'Broman' story makes student appreciative

By Justin Manger

In our years at Santa Clara, it is all-too-easy to become frustrated and disheartened by any of our various failures or shortcomings. But after the events of this past Saturday night, I took heart, as I hope you will. I promise, this stuff is all true.

This weekend, while visiting my cousin and some of his friends in San Luis Obispo, I heard of a guy referred to simply as "Broman." The fact that immediately boggled my mind was that every other topic of conversation seemed to settle on this "Broman" character. Normally, guys who have consumed their weight in various liquid and chemical modifiers lack the intellectual capacity to focus on any one topic for more than a few minutes throughout the course of a night. But every other subject mentioned on Saturday was, indeed, regarding Broman.

The name was apparently bestowed upon him in appreciation of his marvelously sophisticated vocabulary, a rich and varied lexicon as evidenced by its inclusion of either a "bro", "man", or both in roughly 95 percent of all spoken sentences. His name, however, is only the beginning.

Upon closer inspection, I discovered that Broman (the closest I ever got to a real name was "Justin-something") was in fact a 30-year-old wastrel who, besides hanging out with guys who were all eight to nine years his junior, had some rather interesting habits. "The dude was always high. It was unbelievable ... he smoked enough pot to kill a small family of African Elephants," remarked Matt. "And, to make things worse, he like, never showered, combed his hair, or did anything to keep himself from looking sub-shabby. I mean, we're lazy, but come on."

"He barely managed to scrape his rent together, and that was when he actually paid it," added Tim. "I wondered for awhile how the guy afforded food and clothes ... until I found out."

It turns out that one day, while heading out for his classes, Tim saw Broman walking down the front steps with a market steak, Italian dry salami, three pairs of boxers, two socks, and a ratty T-shirt in his hands, in addition to two chickens, one under either arm.

"I swear I thought the boxers looked familiar," said Tim, "and when I came home, I realized why." Added Billy: "Yeah, it was kinda weird ... for awhile, I thought I just losing some of my stuff, and we were the ones eating the food and just not remembering. But after Tim told me about what he saw Broman doing, I didn't really know what to think. I mean, he lived with us ... where was he taking that stuff?" They never did find out.

So, after a number of other stories ranging from Broman's philosophy of the Earth's rotation being a bad thing and snakes talking to him to requests for a couple nights worth of couch-crashing turning into five months of unpaid, kleptomaniacal tenancy, the group decided to pay him a surprise visit.

Going merrily along our way, we arrived at his house, knocking on the door while announcing boldly, "We wish to see Broman!" After a couple of minutes, we were let into what appeared to be a commune of sorts, where all of the many visible occupants were lying among filth and shambles in the unmistakable, non-cognizant apathy of their own variously induced stupors.

"Where's Broman?" repeated my cousin. Finally, one of the tenants, eyes as though covered by a thick sheen of glass and snacking on Baked Lays, walked up to us. It took a moment for the only standing member of the household to speak, as the effort he was making to clear his head of the continuous stream of "whoa" and "munchies" undoubtedly running through it was clearly a necessary precursor to formalized speech. What he did end up saying, though, was the proverbial icing on the cake: "Dude, Broman was taken out of here a couple of weeks ago by the cops. He's in a mental ward man. He just wasn't cool." Having known Broman, the guys around me burst into a fit of laughter that went on for 10 minutes, while I just stared in disbelief.

So, no matter how bad things may seem, look at it this way - at least you're not Broman.