“So there’s this kid that is seen frequently enough on campus. I’d say he’s a Junior, but I’ve also heard he isn’t a student. An otherwise unremarkable kid with a pink varsity jacket, He’s been dubbed Jayhawk’s “campus cryptid” by students and faculty alike. That’s kinda bull though. I mean, it is apt, he makes rare appearances almost always wearing the same clothes and is the subject of many a brief but memorable story. But not like in a Bigfoot or Mothman kind of way. No, he’s more like Paul Bunyan, John Henry, or Pecos Bill. Except he’s flesh and blood. Not just a story. Keeps to himself mostly, values his privacy after the incident. Not sure how many people know who he is, or even if he wants to be known right now. I’m just gonna refer to him Pink Varsity.
He travels the states, supposedly searching for a place to settle down in and build a new home, but he drops by Jayhawk because his girlfriend attends classes here. She’s an odd one too, but a more mundane odd. An average girl that happens to have a pink lion and a magical girl anime sword. Which, yeah is weird, and there are stories of her life before college that are out of the ordinary, but strange things happen almost every time Pink Varsity is on campus.
The earliest story about him was when he accompanied his girlfriend to one of Jayhawk’s open house events prior to her enrollment. A unseasonably heavy rainstorm hits and he just conjures this huge pink rounded saucepan thing with a blue lip and this white thorn pattern on it. Uses it to keep a whole group of visitors dry going from one building to the next. A few other prospective students were floored by this, but this was apparently normal to Varsity Jacket. he was too busy being impressed by the existence of Cookie Cats on campus. Supposedly would not stop talking about how they were no longer available where he grew up.
There are lots of stories about him. Like the time he walked onto campus with this orange amazonian woman following him before she destroyed a guy’s car with a headbutt. Or the time he pulled a Mary Poppins and floated to the top of the ceiling of the university center because he was excited for date with his girlfriend. Or the time he had this giant pink hamster ball thing at a frat party and started an impromptu pinball type game was played with it in an empty parking lot. Hell, there was a time when a gorgeous enby was seen at a few raves and threatened to depose him as the campus cryptid that everyone talked about. Until it turned out they were just Varsity and his girlfriend merged into one person.
What he’s best known for though is the radio.
When his girlfriend entered her sophomore year, He had a brief tenure as the college radio station’s guest DJ where he was a wildcard of musical choices. Initially he stuck to the station’s existing library of songs, until playing Emily King’s Can’t Hold Me for his girlfriend during a particularly stressful week. He made the mistake though of including a personal anecdote about dancing to the song with her at a skating rink. When the local cryptid/folk legend starts sharing personal details, people tend to take notice. Listener feedback lead to requests for more music with a personal connections and more anecdotes. It started with songs from indie darlings Sadie and Shep, as well as tracks from the old band, Sadie Killer and the Suspects. There were even some Suspects’ deep cuts that premiered there on that station. He moved onto his rock star father’s discography from there, bringing Mr. Universe’s work some attention. Then he went wild: He would talk about some of his friends and their influences. Mike Krol, some more Emily King, a hometown R&B singer named Harold Smiley, Uber Rage, Chugi and the Woo Woos, Jack and the Frosted Tips, 7-Force, The Philosophy Majors, Quadrinometry, Orange Magic Orchestra, Aquaticus Baticus, S.I.S., Stella, the list just went on. On rare occasion he played songs he wrote and recorded.
But again, sharing some personal songs wasn’t all that he did. There was the anecdotes. Sure, that alone would have been enough to fuel people’s curiosity of this enigmatic figure, but as he got more into the DJ thing he opened up with more personal anecdotes. Like, you’d be listening to Quadrinometry’s The Secret of the Wave Lies in Creation and he’ll follow it up with the story of how one of his guardians reacted to the song by jumping out of a moving van. During a quest to recover the Atlantic Ocean. Because it was stolen. And while you’re sitting there trying to take all that in, he’s moved on to talking about something more mundane like the history of the fry shop and pizzeria. Though to be fair some people enjoyed the mundane stuff too.
There were anecdotes on alien empires, a conspiracy theorist hanging out in the lighthouse, secret rebellions, this one really freaky onion kid, efforts to reform the system, a space pirate friend he resurrected, aliens with grudges against his mom, street races against an entitled jerk, and a lot of other crazy stuff mixed in with dry stories about friends and family that he tells with the same sincerity as he does with the crazier stuff.
That all changed one afternoon when he played Kerry Moonbeam’s Mr. Universe and mentioned how it inspired his dad to leave home and become a rock star. That lead to him telling the story about how he first heard the song and hated it, how he chewed out his dad for how he was raised. I guess he didn’t intend to talk about that though, because he started to berate himself for telling the story and for getting used to speaking on the radio and being so open to people he doesn’t even know. And suddenly it sounded like he was having some sort of panic attack. Then best anyone can guess the equipment went haywire and the radio signal went silent. The station repaired it two hours later and Varsity announced he was going to take a break.
He disappeared from the radio completely after that. hasn’t returned since. Oh he still shows up on campus and says he’s doing better now. That it was “just a relapse and he didn’t even become a monster this time,” whatever that means. Still, it’s been a whole year since then and he doesn’t have plans to return to the radio any time soon.
Sucks really. The new DJ just isn’t as good.”
—Anonymous Jayhawk Student
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