What is this strange new feeling? Indigestion? Maybe. I did eat half of a cheeseburger calzone at midnight — and the colder half at 2 a.m., in bed.

But it can’t be that. I’ve experienced indigestion before gallivanting through the monstrosities sold as food at Kimmel. No, this is in fact a feeling that I always dreamed about having but always thought was reserved for guys named Chad who probably own fleets of yachts solely to match their extensive collection of Sperrys.

This is cockiness. More specifically: misplaced sophomore cockiness.

I always told myself I wouldn’t ever become the type of guy who groans about freshmen. But something about coming back to campus after completing a full year of mishaps and successes and even more mishaps imbued me with strangely unmatched confidence.

No longer do I get “mooed” at as I walk down the street. Now, as if channeling Walter White, “I am the one who moos!”

This cockiness even extends to how I walk down the street. Imagine my amazement when I noticed a little strut in my step. A strut. I always assumed that strutting was reserved for CEOs or pimps or gangs in musicals, but there I was, strutting like a CEO pimp ready for his big tap dancing solo.

Working Goon Squad only compounded this cockiness. There, my ego got inflated by parents staring in awe of me picking up their freshman’s refrigerator. Clearly, those three times my roommates forced me to go to the gym with them were paying off.

This ego-trip only increased when a mother I was helping stopped to tell me I was handsome. Creepy? Maybe. But I just assumed I looked fetching in orange.

Every interaction I had while helping students move in always ended with me saying, “You’ll figure it out!” Because clearly I had it all figured out — I mean, I had a beard.

It was utter euphoria for those few days. I was a “god” among nervous mortals who were forced to go to an absurd amount of ice cream socials. I embodied that “Girl on Fire” song by Alicia Keys.

But just like a literal girl on fire, my newfound swagger would be taken down a peg.

As I strutted past Watson Hall and waited to cross the street, a bus passed by. This bus clearly had a mandate from the coalition of CEOs, pimps and musical gangsters to stop my strutting, because as it rounded the bend, I was splashed with the truth.

And by the truth, I mean the murky water left by the rain with possible remnants of Saturday night’s poor decisions in it. I didn’t even think that kind of bus-splash happened anywhere outside of terrible romantic comedies. But it happened.

As I felt the water, dirt and sadness mixture soaking through my cargo shorts, a group of students walked by. I could tell they were freshmen by their copious amounts of Syracuse apparel and hopeful auras. So many thoughts rushed through my head. Was it too early in the day to moo?

They crossed the road under their umbrellas untouched by the rain while I scowled through my drenched, scraggly beard. I had found the origin of this mysterious cockiness. It’s the conceit that I know more than they do — a clearly untrue statement.

Maybe being a Chad isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

As I walked by, they asked me if I was OK. My initial thought was, “Gahh freshmen,” but I stopped myself and replied with a succinct, “Yeah. Thanks.” I’ll count that as progress.

Christian Unkenholz is a sophomore public relations and political science major. His column appears every Thursday in Pulp. He can be reached at cdunkenh@syr.edu.

Published on August 29, 2013 at 1:22 am