Every year before I come to school I get a $10 roll of quarters from the bank at home. My mom thinks I get them for laundry. Nope, I use the money she puts in Domer Dollars for that.
Those 40 quarters are for the 40 quarter dogs I will eat before fall break.
WAIT?!?! No more quarter dogs?! They are now called MIDNIGHT DOGS?!?!
Actually, that's not a big deal.
THEY COST 33 CENTS?!?!
Let me repeat that:
The day-old hot dogs that used to cost one coin with George Washington's head on it NOW COST 33 CENTS!!!!!
Who made this decision to raise the price by eight cents? Was it the head of Food Services or simply a sadistic manager of the Huddle Mart? Someone must take responsibility for this travesty.
Someone must explain why EIGHT CENTS is worth endangering tradition, convenience, education, world peace and healthy livers.
My oldest brother graduated from Notre Dame in 2000, and his sole piece of advice when I enrolled in 2008 was, "Find out when quarter dogs are at LaFortune."
And it really was that simple. I would wait until restlessness hit shortly after midnight, grab two quarters, find the guys downstairs, and we would all procrastinate for an hour.
Now? All I can find is a quarter, two pennies and a nickel. Guess I'm out of luck. Without that refresher, all six of us are too tired to keep working. To bed each of us goes.
What's next? Well, first, none of us finished our work. From day one, we're behind, bound only to fall further behind in class. Grades will drop. Alex will probably fail out. With the money he didn't spend on half-cooked hot dogs, he'll take up alcoholism. By age 30, he is going to need a new liver. All because some anonymous higher power raised the price of "midnight dogs" to 33 cents.
But Alex won't be alone. The rest of us might not fail out of school, but our GPAs will become tainted and our recommendations from teachers won't be as glowing. James won't find an internship to turn into a job offer. He'll find a ho-hum job he hates. He'll turn to gambling for solace, and on one rainy night some high-roller will take James' wedding ring, his son's piggy bank and, before sunrise, his house.
Matt will see all of us in misery when he comes back from Australia. He will be so concerned he will stop focusing on schoolwork. His destiny of designing environmentally-friendly nuclear power plants will go unfulfilled. China will take over Asia, Europe and then the Americas, in search of oil. Before long, my grandchildren won't talk to me because Mandarin is their first language.
All because someone decided to ruin all of our futures by raising the price of quarter dogs eight cents. Hope that someone is happy, because nobody else will be.
