If I’m being completely honest, I don’t quite get Homecoming Week on college campuses. Specifically, I don’t understand why it becomes such a huge thing for the active students.

It makes sense from an alumni relations point of view, but I’ve never really participated in it outside of the parade and the Unity Walk (both activities that the entirety of my sorority participates in).

That is, until now.

Today, I participated in the 22nd annual WMUL Car Bash for the first time, and I actually had pretty decent fun.

It’s also a bit strange that I’ve never done it since I, quite literally, work in the same building as WMUL. I have classes with their members, and I’ve been WMUL-adjacent for most of my time at Marshall.

No matter how liberating it was to feel like Carrie Underwood in her song “Before He Cheats,” I will say that I am not a person made to use a sledgehammer. It’s been almost 12 hours since the event as I write this, and my arms still hurt.

That’s probably because as I bashed the car, I repeatedly attempted to take out the right side’s tail light with a very heavy sledgehammer.

Did you read that? “Attempted.” I say that because I missed the car entirely multiple times, and, in the end, I only was able to make the tail light stick out at an awkward angle as my two minute timer ran up.

Overall, I enjoyed my time at the Car Bash. I was able to take out my frustration on Dan Hollis’ “fast facts” quizzes that us School of Journalism and Mass Communications students have to take in his journalism law and ethics class. Memorizing the fair use doctrine might just be my enemy at the moment.

Also, I was able to try something I’ve never done before and mark one item off my before-commencement bucket list. So, even though I didn’t “(dig) my key into the side of his pretty little souped up four-wheel drive” or “carve my name into his leather seats,” I managed to take a sledgehammer to the back tail light of a random car in Buskirk Field.

I think that still counts. 

Abigail Cutlip can be contacted at [email protected]