Where be all the pirates?

"Ughh," I groaned last Monday, greeting a new week of classes. My enthusiasm was echoed all around campus as those unfortunate souls with 9:10 classes arose and began to move around. It's a consensus-mornings at the beginning of the week are absolutely daunting. Climbing out of bed, I wished that there was something about this particular day that would add a new flavor and put the perk back into Monday (if it ever existed in the first place). Walking back from class, and in the middle of a particularly long yawn, I was startled by a euphoric greeting.

"Drink up ye matey yo ho," my friend Vicki Schairer sang. "It's September 19! International Talk Like a Pirate Day!"

How could I have forgotten? New on the scene of international holidays, the phenomenon started when John Baur and Mark Summers declared to columnist Dave Barry that on Sept. 19, everyone could dip into their devilish side and talk like pirates. After considerable publicity from local radio stations and TV, International Talk Like a Pirate Day had swept the nation.

Immediately I was caught up in the world of treasure and adventure. I had strange urges to recite lines from Pirates of the Caribbean, walk like Long John Silver and squint my right eye while screaming "Yarrr" down the paths of Brandeis.

Yet something seemed odd to me about this holiday. I recalled from the Activities Fair that there was in fact a Pirate Club on the Brandeis campus. That's right, watch yer booty and guard ye treasure, for I'm sure you've seen the Pirate Club's 156 members reciting all types of pirate jargon.

I asked myself why, on International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I was not bombarded with Brandeisian pirates plundering my pockets? Or at least passing by with the occasional "Avast, ye scalliwag!" The irony of the situation was too much to handle. My friend and I were wandering around Brandeis scaring everyone who walked by with our joyous pirate talk, while the actual Pirate Club (which is officially recognized by Brandeis) failed to be seen.

Upon passing the fifth person who backed away slowly after coming within earshot of our pirate chatter, I decided to investigate. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions. Maybe the Pirate Club did partake in its international holiday and I was just too blinded by my own thrill of piracy to see it.

I ventured on the club Web site and, to my horror, saw no mention of Sept. 19 at all! I even e-mailed the president of the Pirate Club, Ben Douglas, for comment on this travesty. He responded with an interesting perspective. "If you want my personal opinion on the matter," he writes, "talking like a pirate is just a showy Hollywood thing, and there are much more exciting things that could be done." Well, isn't this what we at Brandeis embody in every aspect? The Pirate Club is just one example of the many at Brandeis who reject expected stereotypes and live by their own constitution. Well done, me hearties, well done.