22. New Year's Eve

This anecdote is dated December 31, 1999.



A month before New Year's Eve, Jamie started to get really excited about the Y2K hype. Sure, everyone was a little concerned that giant robots sleeping deep within the earth would awaken and come bursting through the city sidewalks, but mostly life went on as always. Jamie, however, started exhibiting a host of bizarre symptoms. He began talking really quickly, and stringing his sentences together without pausing. Sometimes, he'd confuse similar sounding words. "I hate your guts," the standard phrase he'd use to fill pauses in the conversation, turned into, "I ate four butts." Another Jamie trademark, "Why don't you die?" became, "I want poo pie." Whenever anyone snickered at these ridiculous utterances, Jamie would turn bright red. If he got too embarrassed, his eyeballs would start spinning like crazy. No one knew quite what to make of all this, so, one by one, we all sort of stopped calling Jamie, inviting him to the dining hall, and letting him tag along to Harris parties.

This was, of course, before we knew he was a robot. I, for one, was still laboring under the impression that he was a misunderstood, vaguely lupine little brat who might have harbored one or two redeeming qualities in his otherwise thorny heart.

On December 19th, as Finals week was winding down and people were preparing to go home, Jamie disappeared. While we hadn't been hanging out socially for a while, my friends and I would occasionally see him darting across campus, wearing cargo shorts, one flip-flop and a funny, discolored button-down thermal shirt. It was extremely snowy that year and I remembered thinking mistakenly that he was probably from the South and didn't know how to dress himself in the winter. But after December 19th, no one saw Jamie. His car was still parked behind Read Hall, so we knew he hadn't left campus. We were only freshmen, though, and didn't know what to do about the situation. So, two days later, we left without giving it too much further thought.

On New Year's Eve, Jamie sent a cryptic email message to all of us.

"You'll get yours after the R0E1V0L1U0T1O0N," was all it said.

A week later, after January 1, 2000 had come and gone, he sent another.

"Disregard previous message," it read.

The next time I saw Jamie, he blushed so red that I started to feel embarrassed for him. I wanted to ask him how his break had been, but he mumbled an excuse and scurried down the loggia and ducked into an opening door. Later, Matt Becker snuck a look at Jamie's diary and told me that Jamie had sincerely expected robots to take over at the stroke of midnight on New Year's day. "Oh, he's been watching too many cartoons," I said wearily when Matt asked if I thought we should drive Jamie to the mental health clinic.

If only I had known...

Dorothy Wainright, the prettiest robot in the whole world.