So college was a fun time. We hung out at a friend’s dorm room, since he was the only one who lived on campus. He had two roommates though, and as one of them was pretty much your stereotypical “jock”, (who could NOT figure out the appeal of sitting around for an hour or two and playing Smash Bros) and we were all Comp-Sci nerds, there was some inevitable friction.
Well, one evening, it somehow changed from a low simmer, to an outright confrontation. We were having fun and games in the room, and meanwhile, one of the Jock’s friends kept knocking on the door, and when my friend answered, the Jock’s friend would tell us how lame we were, so we’d shut the door. Eventually we stopped answering, so he started throwing himself at the door hard enough to make the building shake. The Jock came back, and thought this was a fun game, and so doing it himself.
Happily, at this point, we were leaving anyway, so we walked out before they got too far. (We contemplated watching through the peephole and trying to open it right as they came, but we lacked the patience.)
So out we came. And ended up face to face with the Jock. “Why do you guys have to be such freaks?” he demanded of us, without a trace of irony.
Now as it happened, I was in an odd mood at the time, so my response was a little weird. “Dude,” I said, entirely straight-faced. “Don’t be such a tabernacle”. He stared at us, and I took the opportunity to breeze past him, and we wandered off to the campus Anime Club.
Fast-forward to a few days later. My friend has been informing me that the Jock has been SEETHING. Apparently not knowing what a tabernacle was, he decided from my tone that it was clearly the most deathly of insults. How DARE I call him such a thing! So of course, inevitably, next time we met, he confronted me. “Why did you call me that?” he asked. “What, a tabernacle?” “Yeah. What are you saying? Why would you say that?” “Because you were acting like one. If the shoe fits…” “You take that back…” I laughed. “You are SUCH a tabernacle.” And I left, leaving him sputtering.
I don’t know if he ever actually bothered to look up what it actually meant, but I have it on good authority that he seethed for a bit more, and I know he didn’t trouble us quite so much after that. Presumably out of fear that I’d taunt him some more, by once again calling him a portable, Jewish, place of worship.
Good times.
