Pledging: “The Best Time of Your Life, But You’ll Never Do it Again”

September 11, 2008 Posted in College

I remember hearing that phrase, “The Best time of your life, But You’ll Never do it Again.” At least that’s what I heard when I had a sports jacket on and all the “brothers” were cheering me on as we got drunk and had fun on bid day.

And sure it was fun the first couple of weeks when we had to do little chores for the brothers and even humiliate yourself for a gag or two.

It’s fine to degrade yourself by being the “lotion boy” and having to ask girls if you can rub them down in the middle of the quad. It’s even funny to wear ridiculous costumes and be a drunk moron for a few hours. That’s college and that’s the privilege of youth.

But I’ll never forget the day when the brothers first said “Get on your faces!”

Lying on your face in a pile of douche, letting guys paddle the crap out of you, abuse you, yell at you, and make you eat things I can’t even mention on here….Is that really all necessary to “bring together” a pledge class over the course of three months?

I mean I actually kidnapped two seniors with my pledge brothers and left them for dead. It was one of the seniors. We literally dragged him out of his house half naked in the middle of the night and drove him about an hour outside of school. We got the guys completely hammered and basically left them there with a quarter to call the other seniors.

This was all “part of your initiation.” Are you kidding me? The stuff we did back then? I literally could have over 30 years worth of jail time for the crap I pulled.

Hell we got into a fight with another fraternity and there were sledgehammers involved.

When I look back at this experience I think to myself, “was this really necessary?” And I answer that question, “clearly it wasn’t necessary and clearly it was the best time of my life and I’ve never do it again.”

And I ask myself why it was the best time? It was college people. That’s the only reason. College. What a place.

But I guess it’s kind of bad, you know. This hazing and all. Let’s tone it down guys.

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Comments

85014 Responses2008-09-11+19%3A00%3A03COED+Staff to “Pledging: “The Best Time of Your Life, But You’ll Never Do it Again””

Zeus Hanover says:

September 11, 2008 at 11:16 am

The new privates that came to our unit after we got back from Afghanistan got pure hell. We actually drove one guy completely insane to the point were he ended up getting section 13 (getting kicked out for being insane). We grabbed this poor cherry from his bunk at 2 am, threw a burlap bag ovber his head, zip tied his hands behind his back, threw him in a sleeping bag and dragged him down the hall. We dropped him out of the bag in the middle of the hallway and started interogating him in the pitch black, shining mag ligths in his eyes and asking him his general orders, shit like that. After a few minutes of that we throw him back into the sleeping bag and drag him into the showers. We turned one side of the showers on super hot and the otehr on super hold, the cherry is in the middle doing grass drills, front (push ups), back (flutter kicks), go (run in place). The entire time we are drilling him with questions and laughing our asses off. This is on a Saturday night, the following monday he isn't in formationa t 0630, the platoon sergent sends someone into the barracks to locate said cherry and he is in the corner of his room, cuddled up in a ball, crying and spouting off some really obscure exestential poetry he wrote when he was in high school. A few days later he was gone. Ah yes, good times :)
warner says:

September 11, 2008 at 4:19 pm

I miss college.
Mark says:

September 11, 2008 at 5:07 pm

As much fun as hazing may seem, it only creates more of a seperation within the organization. I was never hazed, and will never let it happen to one of my brothers. I have seen too many guys hate the older members because of what they did. I agree, it does make the pledge class closer, but it's because they all feel the same. The brothers should do other things that make their bond stronger. There are plenty of other options. Another thing is how much trouble guys get into when they get busted. It also makes it harder on Greek Life as a whole. There are way too many people out there that are great guys, but they will never even check out a fraternity because of all the stories they have heard. That was a reason why I never looked into any fraternity. I only joined the one I'm in after I met a bunch of the guys at a Powder Puff football philanthropy. All I'm saying is that sure, it does make for good stories, but in the end, it does far more damage than good. There are better ways to have a ballin' time with your brothers.
Schmoo says:

September 12, 2008 at 7:32 am

Zeus,
No wonder why everyone in the world thinks Americans are idiots. It's fucking morons like you that give the rest of us a bad name. Too bad you didn't get shot in Afghanistan.