I Have A Large Scar On My Stomach From Sliding Shirtless Across The Fraternity Basement Floor

Buzzy Robinson6 years ago

The basement of my fraternity home does not drain particularly well. It doesn’t really drain at all, frankly. Any fluid that is spilled, sprayed, dropped, poured, spit, shed, or — God forbid — urinated onto the floor tends to stay there, forming a large, viscous body of sneaker-staining liquid that we affectionately refer to as the “Frat Lagoon.” I didn’t come up with the name.

Drying the Lagoon the morning after a party is a real chore. It requires a massive dehumidifier, shop vacs, mops, squeegees, industrial strength fans, and, for some reason, a big yellow snow shovel. Hey, whatever works.

The unavoidable wetness in our house’s basement (phrasing) is most likely due to the fact that it was built back in 1917. Back then, people were worried about shit like whether or not to declare war on Germany and how to implement centralized federal banking; they weren’t overly concerned with the nitty-gritty technicalities of draining beer out of basements. You had better things to do, America; I get it.

It’s not all bad news, though. The Lagoon has provided generations of brothers with endless entertainment. Occasionally, people remove articles of clothing, run, and slide on their stomachs across the basement floor like giant human curling stones. I personally love gliding on my soaking wet shoes Risky Business-style across the dance floor to make ladies laugh.

The former activity is called a “beer slide” and I’ve done it twice — once successfully, and once horrifically unsuccessfully. This story is about the time that didn’t go so well.

We have a loosely enforced “no glass bottles in the basement” rule in my house. After one too many trips to the emergency room, we no longer trusted ourselves with glass. Props to us for being so self-aware, proactive, and humble. It’s more of a gentleman’s agreement than an actual rule, though, and — as with most regulations — people love to ignore it.

On this particular night, someone had dropped a glass bottle on the basement floor which, unfortunately for my bare stomach, had shattered into a million small pieces. To this day, I still believe that it was more of a Gronkowski-style wind-up windmill spike than an accidental “drop” given the incredibly small size of the shards.

Anyway, the small shards of glass from the broken bottle had become hidden beneath the surface of the murky puddle of liquid in the center of the dance floor. A puddle that I was about run and slide through shirtless, like a wee little Irish penguin.

After getting the attention of everyone in the room, I removed my soaked and stained Jack Wills button-down, made a very Moses-y movement with my arms (parting the people in the basement like the Red Sea), got off to a HOT running start, and hurled myself stomach-first across the basement floor. Hi, mom!

I slid about ten yards through the Lagoon and scrambled right back on my feet like Jason Segel taking surfing lessons in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. “Ok, now POP UP.”

When I turned around to face the cheering crowd of spectators and amused onlookers, I noticed that their smiles of glee were quickly turning into hand-over-mouth gasps of horror.

Apparently, whilst skimming across the surface of the Frat Lagoon, my stomach had scraped against one of the small shards of glass on the floor. This resulted in a deep gash along my upper abdomen just below my sternum and just above my belly button.

I wasn’t bleeding too badly, but I was cut the fuck up. It was rough. To this day, I still have a badass scar on my stomach from sliding shirtless across the fraternity basement floor. My friends have taken to calling it my “C-section scar.” This isn’t medically accurate considering it’s on the upper half of my stomach and I’m a man, but whatever.

Members of collegiate fraternities in Europe used to be identified on campus by cuts and scars on their faces (see here). These scars were supposedly the result of a hazing activity in which older members of the organization made pledges fence each other without helmets on, leading to a number of saber gashes on their cheeks and foreheads. The wounds were seen on campus as symbols of status and rank, signs that these guys were in fraternities and that they didn’t fuck around.

I like to think of my beer slide stomach scar as being similar to the European fraternity maskless sword-fighting scars. I wear my scar proudly, just as they did; like a badge of honor..