Chapter 10

“Do I have to do all the thinking?” Tom asked. “We make a choice. We either change our initial hypothesis so that the numbers support it, or we fuck with the numbers to support our original hypothesis. No one’s going to know what we’ve done. We’re going to overwhelm old Doc Smithers with the sheer volume of charts, graphs, statistical calculations, pretty packaging, and bullshit prose. Now make another pot of coffee.”

Somewhere around four o’clock Thursday morning, I had a profound revelation, which Tom endorsed wholeheartedly. It wasn’t the caffeine in coffee that kept a person awake. It was the fact that we had to go and take a piss every half hour that kept us from falling asleep.

At two minutes before five on Friday afternoon, we placed our very professional-looking eighty-three page report, complete with colorful graphs, numerous charts, six pages of footnotes, and a three-page bibliography, on the desk in our professor’s office.

“I was just about to leave and give you boys a zero,” Dr. Smithers said. “Hmmm, this looks pretty impressive. Does your research support your hypothesis?”

“We started with a question in our minds and then did enough initial research before we formulated our original hypothesis to feel that we could support it, sir,” Tom said. “I feel confident that you will find that we’ve conclusively proven our hypothesis with our research data, and have supported our findings with numerous references in the literature.”

“You boys look a little rough,” Dr. Smithers said. “I hope you didn’t just throw this together at the last minute.”

“Of course not sir,” I responded. “We had the entire project done about a week ago, but on re-reading our paper, we felt we could improve it, so we did a complete re-write, which is what we are presenting to you.”

“Very well,” Dr. Smithers said. “I’ll go through this over the weekend. You boys both have a B average so far. This project could make or break your semester grade. I hope I like it.”

As Dr. Smithers’ door closed behind us, Tom muttered, “You better like it, you pompous old fart. We didn’t just go three nights without sleep for nothing.”

“What do you want to do now, Tom?” I asked.

“If I didn’t have a near-toxic level of caffeine in my system, I’d say I wanted to sleep until Monday, but all I want now is a shower, some food, and maybe a beer or two.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

We made it to the bar by before seven o’clock. The beer or two turned into four pitchers. Around ten o’clock, the alcohol was starting to overpower the caffeine and I was thinking about heading home to crash – for days. Then I noticed two girls sitting at a table near us.

“Tom, check out the pussy at the table over your left shoulder,” I said.

“Huh?” Tom said, obviously feeling the effects of both our marathon work session and his half of the considerable amount of beer we had consumed. Then there were his double shots of whiskey. If Tom decided it was time to get stupid-drunk, he always had a double shot before each pitcher we bought. He actually can hold his liquor, to a point. Sometimes he partied right past that point. Those were the times when I really wondered about myself, calling this dipshit my best friend.