Mr. Squish and Greek fraternities.

Before college, all I knew about Greek fraternities was from Animal House, and the fact my dad was in Sigma Nu at San Jose State. (And didn’t talk about it. But that was probably because of all the blackouts. Lots of drinking went on.)

A lot of the college grads I knew from church had gone to Christian schools, which rarely have fraternities; instead they have what they call “Greek-letter societies,” which are basically academic clubs. I later joined one of them, Epsilon Delta Kappa, when I was at Bethany College; I was on its senate for a year, and suffered through some of the longest, most boring meetings ever. Worse than the prayer meetings at a Fundamentalist church. Seriously. But let’s hop off that tangent and go back to 1990.

So when I got to CSU Sacramento, there were the fraternities. Or, as they call themselves, “Greeks"—which, considering their behavior, is nearly as much an insult to ethnic Greeks as "Atlanta Braves” is to Indians. But I digress again. You get the idea, though, that it wasn’t a positive experience.

My first semester at CSUS, I was on the Hornet staff (not yet the State Hornet) as Graphics Coordinator, which was the fancy-schmancy title of the art director. Twice a week, we produced a newspaper. It was due at the printer by midnight, but we never once finished on time. (I personally did, but that’s just me.) But once we put the paper to bed, sometimes we’d finally have dinner.

We’d go to one of those 24-hour restaurants, like Denny’s or Lyon’s or Carrows or IHOP or Pancake Circus, and buy something cheap like nachos or fries or pancakes. We’d eat, shoot the breeze—discuss whatever silly things college kids do, from the profound to the profoundly stupid—then go home, catch four hours’ sleep, and go to class in the morning.

I can be a brilliant conversationalist, but I have three huge problems: I have a giant ego, I’m brilliantly sarcastic, and I’m loud.

Nowadays I recognize I don’t know it all, and I’ve eliminated most of my sarcasm. Then, thanks to years of reinforcement by politically conservative Fundamentalists, I figured I was absolutely right; and thanks to years of learning just how far I could push things before Dad punched me, I was pretty decent at the sarcasm. And I didn’t give a wet crap whether I offended anyone. Consequently I offended lots of people. If I knew about it, I didn’t really care, but more often I was oblivious to it. I assumed everyone else had a thick skin like me—or I just didn’t care, and kept mercilessly hammering away at ’em, especially if it was making other people laugh.

I should say: I’m not just loud. My voice carries. It goes through walls. It wakes light sleepers. It never occurred to me till years later: Because I’m so easily overheard, the folks at my table might laugh their behinds off… but the folks across the room might be fuming. Or assume I passive-aggressively meant to be overheard. ’Cause sarcastic people do that.

So one night, at Denny’s, I royally pissed off some fraternity brothers at a nearby table. To this day I have no idea what I, or we, said. But they were violently angry. They started making noise. I looked over at their table to see what the commotion was about. Let’s play a little game of Aggro Frat Boy Mad Libs, shall we?

“Hey performer of unnatural act, you want me to come over there and terrible thing to do to one’s butt up all your incestuous adjective stinky waste product?”

No, I truly didn’t. And said so.

Uncomfortably, I returned to my group, and we quietly wondered aloud what on earth was with those guys, and why us, of all people. I’m guessing the whispering made the frat boys believe we were quietly mocking them, instead of wondering how to keep the situation from escalating further. Once again, they volunteered to extracurricular prison activity up all our result of eating Mexican food at Denny’s. Our waitress thoughtfully went to the kitchen and called the police.

Since cops regularly patrol the area round the CSUS campus, they were there within minutes, and their presence meant the frat boys weren’t gonna Visigoth non-pillaging activity anyone up at this particular Denny’s that night. Though you never know about other nights.

So, not the best first impression to get of the Greek system.

But the second impression was much like the first. As was the third. And fourth. And fifth. Nearly every time I encountered fraternity brothers off campus, they were belligerent and hostile. I had no idea why. At the time I was probably more politically conservative than they, so I know it wasn’t from mouthing off about politics. And some evenings I hadn’t said anything. When I’m eating (or tired) I’m quiet. But there’s just something about the combination of pack mentality, alcohol, late nights, and repressed deviant behavior, which just makes frat boys want to pledge-initiation everybody else. Particularly skinny 19-year-old budding journalists with big mouths and a penchant for topcoats and Bart Simpson T-shirts.

Round October 1990 the Hornet began getting letters from “Uncle Todd,” the pen name of a writer who gleefully bashed fraternities and their system. The Hornet’s policy was to refuse to publish anonymous contributions unless we had the contributor’s secret identity. But our editor-in-chief, Dave, claimed he had no clue who Uncle Todd was, the contributions were hilarious, and so much for our policy. (I personally wondered whether he wrote ’em, but I didn’t really care. I agreed they were funny.)

Incidentally, in the years since the Hornet, I’ve discovered nearly every newspaper has such a policy against anonymous contributions… and they ignore it when the contributions are too good to not print. I’ve broken that rule myself when I was a managing editor—but then again, the policy was just an excuse so I could ignore any anonymous pieces I didn’t wish to run. When people write stupid letters, but they at least put their names on it, you gotta respect the fact they’re owning their stupidity.

Frat boys responded to the Uncle Todd pieces with rage and contrary letters. And sometimes personal threats of violence. One morning I was in the Hornet office reading the daily papers (we subscribed to a bunch of ’em, so many mornings I went to the office and actually read ’em) and some furious frat boy showed up, offering to personally biologically perforate up Dave’s intestinal byproduct for running Uncle Todd’s latest missive. Dave was in class, of course. So the raging lad retreated, leaving Dave’s sewer occupant un-intimately injured. Dave could totally have taken him, but then again, the idiot might’ve show up later with a mob of beer-fueled brothers itching for a Hell’s Angels-style chain-whipping.

I later told Dave what had transpired. Dave found it amusing too.

So one day, inspired by Uncle Todd—whom, you notice, I quoted in the “quote” section—I drew the strip at the top. It ran in the 29 October issue.

I actually got no death threats for it. I still got ’em during our late-night outings at all-night diners, which as far as I knew were entirely unrelated to the strip. Definitely unrelated in the case of those frat boys at the Lyon’s in Davis.

Nowadays I do care about giving offense. I try not to offend. But that’s not what finally stopped the frat boys from threatening to disembowel me. Simply put, it’s the fact I bulked up.

In 1990 I weighed 140 pounds and was skinny as an alley cat. Over the next five years, thanks to a slowing metabolism and a diet heavy in Cheez-its and fast food, I gained 85 pounds. And because I wasn’t sedentary—I walked, or biked, everywhere—a lot more of that was muscle than you’d assume. Ever since I gained that weight, rarely has anyone threatened to give me a beating. I didn’t reform my behavior for another 10 years, but even so: When people met me in person, they always chose to talk things out instead of throw punches.

When you’re a rail-thin kid with a massive attitude, you don’t pose any physical threat. So people figure it ain’t no thing to flatten you. Now, when you’re a big guy with a big ego, they’ll let you get away with anything.

There’s a whole other rant I could get into about how inappropriate it is to bully the weak. But I don’t care to get into it right now. I’ll just say: If you have a regular problem with angry frat boys, start eating lots of barbecue and Doritos, and stop before the obesity falls into the morbid category.