After watching countless people biff it on the ice during my freshman year, sometimes in spectacular fashion, I set myself a goal — make it through four years at NDSU without eating asphalt. Alas, the record couldn’t last.

I thought it was an admirable goal. I stepped carefully, day after day, semester after semester. Eventually, I got confident. I started writing guides to avoid slipping on ice. I bragged about my patented flail-and-pray method.

Just this semester, I witnessed a three-person pileup, complete with spilled coffee and flying papers, which inspired me to write an article about the rogue zamboni driver who I’m sure haunts the campus just for giggles.

I chuckled at my own wittiness as I wrote it.

The day dawned cold and gray. My coffee machine plugged up with grounds, and as I fiddled with it, my bagel burned in the toaster. I could tell nothing was going to go well. All of this may or may not have happened, but it sounds better this way. Run with it.

I set out for school with my roommate at my side. Everything had melted the day before and then frozen during the night, so a thin film of ice covered the entire parking lot.

“Slicker than snot,” I said.

“Yeaheeeeeeargh,” my roommate yelled as he hit a patch of ice. He employed the flail-and-pray, and managed to stay on his feet, but looked like a fool doing it. I guffawed.

“Didn’t you see the cross-hatching?” I asked. “It’s an obvious sign of ice.”

We pressed on since the buses will leave you, ice or no ice.

I spied a melted patch and stepped confidently forward to make up for lost time. To my dismay, I found out the thin layer of water was hiding an invisible layer of ice underneath.

“I’ll get that dastardly zamboni driver if it’s the last thing I do,” I yelled, flailing madly. It wasn’t enough. I bit the dust. He finally got me.

I looked around to see if anyone witnessed the end of my perfect walking record. Besides one hysterically wheezing roommate, nobody was in sight except for a few maintenance guys spreading salt on some ice I didn’t slip on. Phew.

“The — haw — cross-hatching — hee-hee,” my roomate wheezed out, between gales of maniacal laughter.

I picked myself up and gingerly made my way to the bus stop, where I ignored the intermittent giggling.

It wasn’t until 10 minutes later that I realized I had lost something.

My pride lay somewhere back there in a puddle of melting ice.