After a morning run along the beach, I jogged back to the dorm, fishing for my lanyard, only to realize the key card to my room was gone.
With 30 minutes until class, I retraced my steps — the sailing center, the playground, the fountain. By the time I’d walked an extra 4,000 steps, I accepted my grave fate: Spit List.
The legendary cherub tradition – publicly posted on a giant poster in the dorm lobby – shames oversleepers, jaywalkers, key card “misplacers” and other rule breakers.
I confessed the loss to my community and academic associate. Immediately, she scribbled my name on the poster.
Like the other 17 Spit Listers that first week, I received a Saturday night text from the CAA’s: meet at 6 a.m. in the dorm lobby with an Associated Press (AP) Stylebook and a tube of toothpaste.
The four CAAs told us to circle up and then selected another cherub (thankfully) to lead a morning stretch. Then, hand in hand with a partner, we embarked on a 10-minute walk as the CAAs snapped photos and tried to hide their smiles. We stopped at a lawn, where the CAAs told us to memorize an AP Stylebook section about essential and nonessential clauses (“that” and “which,” for the uninitiated).
After we memorized the 97 words, we individually recited them while balancing on one leg. If we succeeded, we were allowed to squeeze a blob of toothpaste on a CAA’s finger and be released. If we failed, we looped around a bush three times and waited 10 minutes before trying again.
Although I survived the experience unscathed, I knew I didn’t want to endure it again. So along with always taking a crosswalk and setting five alarms before bed, for every run that followed, I slipped my new key card into my phone case and clutched it tight.
