The Laws of the Ring (7 page)

Ryan has given me a whole new perspective on people in need. He and I used to ride the public bus as kids, and I was always the crack-up who would make jokes about the people who got on the bus. Silly kids' stuff like the big smelly guy, or the lady who would sit and argue with herself. Now I think about how many of those people might have had stories like Ryan's. Maybe a severe trauma that has never really been resolved and is eternally engraved in their mind, making them who they are now. Maybe they have no emotional support for whatever their mental torture is. Could be any number of heartbreaking scenarios. You never know when, in the blink of an eye, your whole world can be flopped over and rolled away, leaving you powerless to control it. Changed forever.

The 8th Law of Power

Learn from Your Mistakes

I
t's great to grow up with freethinking and free-spirited parents. You get to experience life on your own terms and make your own mistakes (and, hopefully, learn from them). But when I got to UC Davis, I quickly discovered how poorly my upbringing and high school experience translated to the world of dormitories, roommates, and resident advisers.

I arrived at UC Davis fresh out of Lincoln, California, a town of about seven thousand people, mostly farmers and hardworking Mexicans. This, of course, was way after my Christian commune days. By this time my parents had split and my mom had married my stepdad, Tom. My friends and I had the run of the town. We'd go country-cruising around a local lake, and we'd hang out on my mom and stepdad's ten-acre lot and be as loud as we wanted. People in town knew us as good kids who sometimes got rambunctious. That's, of course, a nice way of saying we got away with a lot of stuff teenagers do, including driving around at all hours and partying at the local lake.

I was one of two boys from my class to attend a four-year college directly out of high school, and the number of college-bound girls didn't exceed us by much. But one of these was my high school sweetheart, who also chose Davis and was placed in the same dorm complex as me. To boot, it was less than an hour's drive from Lincoln to Davis, so it would be easy for my buddies from high school to come and visit—and party—in my new digs with me, my girl, and my new friends. The outspoken, friendly guy I am today is not an aberration of what I was at eighteen—so for better or worse (I like to think for better), everybody in the dorm knew me within a few hours of my arriving in college, and I quickly became friends with some excellent people like Dustin Soderman and my wrestling teammate Spanky Michaelis.

Because of wrestling practices and simply a desire to ingratiate myself in my new environment, I waited until about the third weekend of my college career before I invited Will Creger, Jim Cannon, and Brian Strand, three of my buddies who were still back home, to come experience college life with me. This was going to be my shining moment, when the best of my Lincoln and Davis worlds would collide.

Flash-forward . . . with beer in tow, Dustin, Spanky, and my other college friends were having a great time with my high school buddies. To me, this was the best. I was bringing my social circles together, and everybody was getting along as I'd hoped they would. But just as I convinced myself this new college atmosphere was easy to navigate, things got slightly out of hand. My buddies from high school started popping their heads into dorm rooms uninvited, flagrantly disregarding privacy and personal space. The alcohol was on full display in my room, and when word got around that the resident adviser was coming for heads, some people panicked and others just hung out. Spanky broke his leg jumping out of a second-floor window in an attempt to avoid being caught. My buddies from home, thinking they were re-creating our senior trip to Puerto Vallarta, followed suit and jumped off the second-floor balcony into the pool in the dormitory courtyard. And there were beer cases everywhere. With my friends cleared out, I quickly cleaned up some (which is to say, barely at all) and went to bed.

It was a wild night.

I'm not sure what time the night ended, but it was well into the morning. I wasn't in a position to take inventory of all the damage we had wrought, but the next day there was an official letter in my mailbox. I was being written up for violations of noise, curfew, and alcohol, and I would need to appear before the resident adviser. I knew there were rules to living in the dorm, but I'd been too busy with wrestling and classes to consider them very closely. And let's be honest, I was still on Lincoln time, where everybody knew us and we could get away with being a little crazy without worrying about anyone getting too upset. Besides, we were just having a little fun and hindsight is always 20/20.

No big deal,
I thought.
I've never been in trouble before, and this is just a minor deal.
I was so unconcerned that I neglected to write down the time and date of the meeting with the resident adviser.

