First Contact
When I decided to go to Ohio University 6 years ago, the decision was made to go alone. All of my friends from high school were spreading to different colleges around Ohio and Pennsylvania, but none of them wanted to go to OU. It didn’t really bother me, I was actually looking forward to the experience of starting over. Little did I know how much of an experience.

When I decided I wanted to live with a roommate, I knew I would be paired with some random dude, but hoped for the best. I figured he could be one of those cool guys who would gain the distinction of “my buddy from college,” a term I always thought would sound cool worked into a sentence about school. Unfortunately, this term would have to be reserved for someone else. Anyone else, actually.

I got the room pairings in the mail, and looked at the name on the list. ‘Hmmm,’ I thought, ‘Michael Sutzton. Sounds normal.’ I picked up the phone and called this guy to see what he would be bringing, thinking ‘maybe a refrigerator, maybe a stereo or a VCR…Or maybe, if I’m lucky, a Playstation!’ On the other end, I was greeted by a strangely southern Ohio accent. I introduced myself, then got on to the important subject.

“So Mike, what are you going to be bringing down? Just so I know not to bring the same things.”

“Well,” a brief pause, “I’ll be bringing a coffee pot, a popcorn maker, and a rug.”
A coffee pot, a popcorn maker, and a rug. Those were the essentials. These were his contributions. At least I was able to leave my Cappuccino maker, PopMaster Supreme, and bearskin rug at home.

After that, we really didn’t have much to talk about, so I hung up. I was a little worried, but figured everything would be cool. I didn’t want to hang this guy before even meeting him. Besides, it would be nice to have some carpet to cover the floor.

The Journey Begins

Meeting Sheit
A few weeks later, my dad and I drove down to OU. I was really excited about getting there, but also wary to meet the person I’d be spending a year with. When we got to the dorm, we brought up a few boxes and went to check out the room. Entering the mod, we were met by a tall, brown-haired fella wearing a Bobcats hat. He was one of those people who just never learned how to wear a hat right, and it sat high on his head, with the straightest brim ever.

“Hi, I’m Mike!”

And this was my roommate. He seemed like a nice guy and even offered to help me with my stuff after he was done unpacking. My dad and I looked at each other and shrugged, and went down the hall to my room. When I opened the door, the room was empty, except for a few boxes, the popcorn maker, and the coffee maker. In the center of the room was what looked like a green bathroom mat.

“Um,” My dad said, “is that the rug he was talking about?”

“Noooo, it can’t be.” I said.

Upon closer inspection, I found the mat to be covered in toenail clippings, confirming it was definitely a bathroom mat. When Mike came in, my dad asked him, “So Mike, is this your carpet?”

“Yep, it sure is!”

“Ooookay. Good luck Stephen.”

So there we stood, staring at a bathroom mat that covered 7% of the floor.
And with that, my dad was gone.

It’s a bathroom mat, asshole.

Show and Tell
After we settled in the first night, Mike and I were hanging out in the room with Dave and Dan, two other guys who lived in our hall. We were talking about where we were from, what we did, normal get-to-know-ya kind of stuff. We started talking about different things we brought with us, and it turned to alcohol. Dan said “check out what I brought,” and came back from his room with a bottle of vodka. Very nice, Dan. I said I had brought a bottle of Ice 101. Then, Mike said, “Sheeit, you guys wanna see what I brought?” And he made way to his desk, pulling out a small blue chest he must have had since childhood, because it was decorated with cute baseball gloves and bats. Everyone was wondering what kind of alcoholic treat Mike had brought with him. So he unlocked the chest, opened it up… And pulled out a Swank Magazine.

“Oh my God, Is that a Swank magazine?” I don’t even think Dan tried to hide his disgust. “Dude, that is the worst magazine I have ever seen.”

So, while we were sitting around talking about which alcohol we brought with us, Mike busted out the Swank. Needless to say, he locked it back in the chest, which housed two other belongings: a poster of an attractive lady, and a knife.

This was our first inclination that there might be something a little strange about this guy, and also planted the seed of his nickname.

This’ll get me friends!

