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To this day, researchers have not been able to pinpoint exactly what it is about the Fall London Program at the University of Notre Dame that increases the risk of mental defect by several orders of magnitude, and without conclusive evidence the university carelessly allows the program to continue unfettered. While many suspect the sudden deprivation of football Saturdays and the subsequent, socially accepted Post-Football Sub-Coital Interhall Macking Racking and Yacking (PFSCIMRY), other factors such as weather, geomagnetic field, and hot foreign accents have not been ruled out. In the meantime, the dark side of Fall “Londomers,” as they are known, is relegated to the soft case files of the rumor mill and the Post Londomer Support Group (PLSG) that has yet to be officially recognized by Campus Ministry. This does not make the human pain and suffering any less real.

To those who suffer the second-hand consequences of the affliction, the symptoms are not at all simply “anecdotal.” The bizarre haircuts, the unforeseen urge to have something pierced or tattooed, the unnatural obsession with hard cider and public transportation, having semi-naked adventures with several of your closest neighbors at once, these are all well-recognized side-effects of the FLP@UND that have destroyed countless lives — well, if not lives, then at least relationships and telephones.

It was Superbowl Sunday, 1996, and my FLP@UND girlfriend and I had just celebrated an anniversary and promptly broken up so she could continue to pretend she was in London by cutting her hair short and hooking up with a guy with a dumber name than mine. There was a party at a mutual friend’s, some kind of an argument, and a heated post-Superbowl fight about who sucked more via telephone. And then, as reality began to trump Londonitis, I was hung up on.

Todd and Kevin were in our room watching the post-game show and gnawing on Summer Sausage as I sat on the floor out in the hallway and stared incredulously at the dead receiver in my hand. Out of nowhere, they heard above the din of the TV a

SMACK-KLANG!!!!

“What was that?”

KERPOW! CRASH-BLANG!!!

“I think it’s the phone.”

FWACK! whoosh-CRACK! KER-PLANG!!!!

The phone sailed back into the room in the terminal phase of a post-kick ballistic trajectory, crashing down square in the middle of the large gray swatch of factory-leftover wall-to-wall carpeting that had been vacated of skanky-70’s-brown couches in anticipation of a Superbowl Party that never happened.

“Correction: that was the phone.”

I walked back into the room and looked down at the sad little mess that was our means of reaching out to the rest of the world. I stooped over, picked up the base with my left hand and with my right put the receiver to my ear as I pressed and released the hook in hopes of regaining a dial tone. Nothing. I looked down at the roommates who stared up at me in anticipatory silence, shrugged, and put the phone base back down on the floor and gently laid the receiver back to rest on the hook. And then, as Todd so eloquently put it,

It was like one of those Wile E. Coyote cartoons — you jumped into the air, and then hovered there for a second, and your body remained still in the air while your legs came down like a jackhammer. It was surreal.

There was one large chunk of green circuit-board left amid the splinters of almond-brown retro phone shell, and Todd picked it up, pinned it to the bulletin board outside our door, and labelled it with a piece of paper that quoted the Beastie Boys, “Phone is ringin’, oh mah gawd.” Father David came in the following evening, having studied the silicon aftermath, and said, “You know, in the grand scheme of post-breakup freakouts I’ve seen in this dorm, if all you do is destroy a plastic phone, I think you’re doing alright.” While comforting, Father David’s words were also enabling, it might be said. That would not be the last phone to die at my hands. Or, you know, feet.

Incidentally, she’s now happily married. I am not. You do the math. Ohmahgawd.