This
is something that was done to me by my wonderful roommate, Dave
Walling, during the spring semester of 1996. Here is a photo
of him taken the following year. I can't say I ever really understood what
he was trying to do in the picture.
Here at ORU we have a nice voice mail system. When you leave a message for someone, it plays a short recording of you saying your name and number so the person receiving the message will know who sent it they call this your verification.
Dave had come up a chastity slogan--Wait to Mate, and was trying to get used quote of the week, etc... I didn't realize it but he changed the message and verification to, "This is Dave and Mark. Remember, Wait to Mate." Since I didn't call myself often it was about 3 days before I had a hint of what had happened, but even then I didn't catch it.
I had been leaving messages all over campus for my teachers, the head of community outreach, all the people in the music group I was in, etc. One of my teachers returned my call and left me a message. At the beginning he said, "I already waited! That is a very...uh..interesting voice message." I had always suspected the teacher of being slightly confused anyway and since what he said didn't make any sense to me I disregarded it.
I went on for the rest of the week happily leaving messages for everyone until one night I was talking to a friend while Dave pretended to sleep. My friend said, "Oh by the way, Mark, did you realize that all those messages you've left recently say Wait to Mate on them."
"They say what?!"
She repeated herself and I looked over at my roommate. "Daaavve!" He burst out into laughter. I told my friend thanks, and that I needed to go talk to my roommate now.
I
decided I had to put a little more here about Dave Walling. everyone
should meet someone like Dave Walling. Actually every one should meet
Dave. Several weeks after the "Wait to Mate" episode I was
trying to study when Dave came in and sat down on his bed. He put a
sock over his left hand and held a book in the other. Then he proceeded
to read his book. Occasionally he would look up at his left hand, nod
at the sock and then go back to reading. Needless to say this made it
nearly impossible for me to study. I finally asked him what in the world
he was doing. He explained that it was his study sock. He turned
it so I could see the eyes and mouth he had drawn on it and then he went back
to studying....with his sock.
Here
is a picture of Dave as Santa. Unfortunately I don't have a picture
of him in his chicken costume. Dave wanted
to be the golden eagle mascot at the basket ball games because he didn't feel
person currently doing the job was getting into it enough. I guess he
figured if he could show them how to do it, they would either give him the
job or at least do a better job themselves. So, he started looking around
for a golden eagle costume. Those aren't real easy to find in Tulsa
(or anywhere else I've ever been for that matter). Anyway the closest
thing he could find was a full body furry yellow chicken costume. He
only wore it to one or two games. I guess he decided it wasn't quite
close enough to the golden eagle.