Story of the past: Cool guy of the week

I thought I'd pull a story from my past years for this blog post. Partly because I don't want to write about my week every time, otherwise people may realize I don't live the adventerous, action-packed life that I say I do (Though really I do, if I were to talk about my week this week, I would tell you stories of wandering through the dangerous areas of Detroit, visiting cider mills, one with a bridge rumored to be haunted, and let's not forget game night on Friday, where I saw the phrase "The man took his dog to find his lost meat" slowly change to "Evil vampire man attacked the girl with a pitch fork"). So my past life story I'm going to tell we'll call "The Origins and Endings of The Cool Guy of the Week".You had to be cool to be cool guy of the week. It was the most important rule.

As I've said before, I always lived with the same guys through my undergraduate years at college. During our time together, many interesting traditions started and ended...and sometimes even started again... Cool guy of the week was one of those traditions. It started our freshman year. Basically, every week, everyone on our dorm floor would vote for someone to be the cool guy that week. This meant anything they said went (cool guys obviously can't be wrong), they got prime seating for midnight movie on Thursdays, and everyone else had to constantly let them know how cool everything they said was. Oh, and you had to wear a very...cool...shirt all week, called the cool guy shirt. This shirt could never be washed, although you were allowed to jump into the pool with it on, if you felt that it needed a little rinsing off.

Don't worry, we did not discriminate between male or female. Either sex could be voted cool guy of the week, though some thought it unfair that we refused to allow the title to be changed to cool girl of the week, or anything like that. But let's be serious, guy encompasses both male and female.

The tradition obviously stopped while my friends and I served missions for our church, but when we got back, it started up again (with a new cool guy shirt, as the old one was lost, and with the addition of a cool guy sweater option for those colder days). And the tradition grew to include much of our ward (church group that met together). Eventually a roommate started up an online voting website (I did a google search and found the website: http://www.geocities.com/coolguyweek/ it still exists!). This is where the tale becomes sad. Corruption, greed, and false coolness lead to many problems with the voting system. Soon, campaigning began, as if one could campaign to be cool. People began to lose sight of the true meaning of being cool. Then fake votes began showing up. Due to a flaw in the security system of the voting website...or maybe just the complete lack of any security system on the website...people were able to vote as many times as they wanted, and false names were often created.

I was voted in as cool guy during a week of civil unrest. The previous cool guy, outraged that one of his cool mandates had not been met, refused to return the cool guy shirt and sweater. During this time of turmoil, a cool guy coat was created (bought in Mongolia by one of my roommates). I have never gotten so many angry looks on BYU's campus as when I was wearing the cool guy coat everyday. I suspect people were angry and jealous of my coolness. I did not wear the cool guy hat that is shown in this picture, I didn't think the world was ready for that kind of coolness.

In an angry response, our apartment shut down the online voting, seizing all control of the naming of cool guy of the week, so that only we could decide who should be cool guy of the week. This caused many horrible backlashes in our ward. Angry mobs formed, bricks were thrown threw our windows, followed by torches. The cool guy of the week could not calm them down. Finally, after getting thicker windows that would repel bricks, we decided that the once proud, unifying, tradition of Cool guy of the week, had lost all meaning, and needed to be retired. The cool guy shirt and sweater were hung in our closets, and there remained...and possibly still do remain.

The final cool guy of the week was the naked indian on BYU's campus (please note that the statue is not actually naked, he is sporting a loin cloth, we just refered to him as the naked indian statue). He was cool because he could sport the sweater in the normal fashion, or as a cool guy loin cloth.