The blog was on a bit of a summer break, but it’s tanned, rested and ready once again.

I pledged a fraternity when I was in pharmacy school.   I know some if not a lot of you are thinking “I think he made that sentence up.”  No, it’s true, but pharmacy school along with the fraternity didn’t work out.  However, I was around long enough to hear some of the details about what the pledges had to endure when they were inducted into the fraternity.  The future members I was told were asked to strip down to their underwear and then blindfolded, very 50 Shades of Grey but with all guys.   The pledges were then handed various things like a liver and told it was a heart, whose heart was never explained. Another activity they were required to do was stand barefoot on spaghetti but were told it was dog sh.t and on and on.  All of that is so 20^th century compared to what we’ve heard about in the past decade.  The most recent case of a pledge night gone wrong involved a Pennsylvania State University student who died in February during a “bid night.” Tim Piazza became dangerously drunk that night and died as a result of injuries he suffered after falling down a flight of stairs.  A number of the fraternity members have been charged with manslaughter and other crimes.  This is not the first time we’ve heard about alcohol hazing going on at fraternities with ugly results.  So you have to wonder why the frat bros keep going back to that well.  Hey I would imagine almost all of us have done at least one really stupid thing in our youth, I know I did, it involved peppermint schnapps.  I couldn’t eat peppermint Life Savers for years afterwards, lesson learned, but that was solely my decision to be stupid.  How do you get a bunch of guys to validate stupido behavior?  Because men 18-25 years old in groups are your most dangerous.  Evidence suggests that Tim Piazza entered into a drinking gauntlet at the frat house and after he fell down the stairs it was hours before help was called.  Here’s what I learned early in life; what my capacity was for alcohol; I don’t need to drink beyond my capacity to impress anyone; and, I don’t walk around in only my underwear in front of a bunch of guys unless I’m taking a military physical or modeling underwear for a Calvin Klein ad, neither of which is going to happen.

Peace,
Garry