GET TO KNOW: THE KID WHO FELL THROUGH THE ECLECTIC SKYLIGHT

It started out stupid, like every other night. We pre-gamed in WestCo and listened to nostalgic 90s rap. Everyone got too drunk. Nobody wanted to smoke weed or have sex with my visiting friends. What seemed like any night I may have had at college – or at home in Minnesota, for that matter – soon devolved into a sanguine shit show which the student body of Wesleyan may very well remember for years to come.

“it’s weird cause I really only remember after falling through the roof. I vividly remember plastic breaking and then blood everywhere.”

The atmosphere at Eclectic House prior to my friend’s fall was much like every other show this school year. I was surrounded by people whose names I knew but whose personalities I could not actually tell you very much about, telling stories to girls who were almost certainly not interested. On the Eclectic balcony, bumming cigarettes from people who indirectly fund my burgeoning habit in exchange for passible conversation, I was unmistakably in my comfort zone.

“The night up to falling was pretty blurry. I’m on the skylight, I hear a crack, I hear someone say ‘oh shit oh shit oh shit’ and then I hear another crack and see the ground and I think ‘oh shit’”

The idea for this story started when, in a stupor that he has since attributed to “percs”, my friend – the infamous “Skylight Kid” – accidentally sent an email to Aural Wes instead of ‘that band with the long name.’ He later conceded that this move was characteristic of an “idot” (sic). One fifteen-minute-long drug-fueled interview later, I had all of the information I needed to write a semi-accurate facsimile of the time when I passed up that “The World Is A Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid To Die” concert for a night in the Middlesex Hospital Waiting Room.

The first words Skylight Kid said to me during the interview were “frosty…super frosty…like dairy queen blizzard level frosty” which were apparently intended to characterize his level of inebriation. The more we talked, the more the events of Saturday, October 12th - and the earlier hours of Sunday morning - began to creep back into the kid’s mind.

Another one of my friends (who wishes not to be named) jostled past me and urgently shouted “Code red,” which I naturally interpreted as, "somebody dropped the blunt." Fuck me, right? I would have preferred something along the lines of “your dumbass friend just fell 15 feet through two layers of glass and needs immediate medical attention right fucking now.” As I was not fully aware of the circumstances, I sent a text reading “you guys good?” and finished my cigarette before investigating the incident.

“People all over campus have asked me how it happened. Friends, teachers, deans, janitors and I’m just like… ‘I was drunk’… so yeah I don’t really understand how people ask that question.”

With that explanation, Skylight Kid joined a timeless lineage of wrongdoers for whom “I was fucked up” is a valid excuse for any and all inappropriate behavior. He hit the ground, miraculously landing on his feet. Skylight “noticed a lot of blood” and stumbled into the closest room, taking several steps on an ankle that was later confirmed as broken. He wasn’t in a lot of pain but immediately asked onlookers to “take me to the hospital.”

The first students on the scene astutely chose to call an ambulance. Without disclosing too much information, I can assure you that nobody was in the right state to drive a car. At least one responder’s face stayed in a painted, cartoonlike expression of awe. After sitting down and having some timely first aid performed, the pain finally set in. Skylight Kid was drunk, dizzy and terrified.

“Out of nowhere, this girl started petting my head and that calmed me down so much.”

He remembers it like a dream. My injured friend was met by a sea of unrecognizable heads while getting carted out of Eclectic on a stretcher. By this point, word had already spread. An accident of this nature couldn’t be kept secret for long. My friends and I jostled for Instagram fame and a Public Safety Officer remarked that he “must have been doing it for the pussy.” It’s become a cliché, but this shit was like a movie.

“I had a mental shift in the hospital. The adrenaline went down and I started to realize what happened.”

They couldn’t give him an IV because the ambulance ride was too bumpy. At this point, Skylight Kid was finally aware of the stakes of his fall. He had no head or neck injuries, which seems to be an incredibly fortunate outcome for one stupid motherfucker. When I first saw him in the hospital, my friend looked almost Christlike, his arms strewn to either side of his body like a plea to the heavens. His right arm took the most severe damage from the broken glass, and would receive over twenty stitches and sutures later that night. The rest of my evening was spent alternating between three locales: Middlesex Hospital waiting room, across the street from Middlesex Hospital (cigarettes not allowed within 25 feet of the building) and the Taco Bell on Washington Street (I plead the fifth).

“They didn’t wake me up for breakfast cause, you know, why would I want food? Instead, they wake me up for Percocet.”

We left the hospital at 4 AM with instructions to return at 7. We returned at 7 and were given instructions to return at 9. My pounding headache and the blunt reality of daylight certainly made matters worse. Skylight kid was eventually picked up at the hospital by his grandma, who lives in Hartford and was described as “chill as fuck.” He came back to Wesleyan to pick up his stuff from my room and hobbled around campus like some kind of human Jenga tower, his left arm maneuvering a crutch while his right leg dangled several inches from the ground (the damage to his right arm prevented him from putting weight on it). Skylight kid looked as though he may totter over from even the slightest breeze. The world is a beautiful place indeed.

Weeks later, my friend is back at his ‘prestigious east coast college.’ He was given a scooter to get to-and-from classes, and received a free pair of shoes from Supra by sending them a picture of his bloodied sneakers (with the ridiculous story included). Skylight kid has suffered no long-term injuries other than a slightly bruised ego, which he probably needed. Since that fateful night, the Eclectic balcony has never felt so good.

“All things considered, that was one trill weekend. What actually happened to that blunt though?”