The Origin of Sheit
In college, people have nicknames for each other. Some, like Lethal D or Boobs McGee, are earned and have merit. Some are neither. Mike Sutzton’s nickname was Sheit. He got this nickname because every time he would say something, it would be to upstage you in some way, and it would begin with the exclamation “Sheit!” For instance, if you said, as a passing remark, “Hey, I brought a camera to take some pictures with.” His response would be “Sheeit, I got a camera. You want to see a camera?” Then he would run into his room and come out with a camera. “Sheeit, see?” No one would care. Or if you said “I think I’d like to climb the wall at Ping.” He would say “Sheeit, you want to climb the wall? I’ve climbed the wall so many times, I’m an official belayer.” He could belay your ass like there was no tomorrow.

So after repeated use of the word Sheit, the nickname was born, and the name Mike Sutzton no longer meant anything. From then on, he was Sheit. I could just imagine when he went home for the holidays.

“So son, how is college?” Dad inquires.

“Great, dad,” Sheit replies.

“When I was in school, we used to have nicknames for everyone. Do you have one, son?”

“Yeah. Everyone calls me Shit.”

Milk Dud
When Sheit was in high school, he went to a mostly-black school. The students nicknamed him Milk Dud. Talk about bad luck with nicknames.

Tasty.

The Sheer Panties
After the original Swank incident, we never heard about the magazine, but it was always fresh in our memory. We became good friends with a guy named Tim, who lived down the hall. Tim was a tall bearded guy, and he was hilarious. He also enjoyed smoking the weed. The first time Dave and I met him, he said, “Hi, my name’s Tim and I’m so fuccked up right now.” When he wasn’t fucked up, we told him about the Swank incident. Being the person that Tim is, he wasn’t going to let it slide. He started to question Sheit about the Swank, saying things like “So Sheit, I hear you got a Swank magazine. Let’s see it. Come on! Come on, show us the Swank!” Sheit had vehemently claimed that he threw the magazine away, but Tim wouldn’t let it go.

So one day, when Sheit was at class, Tim grabbed Dan, poked his head in my room and said “Reconnaissance mission.” So the search began for the Swank. I took the closet, Tim and Dan took the desk, and Dave kept watch. Tim busted the lock off the baseball chest, but only found the poster and knife. Buried in the closet, I was struggling with an empty suitcase when I heard Tim yell, “What the fuck is that?” I didn’t think much of it, because Tim liked to swear a lot, but I turned around and saw them both looking into one of Sheit’s desk drawers. Dan grabbed a pen and reached into the drawer, lifting out a pair of black, see-through, sheer panties.

“Holy shit!” Everyone in the room jumped back in disgust. Sheer panties!?! Sheit had what looked like women’s sexy underpants in his drawer. Much speculation has surrounded the sheer panties, and several theories surfaced. We all concluded that they weren’t a souvenir, so that left us with only a few options. The most obvious is that he wore them for comfort, which is weird within itself. But to this day, Tim still insists that Sheit would put them on at night, stand over me while I was sleeping, and pleasure himself, proclaiming, “Sheeeeeeeiiiiiiiiit!!!!”

I hate Tim.

Well, something like that.

Musical Taste
Sheit had also brought with him a small tape player with miniature speakers. Among his tape selection was the Sister Act II soundtrack.

Play Doh
One night, everyone on our floor went out to the Greenery, the only bar that Freshmen could get into and drink. It was a grimy, smoky pit where you could get cheap drinks and try to dance with drunk girls, if you like that sort of thing. The night that we went, they had a special on a drink called Brainstopper. It was a pink, fruity drink that you could get by the pitcher, and get drunk in a reasonable amount of time. Tim, Dave, and I would share a pitcher at a time. While there, we saw Sheit walking around with a pitcher in his hand. He was taking it down all by himself, and once he reached bottom, he’d waste no time getting a refill. He was on a mission. He was stumbling around the Greenery for a few hours, then he disappeared. The next time I saw him, he was passed out in his bed.