Four or five days later, I got up around six in the morning to go for a long run. When I got back, I hopped into the dormitory spa in the courtyard. The rules stated that there was to be no spa use at that hour, but I concluded that since there was no one around and that if I was quiet, it would be no big deal. You can already see that by this point I was, unknowingly, compounding my mistakes.

On cue, the RD (resident director) came out of his room, which was directly across from the spa, and stopped in his tracks when he saw me.

“What are you doing?”

“Uh . . . relaxing after a run?” I said.

“Do you realize we're supposed to be having a meeting right now?”

“Oh, dude—I completely forgot. I'm sorry. I'll be right there.”

Instead of heading to my room to change, I went directly to the RD's room to have the meeting. I had a towel around my waist and was wearing no shirt.

The RD looked at me with disgust. I didn't mean any harm, but I had broken nearly every rule in the book. I had shown no indication that I understood the severity of the situation. And now I showed up for the meeting bare-chested, seconds after breaking
another
rule by being in the spa at the wrong time. I was young, but not an idiot, and I pretty quickly realized that my state of
un
dress was going to fan the flames.

The RD started running down the list of offenses of the previous weekend. There was alcohol in the room. People were jumping off balconies. Curfew was broken. Noise rules were violated. A door was broken.

“Sorry,” I said. “Those were my buddies. I guess they thought they were in Mexico.” I wasn't mocking the guy; just trying to lighten the mood.

“
You're
responsible for your buddies,” he said, clearly not amused.

He was getting more pissed off every minute. I was disrespecting him by dismissing what he had to say and sitting there in nothing but a wet towel.

“I'm going to recommend you meet with Judicial Affairs,” he said. “You are in some trouble.”

I immediately understood the implications of this. A meeting with Judicial Affairs was serious—not a student RA or even the head honcho of the dorms, the RD—and they had the authority to kick me out of school. I thought the guy had overreacted; surely he could have just disciplined me without passing me on to the big-time authorities, couldn't he?

“Dude, it was all in fun,” I said, expressing more urgency.

“Just watch your mail for the notice of your next date to appear,” he said.

Well, I immediately developed a phobia about that mailbox and the phone in our room. I thought every envelope was a dismissal notice and every phone call was informing me that I was through.

I still remember the name of the man at Judicial Affairs who would be determining my fate—Donald Moore. When I met with him, he immediately gave me a pretty thorough dressing-down.

“You have to understand that you are now living in an environment with neighbors and rules,” he said sternly. “You have to respect those neighbors and be aware of the rules.”

Of course, by now I had come to the conclusion that I couldn't wiggle out of this with my boys-will-be-boys defense. That might have cut it back home in Lincoln, but Donald Moore was here to tell me those days were over.

I promised to do better, and I apologized for screwing up, and Moore put me on some sort of probationary watch list that meant I better not make any more mistakes.

Two weeks later I got back from a wrestling tournament late on a Saturday and went with some of the guys over to another dorm to see some friends. It turned out to be a full-on party, and within three minutes—no joke—I saw two RAs heading our way ready to break it up. I hadn't had a beer. I barely had time to say hello to anyone. But I panicked.
I can't be in here. I can't be in here. I can't be in here.

I went into the back bedroom and crawled out the first-floor window. I thought I was home free, until I found a slip in my mailbox the next morning. I had either been seen leaving the party or someone had turned me in. Back to Donald Moore I went.

This time, as you can imagine, it was more serious. I got moved out of my original dorm, away from my girlfriend, away from my friends Dustin and Spanky. I was informed that I had run out of last chances. One more screwup and I was gone.

But despite all this, I was still hanging around the old dorm quite a bit. One night, I was with my girlfriend in the lounge when Dustin came home from the frat he had just pledged. He was drunk, his head was shaved (from being hazed), and he was jumping around like a wild man.

The RD's room was right across from us, and Dustin started flipping off the door in a move I took as a form of protest against my removal from the dorm. He was bouncing around, laughing and being stupid, and at some point he decided it would be a good idea to piss on the floor's copy machine. So he did.

