it so many times before, that all you had to do was look at it and it would come off on it's own.  The thing that made us laugh, was every time we'd do it, Mohan would freak out about it.  So, we turned it into a game called, Hide the Door on Mohan.  Since he already sounded like he was from a game show, he could host.  We'd put the door on the porch, upstairs (where he wasn't allowed), downstairs (where the football players would kill him) or other special places, like across campus.  It was his job to find it.  The game would always start like this.  Mohan (and the studio audience): "Where's my door?"  Us: "You know, I don't know.  I think it left."  Narrator: "You know what that means!!!"  Audience: "Time to Find the Door!!!" (Crazed clapping and cheering) 

He brought it upon himself.  All we were doing was looking out for a friend.  This is just the tip of the iceberg with Mr. Mohan.  As he got worse, we got worse.  There are more stories to come.  Hope you enjoyed.

Editor's note:  I'll use nicknames whenever I can, just in case someone does something crazy, like try to run for office.  Although, they have much larger things to worry about than my little stories from college.