That's what friends are for

I mentioned previously that Shrek was an RA in college. Before the start of the academic year, this meant he went through 3 weeks of training. Three weeks seems superfluous, but I assure you if you saw the winners who were RAs, you'd understand why they needed a whole three weeks to teach them a few menial tasks.

Part of this training included B.S. team building activities such as scavenger hunts and craft time (seriously). Basically any cliche leadership retreat activity you can think of, they did. Meyers-Briggs test? Check. Moon survival activity? Check. Desert island? Check. Shrek didn't mind all the training though because he was really good friends with all the RAs. He would always go on about how close they all were. I wouldn't understand the training because I am not in a group of close friends like he was with his coworkers.

It always seemed like the other RAs did not like Shrek much. They would go out and often not tell him. Or all plan to go out on the night he had to patrol. I had a sorority sister who was an RA in the same building and she barely knew him even though he would talk about her all the time. Weird.

The climatic end to their three week training bonanza involved each person writing something nice about everyone else. The lists were then typed-up by their boss who gave each RA a list of anonymous nice things that everyone else had written about them. This simultaneously warms my heart and triggers my gag reflex.

Shrek spent all night working on his list, eagerly awaiting the next day when he would get a list of compliments (he was always fishing for them). The next afternoon, he came to my dorm with the list of compliments. If I hadn't known about this beforehand, I would have thought the assignment was to write a back-handed compliment about the entire staff in as little time as possible.

The compliments on Shrek's paper were things like "Shrek would probably be a good boxer (aside: Shrek had never boxed in his life)," another gem was "Shrek has a unique personality." There were a few variations of "If I were to get in a bar fight, I would want Shrek to be on my side (Shrek was a big guy)." But, the best one of all was "Shrek has a pretty girlfriend."

I think a few people didn't even bother to write something for him (or if they did, it got edited out) because his list had about 10 fewer comments than there were people on the staff.

But the weird thing is, Shrek didn't take the hint and still went on believing that he was the best of friends with every member of the staff. I could not believe how dense he was. I didn't realize it entirely at the time, but I later discovered that nearly everyone he had called his friend really thought he was a huge jerk. After the break-up, I had his RA "friends" and fraternity brothers telling me that he was such a dick and everyone wondered why the hell I put up with him.

Shrek made a point of saving the list. I guess he didn't realize that no one on there said anything that would suggest they even remotely liked him.

If my good friends (or hell, even my acquaintances) had to write nice things about me, I would hope they could come up with something a little better than commenting on how my physical attributes may be advantageous in a very specific situation.