"Mung-Day"

The First time I ever heard about Mung was probably when SOMF was talking about his friends back home. SOMF frequently mentioned a chum of his that apparently could jump and touch the sun (yes, he is quite tall). Besides his rather large size, the only other thing that Smith indulged about him was that he went to West Chester because he was obsessed with a girl that went there, and that he was considering changing schools, and possibly coming to Mont Alto.

As luck would have it, Mung finally gave up on the girl at West Chester, and transferred to Mont Alto (not sure if there was a “second-tier” girl that he liked at Mont Alto). I must’ve made one heck of an impression on Mung that very first weekend. The area police were nice enough to bust the annual kickoff party in the woods, so there was nothing to do except watch the replay of the York Fair on 25 Alive, the only t.v. station serving Hagerstown and Mont Alto, OR go to Denny’s to eat Moons Over My-Hami. I, of course, would never eat anything with ham in it, so I probably would’ve ordered the Grand Slam….had I gone to Denny’s. Unfortunately, I decided to stay in and watch a movie, or something. As luck would have it, everybody but some disgusting broad who made Chewbacca look sexy left for Denny’s. Of course, given my high standards in women, I fooled around with her a little, which unfortunately caused the entire room to reek of her stench. SOMF, who was my roommate by this point, gagged and almost puked when he came back.

Mung’s impression of me probably sagged even more when we all made our way to a classic Mont Alto “Kegger,” or drunken party in the woods. This particular kegger featured a twist, as a bottle of Vodka/paint remover was raffled off. Mung had the winning ticket but wanted no parts of this ridiculously cheap bottle. He gave the ticket to me, and I claimed the prize…unfortunately, I had to take a rather large swig of this “juice of Satan,” which immediately mixed with the beer I had already consumed, and rendered me retarded. On the way home from the kegger, I got into a fight with another friend of mine, and I was hurled down a hill. Mung, in a rare moment of selflessness, came down the hill to check on me. Mung decided to hurry up to check on me by falling down the hill. Sometime during this fall, Mung was able to successfully break his ankle, after which he let out a wincing shriek that almost eradicated local wildlife.

“Tell me it’s not broken!” This whimpering phrase, repeated several times by Mung, went unanswered by me, as I was more concerned about keeping the contents of my stomach from shooting out of my mouth. We stumbled back to the dorm room, a room that Mung would ultimately stay in for 3 weeks straight… even though he didn’t even live there. I guess I can be faulted for the rapid decline of Mung’s athletic activities, as the broken ankle all but signaled the end of Mung’s intramural beach volleyball career. As a side note, Mung was responsible for shattering my toenail and giving me about 10 years of the wonders of toenail fungus (a story for another time). I guess these beginnings can probably explain why Mung and I have had such an “interesting” relationship over the years.