Wet Wet Wet Monday

It's not often that you find yourself in the middle of a half-shirtless hoard gathering outside at midnight in April, equipped with little more than warpaint and galoshes, but allow me to walk you through one of Jonathan Edward's best traditions (and probably the single most epic night of my life): Wet Monday.

Wet Monday is vaguely based on the Polish tradition of Dyngus Day that follows immediately on the tails of Easter Sunday. On this day, boys would awaken the girl they fancied by getting her mother's permission to sneak into the house and wake her up by dumping a pail of water over her head. Our version has lost the religious and courtship aspects, and is instead a monumental midnight water fight between the freshmen and upperclassmen of JE. With the rest of JE 2011, I spent the afternoon readying bins full of waterballoons for the long trek off to war.


I'm sure we probably confused a lot of people- in the few blocks we covered, we crossed the street in front of all sorts of great late-night hangout spots, including the infamous nightclub Toad's.
As we approached the gates, I took it upon myself to strike fear into the hearts of my enemies, bugling war cries and the Mortal Kombat theme song. Also note how many of us were clad in apparel inspired by the Movie 300. Many cries of "Tonight, we dine in hell!" accompanied the battle.

It was pretty cold, so I had to continually blow warm
air through my mouthpiece to keep the trumpet playable.

Once we arrived, we faced a new difficulty beyond the attrition of war: The battle usually takes place in the courtyard of JE, but last year the upperclassmen resided in Swing Space while JE proper was under renovation. Normally JE would have multiple gates for branched assaults and surprise attacks, but Swing Space only afforded us one main entrance, a bottleneck of slaughter. So, being the crafty individuals we are, we constructed a phalanx out of umbrellas.

From the inside of our defenses

We broke through the initial gate, bombarded with squirt guns and water balloons from a few strategically placed defense posts atop the gate, and then unleashed our fury...

I cried havoc, and then proceeded to let slip the dogs of war.

My friend Darell, who brought her camera into the middle
of the action, is possibly the bravest photographer I know.

Upperclassmen had some key advantages, including the fact that
they live in a fortress. Beyond just having three times as many warriors,
they also controlled the key territories of hoses and spigots.

Despite incredibly one-sided odds,
JE 2011 remained undaunted by the threat of wetness.

Our Master Gary Haller was there too, while he and
Associate Master Sondra Haller lovingly threatened bodily
harm to anyone foolish enough to step on Sondra's tulip beds.

It's hard to say who was the winner in a situation like that, but the Freshmen class fought a much larger, better equipped force with such unwavering ferocity that I have no doubt we deemed ourselves victorious. The animosity of battle quickly faded as we all retired to the basement of Swing Space for warm towels and hot pizza. Things change when you put your life into someone else's hands like that. Jonathan Edwards had become united in wetness, slightly soggier but far more hardcore than ever before.