The Tale of the 'EmoBoy'

Hidden under a small build and a long, scruffy fringe, lies a very interesting first year known as Chris Ansara or ‘Larry’, a nickname which he has earned while being here at Rhodes University. At a quick glance, he seems like an ordinary first year student who just blends in with everyone else. However, what comes as a surprise is his shyness, which sets him apart from a lot of the male first year students at university. From the time he was very young, Chris has been known for being sheepish. But his shy personality has slowly started to disappear as his first year of university has progressed, which is lets face it, a really good thing.

Chris arrived with his both his mom and his dad at the beginning of ‘O-Week’ and felt particularly apprehensive of what to expect, just as every other first year was. On the day of his arrival, he got settled into his residence and said goodbye to his parents who went straight back home to Johannesburg. “I felt as though I had been abandoned in my room,” he commented, staring through his long eyelashes into the blue sky before chuckling at himself. After nearly a year, he seemed to think that his thoughts as a newly hatched first year were just so insignificant and funny. He had the completely opposite reaction to most of us First Years who just could not wait for our parents to leave so we could finally enjoy our long-awaited freedom from their shackles and chains.

He became recognised very quickly by the other boys in his res as the quiet, shy guy who did not really venture out of his room very often. In fact, when he did leave his room, the other boys jumped back in surprise at the new face which had suddenly appeared out of room 6. Who knows what the boys thought he got up to, but Chris has a secret little passion which he partakes of in his tiny, little room…

Mr Ansara is a huge fan of DOTA. Now for those of you who have no idea what the past sentence just meant, let me explain using language that we non-gamers understand, rather than computer game lingo. Defence of the Ancients, or more commonly known as DOTA, is an online computer game which a surprising amount of boys in this university play. They play over the Internet with or against each other in full frontal battles! Yeah okay, so it may not sound intense and exciting to you, but to Chris and his computer gaming buddies, it really is.

Chris started moving towards the light as he began buying pre-cooked waffles and Nutella. Instead of eating the stuff known as ‘food’ in the dining hall, he would toast his waffles and spread thick layers of Nutella on them, allowing the sugar to race wildly through his bloodstream. With the overload of sugar which he was throwing down his throat, Chris became an entirely different person. I guess you could compare him to a superhero with a hidden identity which is revealed when sugar mixes with his bloodstream. This excessively hyper guy suddenly exploded from his shell and began socialising with everyone, forgetting completely about his shyness.

Soon after that, he discovered Cow Moon Theory, where he, as he put it, “could quench two addictions at the same time,” that being hubbly and Coca Cola (His sugar addiction has taken complete control of his life). It was here where he started spending a lot of his time, rather in just his bedroom and where he finally met some people who had something in common with him. Smoking hubbly.

So, this is how Chris managed to overcome his shyness. Finding people with the same interests as himself and engulfing scary amounts of sugar seemed to be just the right therapy to get him out of his shell and out into the world of socialising and integrating with new people. So, if there is anyone else out there with the same type of problem, try this method, because it really seems to have done the trick for Chris Ansara, the once shy, lonely ‘emo boy’.