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It's so hard to say goodbye

It is with great pleasure that I present to you Lee Camp's Final Humor Column. I sincerely urge you to hold on to it because it clearly will be worth a great deal in the future - in a couple years I plan on kidnapping various neighborhood pets and forcing them to join me in a national crime spree, and just imagine how impressed your grandchildren will be when you say, "I actually have a copy of Crazy Lee Camp's final humor column."

You may not realize it, but because I said "I urge you" in the last paragraph, random large, effeminate men are currently trying to wash my hair with Herbal Essences Shampoo. They're not easy to fight off, so I strongly urge you never to say "urge you." Aw crap, three more just showed up.

Anyway, before I say my thank yous and goodbyes, I'll give you a run-down of the important things that happen each year during life at U.Va. I've worked numerous hours to put this "run-down" into a handy, unisex, one-size-fits-all format, so you have no choice but to be grateful.

First Year: Ah, the wonders of first year are countless. They're countless because there aren't any. First year mainly consists of showering near others of the same gender, hiding alcohol in your underwear drawer and, for those truly intent on having a good time, hiding alcohol in your underwear.

Most of what I remember from first year involves frat parties. Unfortunately, my first year was about the time they started implementing the much-feared Guest List. Once Guest Lists were the norm, casually walking in the door at frat parties turned into a game similar to "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" except it was "Six Degrees of a Frat Brother." I wasted my first and second years standing in line behind people involved in animated conversations like this:

"I swear man, my roommate is totally best friends with Tim who dated this girl who puked on this guy who once met a brother in your frat. You know, Mark. Mark and I go way back. We were in 'Nam together."

"There's nobody here named Mark."

"I meant Mitch ... or Paul ... or George. We go way back."

For those of you still dealing with these situations, if you have to guess somebody in the frat, guess Rob. Guys named Rob almost always join frats and they're usually very well liked because they always kick ass in Beer Pong.

Second Year: The main annoyance of second year is that the multiple-choice exams get harder. Their increased difficulty comes from the addition of choice "E" to every question. "E" can ruin your life because it says things like, "Both A and C" or "None of the above." It completely destroys the test-taking strategy that got you moderately good grades first year even though your total study time for the entire year was shorter than an episode of Sports Center (and, let's face it, that studying was probably during Sports Center). That technique was of course blatant guessing.

Third Year: Third year is mostly a blur, but I'm pretty sure it involved spending the night on the floor of O'Neill's once. That sucked.

Fourth Year: Your last year at U.Va. is truly the year of revelry. On a list of importance, your classes now hold the spot just below whether or not you bought enough Solo cups for the weekend.

Last weekend I witnessed something which I feel serves as the perfect symbol to inspire fourth years - it was a buck-naked student sprinting away from an overweight police officer who was shining his flashlight on the kid's ass.

As you can see, the obese cop represents academia, authority and maturity. The frightened drunk nude kid fleeing into the night stands for all us fourth years everywhere, if we were to take off all our clothes.

As we graduate, I say we vow to continue running from maturity! This is a call for us to cherish our naked vulnerability and flaunt it in the face of the real world obligations staring us down in the dark night! ... at least until we accidentally run into one of those damn blue ropes around the Lawn and skid to a stop on our faces with clumps of grass lodging themselves in all sorts of scary places.

With those inspirational words said, I would now like to finish with a variety of thank yous, apologies and random parting observations.

First, I live four doors down from Tom Koch. It's terribly awkward.

I want to say thank you to everybody who has enjoyed my columns and especially to those who bought my book of humor columns, Neither Sophisticated Nor Intelligent: A College Humorist's Take on Life at the UVA bookstore or www.humor-me.com.

I would further like to thank myself for shameless self promotion.

And to my surprisingly faithful, yet painfully witless readers at The Declaration, allow me simply to repeat Brendan Behan's observation that "critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves."

So everyone, this is goodbye. As Chris Farley laments in Tommy Boy, "I wish we'd known each other, this is a little awkward." I hope this heart-wrenching farewell has evoked in you all a warm, fuzzy feeling much like wetting yourselves.

I don't know about you, but I've had a great time. Everybody, enjoy your summers, and in the future when you think of a naked guy skidding on his face, think of me.

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