I See... From the BYU Archives; A Wildly Inappropriate but not Completely Immoral Party Idea

WARNING: NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF THIS POST OR THE ACTUAL EXECUTION OF THIS PARTY OVER 25 YEARS AGO; IT WAS MERELY THREATENED OR IMPLIED.

From the BYU Archives... a wildly inappropriate but not completely immoral party idea that worked. The scene is Spring Term 1983, and I have left the amorphous BYU underground for the first time and found cheap housing in the sunglight with some home ward friends at Roman Gardens Apartments, affectionately and correctly known then in BYU bachelor circles as “Romance Gardens.” I was on the prowl for an eternal mate, and living in the basements of old homes below campus in “submarinish” sleeping facilities was not impressing anyone, especially a future girl of my dreams.

The spacious Romance Gardens Apartments, especially no. 333 in top northwest corner, was a virtual palace for us. The center of the bachelor pad was a gleaming white endless living room wall that seemed to stretch on into the eternities because, as cheap BYU guys, we had nothing to decorate the walls with. It was like a reverent, imposing monument to our single manhood. That long, blank wall emotionally dominated the rest of the apartment and we strove to control its destiny.

With ruthless male efficiency I concocted a solution that killed two birds with one stone: first, cover the long, blank wall, end to end and floor to ceiling, with pristine white butcher paper; then, hold an “off-the-wall” party, and invite unsuspecting female victims from the other three corners of the housing complex over and encourage them to fill our living room wall with their artwork.

The real challenge was our competition: BYU dances, dollar movie nights, study sessions in the library, student jobs, etc. The most formidable obstacle was general social apathy. How do we get the crowd out?

We decided to make a blatant, edgy appeal to guilt. About two weeks before the chosen date, we drew up some cheap flyers about the size of a sacrament meeting program and added a cartoonish, completely unrealistic picture of three evil gangsters in trench coats pointing their machine guns at the head of cute puppy. The caption below the picture read: “Come to our Party or we'll shoot this dog!” It ended with a location and date/time.

Who would want to be responsible for the senseless death of a cute, innocent, defenseless puppy? The week before the party we heightened the buzz around the housing complex by randomly taping small chits of paper to apartment doors, walls, and pool chairs with catchy sayings like “please don't let them shoot the dog!” and “save the dog! Go to the party!”

It worked! We had a great turnout and a finely decorated wall. My future wife, a serial animal-lover, noticed me there, and the life of a fictitious dog was saved.