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The Troubles of Tuppy

Trouble began for Tuppy the first
week of freshman year, when she ex-
pressed to Doctor Wagoner a desire to
take both Body Mechanics and Hy-
giene immediately. Doc. Wag. could
not conceive that her motive was a
zealous one: it seemed to her to sig-
nify a childish eagerness to gulp down
all the medicine at once instead of
dutifully accepting it according to the
prescribed doses. Petts touched the
matter off by declaring that if Miss
Tuppy learned to contract her ilio-
psoas, thrust her chest forward and
her stomach back, and swing her hips
in counter-clockwise revolutions, in the
next few months, she would have
enough to think about without inves-
tigating the insides of her body until
sophomore year. To this Tuppy meek-
ly answered that she saw the error of
her ways; but from that day forth she
was for the Gym Department a
woman with a past.

Tuppy played hockey as second team
substitute her freshman year. In win-
ter she played swimming, until she
left the class by request after having
pulled Miss Brady overboard in the
execution of her first back-dive. The
day before she was compelled to give
up swimming, Tuppy had had her hair
cut, for it had taken her some time to
realize how inconvenient it was to be
oozing chlorine water on her German
notes all through her twelve o’clock
class. Tuppy joined beginners’ tennis
in the spring, lost her three new balls
in the wilderness behind the back-
board the first day she practiced, and
failed to turn up again for the re-
mainder of the season.

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During sophomore year, Tuppy’s
interest in organized athletics waned.
Occasionally she went down to hockey
when the afternoon was fine, or chap-
eroned a freshman swimming party in
a borrowed “B. M. C.”; but her main
energies she was consciously reserving
for the systematic strain which her
prep school memories forewarned her
would result from early morning
country dancing on the green. The
Monday after Big May Day, Tuppy
found herself with an awkward case
of poison ivy in the Inf., on account
of which she said she would demand
compensation from the college, for
omitting to take thought for the rank
weeds of the field, on which they
forced their “merrie schollers” to sit
down when not performing.

Tuppy spent her junior year trying
to catch up with athletic credits, which
eluded her inexplicably. By some
freak she was elected captain of class
hockey, but was never able to collect
more than two-elevenths of a team, of
which one-eleventh was her best
friend who had never played before.
In winter, she betook herself to pas-
tures new where she might amble
round with a lacrosse stick, thinking
early practices were just the thing to
wake her up for arguing with the
freshmen in her nine o’clock Philos.
class. Had not a sudden cold turn in
the weather and the acute indisposi-
tion of her sixty-cent alarm clock
providentially frustrated her lacrosse
career, Tuppy would undoubtedly
have broken every window-breaking
record in the heavier-ball class.