If I was to tell you that there is an untold story about the class of 1909 bridge behind Maxey Hall, you would probably think I’m pulling your chain. But this story is about as real as what Cleveland claims is “pasta”.

So I was down in the basement of Penrose, avoiding homework as any good student does, and I started wandering around the archives. To my surprise, I found an old letter from 1969 stashed behind a portrait of Narcissa Whitman. Some of the writing had faded, but what I could make out was quite startling.

Dearest Reader,

I am scared. Very scared. There are literal trolls living under the 1909 bridge. How do I know? Well as I walking back to my dorm in the hippy dippy Jewett Hall, listening to “Yellow Submarine” like any basic taste kid in the 60s would I heard this deep roar from under the bridge. “WHO GOES THERE?!”

This did prompt a loosening in my bowels, and basically I shat my pants. So now I’m walking like Charlie Chaplin and if anyone else saw me they’d probably think I was losing my marbles. But it’s finals week so we’re all a little loopy.

Curious, I read further. Because like all teenagers today I have no self-control (I do, I just don’t say I do). And the more I read, the more I think whoever wrote this was high.

In my panic I say I’m a student from Whitman. To which the troll bellows, “We’re from the  future and we know things about what’s to come.” Intrigued, I ask back, “What’s coming?” in hopes he means world peace, or Nixon only serving one term, the pushover. But instead the time-traveling troll utters four gut wrenching words. “You. Will. Fail. Math. Class.”

Aside from the harsh reality that I myself might fail my own math class, I try to read on. But the rest has faded like ska music. The only thing remaining is the name of the writer.

Charles Dickinson. Isn’t he dead?