At 9:15 am the clock had started. Only 24 more hours until we could go home. Miraculously we had been able to successfully kidnap three people, regroup, and leave Las Cruces for the Picacho foothills. Walkout, an annual Alpha Tau Omega Pledge Class event began. Essentially Walkout is a modified game of hide and seek. The pledges kidnap three active brothers and the entire pledge class goes into hiding for 24 hours. Clues are left around the city for the active brothers to help them figure out our location. Everything was set and I was psyched.
The sun barely peeked through the clouds on the cold November day as we set up our camp in a rocky, dry riverbed. Mountains surrounded us on three sides. A couple of my pledge brothers collected firewood and built a raging fire. The rest of us tapped the keg and began to drink. Fighting exhaustion, we all continued to drink and drink and drink. Soon my body decided it was time to sleep and apparently everybody else’s followed suit.
Three hours later I woke up from some rather heavy, sharp rock hitting me on the head. As I peeked out of my sleeping bag another little piece of shrapnel shot out of the fire. Somebody had discovered exploding rocks and had dumped a ton of them into the fire. Soon our fire began popping like popcorn so all of us fled from the fire, some of them began climbing the mountains, others went back to sleep, and I sat and talked to the active brothers that we stole. We all broke into song. We sang, and sang. We sang about ATO, we sang about different sororities, we sang about the Brady Bunch. By the time we had gotten to the Brady Bunch, we just babbled different showtunes for awhile.
As night began to fall and the brothers regrouped from their many different adventures, the fire was still popping like popcorn. We found a better location for a new fire, so we built a new one without the exploding rocks.
While we built the fire, we realized that Steve still lay on the ground completely passed out. After several failed attempts to revive him, we just left him there. I had been awake since 3 am and I just completely forgotten to eat and as a small reminder, my stomach groaned and then began to rumble in hunger. By this time Steve had somehow revived himself and joined the crowd to eat. The charred hamburgers, the soggy hot dogs, and the cold beans landed in my stomach hushing its rumbling.
After we had finished the macho-man “Keg Olympics” and slamming countless beers, we hunkered down to begin what Walkout was all about—the Good of the Order. Like the conch in Lord of the Flies, the gavel (in this case a large stick) signifies the speaker. The speaker says anything that comes to mind. It is very rehabilitating and I learned a lot about my pledge brothers. And in turn, they learned a lot about me. The gavel began with the actives, who told us the pride they were feeling to be chosen to go on Walkout. They told us to keep psyched and stick with it. Through tears, Roy told everybody that he needed help getting through his pledge semester and that it has been very tough. The gavel finally reached me and there the night sat still while I decided whether or not to say what I had to say. I didn’t know these people. Why should I open myself up to these guys? Then the words poured out, strained by a lump developing in my throat. I told them about my cat that had died two weeks earlier. I told them that this was the first major death in my family. I told them how I finally felt like I had a group of really close friends. I passed on the gavel, happy that in the moment of stillness I had decided to do the right thing. By the time the gavel completely circulated, I had laughed, cried, jeered, and learned. On that cold November night, in a dry riverbed, in a small alcove that held 20 people and a fire, in such an insignificant place, 20 close friendships had been born. Satisfied with all of this, I went to bed. While I lay in my sleeping bag, still reveling in the events that just occurred I began yelling “Hey Roy, what’s your middle name?” and about a half an hour later, I knew not only Roy’s middle name, but Dave’s, Mat’s, Ed’s, Bryan’s, Spencer’s, Jeff’s, everybody’s.
I suddenly jerked awake by the sound of a bottle rocket exploding only five feet away. I stuck my head out of my sleeping bag, looked over at camp and found myself staring into the face of an unwelcome active. I looked around and saw about 15 active brothers. Bottle rockets screamed through what was a very peaceful night. Screams of “Hah! We found you!” echoed through our canyon. My watch said 3 am. Twenty-four hours had passed for me, I was ready to go home. I reeked of smoke; I looked like hell; I hadn’t had time to take a shower before we had left for Walkout.
As we were packing, I found out there had been one casualty during Walkout. A piece of exploding rock had found its way into Dave’s eye, so Walkout was much shortened for him. Before we left, we floated the keg. As I walked away from the riverbed, I felt like a part of me had been left behind. That riverbed was mine – it belonged to the Alpha Epsilon pledge class. So many private and wonderful things were said in our little insignificant alcove. I thought about the things my brothers said to me. Yes, my brothers—I could call them that now because they were. Incomplete thoughts ran through my head—seeing Steve passed out on the ground for seven hours, watching Charles drink out of a beenie-weenie can; hearing Bryan tell Roy “I will always respect you and who you are.”; listening to the three actives tell us how much more ATO will mean to us after we are initiated; listening to Roy and Ed tell us they would improve and wondering if they actually would; knowing that I had at least 20 good friends. I will never forget the events that unfolded in that insignificant alcove that held 20 and a fire in a dried up, rocky riverbed, in a dried up, sandy canyon, somewhere at the base of Picacho hills. The clocked had stopped at 3:15 am. We had lost by six hours.
no one ever wins. 🙂