Chapter 40 (cont.)

 

Newark, 19717

 

“I lived in Smyth Hall my freshman year ('92 - '93). Not having cable in our rooms really made everyone either hang out in the lounge or all congregate in the room on the floor that had a TV. I lived on the fourth floor, so unless the show was important (90210), my neighbors’ rigged TV was good enough. They had a set of rabbit ear antennas, and every time you turned the channel you would have to get up and adjust the set. If when you let go, the picture went out, you were made to stay holding the antenna through the show. That part sucked. Watching 90210 in the lounge was so much fun. We would all pack in like sardines to fit. Good times!”

 

- Christa, UD '96

 

Leisure Time

 

“I'm old school because I remember we had a PC that we used to play Leisure Suit Larry on all the time. We also played Family Feud on that same machine. But the real fun was always in my Pencader F single in 1989 - 1990. I had a Nintendo and we'd play Track and Field, Tecmo Bowl, Mario Bros, Blades of Steel, and the best game of them all, SNK Baseball Stars. We actually set up a league in Baseball Stars where we'd have this massive round-robin tourney that lasted all semester. I won of course, but not without sacrificing some valuable GPA points. The following year I got a Sega Genesis and for my remaining UD years we'd play Sonic the Hedgehog, EA Hockey, and Madden '92. Those were fun times!”

 

- Edward P, UD '93

 

Dawson Wreaks

 

“Ugh. Dawson's Creek was SO HUGE my freshman year in '98, that when it was on, you could hear the fucking theme song in stereo down the hallway. After it was over, everyone would get together to talk about it, and some guy in my hallway would go around writing ‘Joey is a GODDESS’ on everyone's whiteboard. My roommate watched it. I despised it.

 

One show that I can say I totally got into in college and miss is MTV’s Sifl and Olly. I think I was drunk the first time I saw it, so its humor was greatly enhanced, but I loved that show! My roommate was more into the TV than I was, so she pretty much controlled the remote. I also remember being forced to watch lots of Friends and Felicity. I hated Felicity, too... everyone on that show whispered constantly. Anyone else notice that?”

 

- Carrie, UD '02

 

Madden Mania

 

“I lived in Smyth. The boys in my building were OBSESSED with Madden. They even simulated a real season and everything. I would wander into my then-boyfriend's room, and there was always SOMEONE playing Madden!

 

Another game we played was Mario Kart -- this was mostly us girls wanting to play it, but the boys always joined in. Then, one of my friends found the original Oregon Trail game online, so he sent us all copies of it over AIM. We then spent many hours procrastinating by killing each other off on the trail. Fun times!”

 

- Christine, UD '05

 

Unreceptive

 

“Back in the ‘olden days,’ we had a huge bunch of us who watched General Hospital in the Pencader III lounge. You could hear a pin drop some days, and others, there were people who made noise and were in BIG TIME trouble. Every now and again some Guiding Light people tried to get in, but we took care of that! The big fight was at 1:00 between the All My Children people and the Days of Our Lives people.

 

None of the dorms had ANYTHING in the way of television hook-ups in the '80s. In our Pencader rooms, we couldn't get any reception at all. There was a time when TVs had two screws / knobs on the back, where you could hook up the rabbit ears. Unfortunately, rabbit ears got you just enough reception to know exactly what you were missing, but not enough to be able to see much of anything. So, we went to Radio Shack and got stereo wire, stripped a little bit on both ends, separated the wires on one end, hooked the individual exposed parts of the wire around the two knobs in the back of the TV, ran the still-covered rest of the wire up to the top of the ceiling, and ran it along the room until it got to the door…

 

…sometimes we'd be able to stick it out the top of our door, sometimes we'd stick it out the bottom of the door. Then we'd run it up the outside wall and leave just a little bit of exposed wire on the second end so the wire could receive as much signal as possible…the covered wire didn't pick up reception as well! The process was not short. It took a lot of time to tweak, pull, stretch and often having to restring, etc, to find the right place to put the wire -- both inside the room, under or over the door. And you had to have the right positioning when it was going under or over the door, because if you pinched it the wrong way, your reception would cut out. The worst was when a friend came to visit and closed the door the wrong way. We’d have to fix it all over again! Even when we were initially setting up the wire, we'd think we had it, but then we closed the door and found that we couldn't get reception with the door closed.

 

I'm not sure why having exposed wire outside of our rooms (in rainy and storm-prone Delaware) was such a big deal to the administration, but they seemed to think there was some sort of safety hazard or something. So, when we knew Public Safety or whoever it was that did spot inspections was coming, we'd have to take everything down and when they left, we'd restring, hoping that we could get things into just the right position so we could actually get halfway decent reception again!”

 

- Sandey, UD '90

 

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