I didn't condone the act, but if you knew Dustin, you, too, would find it kinda funny. But the laughter subsided the next morning when Dustin heard a knock on his door. It was the RD.

“Did you piss on the copy machine?”

Dustin denied it up one side and down the other, but the RD
knew
he was the one who pissed on the copy machine because he watched him do it through the peephole in his door.

So Dustin got kicked out of the original dorm and found himself a new room in the dorm across from mine.

By this point you might be thinking that I was incorrigible, but I was tired of fucking up and behaved myself for the rest of the year. I studied, wrestled, kept my nose clean. I didn't so much as leave a strand of hair in the communal bathroom sink.

During spring-quarter finals week, the last week before summer vacation, Dustin and I finished our last exam and were walking through the hallway one night with another of our friends. We weren't loitering—we had a destination (another friend's room), and we weren't being obnoxious, I don't think, but the rules were stricter for finals week—no loud talking, no after-hours mingling in the dorms. We sat on the floor outside of two of our girl friends' room in the hallway and were talking quietly about plans for the summer when, to our surprise, an RA popped his head out and said, “I'm going to write you guys up.” Apparently, our voices carried.

Neither of us lived in this dorm and
this
RA was one of the few who didn't know either one of us, so Dustin decided to lie about his name. Stupidly, I did the same.

I don't know what led me to believe I could get away with this. Although the RA didn't know me, you couldn't go ten feet without finding someone who did. I was an outgoing wrestler with an unusual name and a desire to know everybody I came across. And of course, in the RA community, there was a target on my back. I got a phone call from Donald Moore.

“We know you were the one in the hallway,” he said. “You and I need to have a meeting to discuss lying and the university's code of conduct. I also want to know who was with you; we can talk about that when you get here.”

Dustin begged me not to give him up. “Dude, my parents—you don't understand,” he said. “It will kill them if I get kicked out of school. My life will be miserable. You can't give me up. You can't.”

Obviously, it would have been better if he'd considered all the collateral damage before he made poor choices, but I couldn't unwind the clock. I felt for him—he was my friend—and so I went along with him when he came up with a plan to talk to one of our friends who had no previous behavior warnings.

“Dude, I need a big favor,” Dustin started with this guy, Darren.

Darren was a cool dude who hadn't had any write-ups or trouble throughout the year; he was a good friend also and realized that talking in the hallway was not going to get him into much trouble. A first write-up, especially for something so small, was basically just a warning and our time in the dorms was days away from being over.

Within minutes, Darren went from “no way” to “okay.” Dustin is a good salesman.

So, back to Donald. We were getting to be old friends now.

He got right to the point. “I'll let you off with a warning if you give up your friend.”

I told him I was with Darren. He looked at me skeptically.

“Are you sure, Urijah?”

“Yes, I'm sure.”

“You're
sure
you weren't with Dustin Soderman?”

Uh-oh.

I persisted for a few more sentences and then it was apparent I had to give in. “Why am I being punished for lying to you instead of giving up my friend?” I screamed out. “Do you understand the position I'm in here?” I launched into a passionate speech about friendship and loyalty and the unfairness of being singled out.

I was pretty pleased with my self-righteous explanation. Donald Moore wasn't. He couldn't stand my let-it-all-slide mentality. He was adamant that I be kicked out of school; according to the picture he painted, I had no other choice, and he proceeded to give me options for other schools I could attend once I was dismissed. I couldn't accept his punishment, however, and wasn't ready to lay down for his opinion on my future.

I researched the university's bylaws and discovered that a student has to agree to be dismissed. I had the ability to fight the decision and force the authorities to make their case. I decided to fight. Despite my occasionally juvenile behavior, I loved UC Davis, and I wasn't willing to give it up easily.

I spent the summer writing letters to anybody who would listen and requesting meetings with administrators. I acknowledged my mistakes and asked for their forgiveness. I selectively focused on the most recent event, which I wholeheartedly felt was unjust. I was protecting a friend. Someone
had
to see the nobility in that. But as I rewound the events through my mind, I could see that the Judicial Affairs board clearly felt I was making fools of them one time too many.