The next morning, when I woke up, Sheit was gone. Tim came stumbling in soon after, and sat on Sheit’s bed. We started to play some video games, and I’m sure I was kicking Tim’s ass. Anyway, as we sat there during a break, Tim looked at the bed he was sitting on, and noticed something. “Hey, what’s that?” He pointed to some strands of light-colored yarn, but then our game resumed, so he forgot about it. Next break, Tim saw more. “Look at that.” A few more strands, this time looking a little like Play-Doh. Tim grabbed the bedspread and pulled it back. To our horror, the entire bed was filled with pink, Brainstopper vomit, all shaped like pieces of Play Doh. I mean, it was everywhere. All over his sheets, up the wall, on the window. The kid had thrown up, got up in the morning, realized that he was Ralph Macchio, threw the bedspread over it, and left for the day. He figured that no one would notice that he was Yakoff Smirnov all over the room. When he came back, he acted as if nothing happened. “Sheit, do you realize you left a bed full of puke sitting here all day?” When he was asked this question, I remember him basically saying, “Oh,” grabbing the sheets, and taking them to the laundry room. That was it. No apology, no explanation, just a bed full of Play Doh.

This is a surprise hit among kids.

Making the Grade
Sheit had to take classes the summer before his Freshman year just to make it into OU. He was so bad at Math, and all his other classes for that matter, that his first quarter, he got a .5 grade point average.

Sheit, I Made Popcorn!
One night, Sheit had the great idea of using his popcorn maker. It was movie night, and he wanted to be the hero. So he went in our room and popped up some corn. It was a nice gesture on his part, but he soon realized he had nowhere to put all this corn he was cooking. Running from room to room, Sheit asked everyone if they had a bowl he could put his popcorn in. When he came up empty, he had to put his thinking cap on. Standing in the mod, he said, “I’ve got it!” And ran back into our room. I got up to follow, and when I got into the hall, he came out with a garbage bag in his hand, filled with all this popcorn. “Yeah!” He proclaimed to me with a huge smile plastered on his face. I looked down at the bag, and said “Uh, maybe not such a smart idea.” Looking down, his smile faded into horror as he watched the hot popcorn melt through the plastic and fall all over the floor. “Sheeeeit!!” And back into the room he ran.

The Alarm Clock
Like any college student, Sheit had an alarm clock that he used to wake up in the morning. Unfortunately, he was a heavy sleeper. If the kid had a class at 8, he would set his alarm for 6. It would go off, and he would hit the snooze button. 10 minutes later, he would hit the snooze button again. And this would go on for 2 hours. Sometimes the alarm would go off and he wouldn’t hear it. I used to throw shoes at him, and he still wouldn’t get up. But, his heavy sleeping actually served an advantage for him once.

Halloween that year, my friends Mike and Enz came to visit. They were hanging out in my room, drinking screwdrivers and playing video games while Sheit took a nap on his bed. They had the door to the room open, because people were coming in and out. Unfortunately, they left the bottle of vodka in plain view, and when an RA walked in to tell them to turn down the music, he ‘noticed a bottle of vodka and orange juice, and assumed screwdriver.’ Needless to say, I got busted, but since good ol’ Sheit was napping, they claimed that he was unaware of the drinking going on in the room. For all they knew he would have been passed out.

The Legacy of Sheit
And so with this article, the Legacy of Sheit lives on. I couldn’t possibly give justice to the ridiculous events that occurred with my first college roommate, but I hope what I have given has entertained you. And let this be a warning to those who are going to college: Get a single.

**Note: While Dave and I are still great friends, my other buddies from Freshman year, Dan and Tim, have not stayed in contact. After Freshman year, Tim flunked out of OU, and went to live in Cleveland, where he still lives and works today. I saw him a few years ago, and he’s still a great guy, never letting me forget the true meaning of the sheer panties.

As for Dan, he chose to transfer to Ohio State after Freshman year, where he shaved his head and joined a cult. His last day at OU, we said to him, “Hey Dan, it was a great year, buddy. You’ll have to come visit us next year,” to which he replied,

“Yeah, you know what. I don’t think so guys,” And he left. Who says that? I mean, even if you don’t plan on coming down, you at least give the courtesy of lying and saying, ‘yeah, that would be great!’ Anyway, after being thoroughly confused and utterly astonished, I then asked Dave, “Wait, didn’t Dan forget an entire case of Rolling Rock in my fridge?” And with that, Dan was forgotten.

If you are Mike Sutzton, let me know at Silentguerrs@aol.com, and I’ll congratulate you on having a fake name