So you found a partner, signed up for DM, and somehow scrounged up your required $800 dollars. Problem is, now you have to dance for 30 hours. Anything could happen – it’s up to you!
1. It’s Thursday night. You know that you have a big day tomorrow: classes, followed by … oh, you know, just 30 hours of dancing. But your really cute lab partner just sent you an eloquent and heartwarming text: “come 2 deuuuce.” What do you do?
- The way your partner poured that flask of acetic acid yesterday sealed the deal — plus, you’re a devout follower of Keg Mondays and Deuce Thursdays. Call that taxi right away — sketchy free pizza, here I come! Click here to skip to #3.
- Pediatric cancer. You spent all year raising your $800 dollars to dance for this cause, and baby, you’re gonna dance. No amount of flirtatious texting or free pizza can tear you away from your goal — you need your sleep tonight. Reply that you can’t go and suit up, in your PJs, for an early night in. Click here to skip to #2.
2. You wake up Friday rested enough to only press snooze twice before crawling onto the floor and dragging yourself to class. After class, you decide to meet up with your DM partner to gather up all the costume accessories and assorted essentials for 30 hours of dancing. What do you grab?
- I’m going for some practical dancing shoes, a change of granny panties, a slew of healthy granola bars, and a couple funky costume accessories to layer over a comfy t-shirt and pair of jeans that I can wear all marathon long. Click here to skip to #7.
- Dance marathon is about going all out: give me my stilettos and non-breathable gold lamé spandex onesie from American Apparel! Yeeeaaah! Click here to skip to #4.
3. You wake up Friday … and have no clue where you are. Or who you are with! Uh oh. Looks like you and your lab partner continued your vertical dancing at the Keg horizontally back at their place. Time to dash. When your last class finishes at 3:00, you’re already fading fast, and in just 4 hours, you’ll be starting a marathon. What do you do?
- Take a 4-hour nap. Hopefully, it will make up for the lack of sleep last night. It’s okay that you aren’t getting work done or hanging out with friends — you’ll thank yourself tomorrow morning when the sun is rising and you are still stumbling around Norris. Click here to skip to #6.
- You know it’s against the rules, but at this point, what choice do you have? Guzzle three bottles of Pepsi Max and pop a few caffeine pills. It’s the only way you’ll get through. Click here to skip to #5.
4. Euuuhhghh. As delirium overtakes you, your existence can be summed into three concepts: a persistent camel toe, blisters the size of continents, and stranger’s sweat all over your floppy body. What now?
- Use the concentration techniques that your weirdo 8th grade teacher showed you to focus your mind on kids with cancer. You wouldn’t want to swindle your wealthy great-aunt and that random guy on Sherman who financed your marathon — you have to keep dancing. Refuel during a break and hope for a second wind. Click here to skip to #6.
- Can’t … continue…. You fumble like you’re blind and deaf through a sea of limbs and bright lights until you find a wall to lean against. Never before has a wall felt this good! Mmmm, wall…. Click here to skip to conclusion #1.
5. When the first block starts, you are feeling grreeeat, like the tiger from Frosted Flakes. But then something goes wrong. You keep having weird recurring day dreams about grilled chicken wraps attacking you, and it feels like you’ve recently been run over by a purple line shuttle. Maybe those caffeine pills were too much. You are crashing fast. You have to do something quick:
- You’ll just have to get really into dancing. There’s no other solution. Jump higher, shake harder, and feel the music stronger. And it seems to be working— all of a sudden you get into this great rhythm with some stranger who’s been dancing behind you the whole time. Click here to skip to conclusion #2.
- You know this is bad but you can’t concentrate long enough to think what to do. You try to grab someone for help, but everyone else looks like they are really into the whole booty shaking thing. Uh oh. Click here to skip to conclusion #3.
6. As the sun rises Saturday morning you begin to lose hope. But then this funky international song starts blasting. It must be the “STA Frequent Flier’s” block! And it’s like you just felt a second wind, in the form of a tropical breeze. What happens next?
- You start getting into the music — really into the music. And that stranger behind you who is digging it with you. Why didn’t you notice them before? They are definitely into you, and your gold lamé onesie too. Ohh yeah. Click here to skip to conclusion #2.
- Wow, those horror stories everyone told you about DM were totally exaggerated. You’re still feeling great, and accomplished about all the money you raised. You feel like you could dance forever. Click here to skip to conclusion #4.
7. You’re feeling so good. You did everything right and are surprisingly enjoying this whole continuous dancing thing.
- Man, you are pretty awesome. So awesome. Look at all those other people who picked bad shoes and went out during the week. You are wayyy better than they are. You decide to treat yourself to a massage during the next break. After that, you’re feeling so smug that you sit down for a moment in a pile of coats, just to watch everyone else struggling. Ha! Click here to skip to conclusion #1.
- You make sure to cheer up your friends who aren’t as lucky as you are and practice every sweet dance move ever invented. You even make up your own and it catches on to the people around you really quickly. Suddenly, it’s the last block, and you are wondering how DM went by so quickly. Click here to skip to conclusion #4.
Conclusions
1. You are suddenly become aware that your eyes are crusted over when a boy lifts a coat off your face. Wait, a coat? Your face? Uh oh. Aren’t you supposed to be at Dance Marathon? Looks like you blacked out from sleep deprivation and crawled into a den of sweaty outerwear. And you’re now surrounded by 50 exhausted dancers looking for their coats, pissed that you were snoozing while they were shaking booty for 30 hours. Run!
2. Holy awkward. What combination of sleep deprivation/crashing from a caffeine-high led you to whisper in that stranger’s ear, “you can touch me there”? You just committed the most sacrilegious of the DM Ten Commandments: hooking up on the dance floor. The last blocks are a blur of fumbling dance moves (i.e. the lawnmower; the shopping cart) and furtive glances. When it’s all over, you creep back to your bed in exhausted humiliation and vow never to use kissing as a dance move again.
3. You wake up on a strange abandoned couch in Norris. You still feel like you’ve been run over by a shuttle, and you notice you are covered in dirty footprints. Guess you passed out on the dance floor. Maybe you should’ve taken it easy this week and not OD’ed on caffeine right before DM. Lesson learned!
4. You somehow escaped illegal naps, poor life decisions in the form of hooking up with strangers while dancing for pediatric cancer, and getting trampled. You must be one of those people who are simply good at life (unless you just cheated and looked ahead.) Congratulate yourself on dancing for 30 hours—longer than most people have gone without sleep. Now get excited for finals week. Woo!