What’s your vice? Is it greed? Maybe glory. It could be temptations of the flesh. What about something more...exotic? I want to hear yours, but allow me to introduce mine.

Saying dumb shit on Twitter.

Sure, I use Twitter as a means of expanding my horizons by following equally intelligent people with differing ideas in areas of interest like sports and politics to challenge the conventions I’ve set for myself, but nothing compares to the feeling of getting a rise out of strangers by saying something I don’t believe or exaggerating something I have a slight opinion in. I’m caked in at least 7 different layers of irony by this point.

My favorite method of doing this is replying to people significantly more important than I. About once a week I reply to the Kansas City Royals Twitter account demanding they say a player “went to Dong Town” after hitting a home run. I’ll ask Andy McCullough, the current beat writer for the Los Angeles Dodgers and former beat writer for the Royals, questions pertaining to the current Royals team that he has no business following. I’ll ask Jon Rothstein what the hell he’s talking about when he steps out of his lane of one-liners.

There is one person I have never done this to. That is the head basketball coach of Marquette University. His name? Glad you asked. Steve Wojciechowski.

I don’t follow him on Twitter. Never have. My feed is too preciously configured to allow unnecessary PR speak in there, plus any announcements that I need to know are going to come from the official Marquette Basketball account anyway. There’s no need.

One morning, sitting quietly at my desk at work, as I am wont to do, I decide to take a glance at the ole mobile cellular device. I do this cool thing on my phone where I download versions of the websites I most often go to in order to see them in a way that allows for the ideal mobile experience. Now instead of going to my computer browser and typing “twitter.com”, I pull up the Twitter Application on my phone and the website pulls up on its own. Pretty neat stuff.

This particular morning, however, was less neat than application technology. I scroll through my feed to see many of the people I follow have quote tweeted our beloved coach, but I can’t see what they are quoting. It shows nothing but the link to the tweet. Knowing it must be an error, I go to his main page to find the fateful message.

I was thoroughly shook. I felt like Keri Hilson at the beginning of Knocks You Down, telling myself this wasn’t supposed to happen to me. I went through every possible scenario in my head, but nothing seemed to fit. I needed to find out from the source.

---

What follows is a completely true account of my journey to find out why Wojo blocked me. Nothing is exaggerated. Pure, hard facts.

Act One

I abandoned everything. Within 10 minutes of seeing I was blocked, my letter of resignation was taped to my boss’ door and my car was packed with a box labelled “Emergency.” In this box are 3 packages of Oreos, 4 additional empty packages of Oreos, a magnifying glass (for detective work, obvs), a list of pet adoption centers that carry bloodhounds (also for detective work, also obvs), 2 days’ worth of insulin and a Fleshlight, which was the result of an incredibly unfortunate typo that I sent to my mom when I told her I needed a box of emergency supplies. [Editor’s note: Google that on your work computer at your own risk.]

I didn’t want to go into this blind and just drive to Milwaukee without any sort of feasible reason to start there, so I had to think outside the box. I didn’t have many clues to work with. All I had was Wojo’s page telling me I was blocked. I didn’t have a time that this occurred or anything. I searched through my tweets to see if I ever tweeted something mean to him. I hadn’t. I went through old articles of mine for similar language. Nothing. But then something occurred to me.

Wojo was officially hired on April 1, 2014. You know what else happened on April 1, 2014? You guessed it. Archaeologists discovered a 3,300 year old tomb with a sarcophagus belonging to a scribe named Horemheb. That name sounds like the fallen gorilla/nuclear meme Harambe, but that’s a bit of a stretch. You know who else was an archaeologist, though? Indiana Jones. Raiders of the Lost Ark was released on June 12, 1981. 6/12/1981 and 4/1/2014, or 6,121,981 and 412,014? Let’s do some math. 6,121,981 minus 412,014 is.....23. You know who wears 23 for Marquette right now? Jamal Cain. And he goes to college where? Marquette. And guess what city that college is in.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I should have known all along. That’s where Wojo must be, lurking in the shadows.

Act Two

Bless you. My journey has been mapped and I’m a man on a mission. I have called the athletic department on multiple occasions, but I get this cryptic message that their office is open Monday through Friday from 8-5. 5 is smaller than 8. They clearly are onto me and sloppily hid their tracks. That didn’t stop them from threatening me, though. They sent rain, high winds, volcanic ash and even fellow people to drive past me and flip me off.

Through the temptations they sent my way, I persisted until something caught my eye. Those who know me are well aware that I’ll stop at just about any Casey’s General Store because their pizza is damn good. After rejuicing the batteries, I noticed a herd of 5 people in the distance. What they were carrying almost seemed like a sign.

It was a sign. It read, “We Walk For Wojo’s Unblock”. I ran to them like brothers in arms. They, of course, were skeptical. They asked me for the password, to which I promptly responded, “The Scarecrow’s recitation of the Pythagorean Theorem at the end of The Wizard of Oz is incorrect. The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is NOT necessarily equal to the square root of the remaining side. This rule applies instead to right triangles.” The leader was pleased and we gave the secret handshake, which is where we interlock all of our toes together. It’s incredibly gross and it took us like 5 minutes to complete.

“Did you determine the path?” I asked the leader.

“We found the final clue after our weekly viewing of The Number 23. Also, I hope that when you relay this story, make sure the listener feels bad for assuming I was a man when they come across the pronoun ‘she’ in my response,” she replied.

We exchanged intel and eventually combined our plans of attack. My plan was to start uncontrollably weeping the second I set foot in Milwaukee hoping that someone would give me what I want without having to ask me, while they were going to walk aimlessly around the Al McGuire Center. Not inside, literally around the outside of the building. With our ideas combined, we were now going to march right into the athletic department’s office and ask politely for our answers.

Nightfall.

Act Three

The group has arrived in Milwaukee. We didn’t go to Sobelman’s because their burgers are trash. We went to Oscar’s instead. The Big O is in heavy contention for being the best burger I’ve ever had. After getting kicked out of multiple religious services for stealing microphones and going on a very similar rant to the one above, we made our next move.

Our disheveled army has made its way to the athletic department’s front desk.

“Can I help you? By the way, in case you relay this interaction to anyone else, make sure they feel bad for assuming someone with this job is a female when the come across the pronoun ‘he’ in my response,” he said.

“Why did Wojo block us?” we replied in unison.

His eyes immediately turned to a steel black. That’s not a metaphor, either. This guy had extremely pale blue irises and they actually turned black, like an octopus living in his retinas had sprayed ink.

“Why must you know?” he hissed.

“We would like to know important updates for Marquette’s basketball team, as well as become more informed of campus events”

“Have you no knowledge of the consequences?!” he roared. “Do you know not the reason this has been done?!”

The floor opened up. Lava oozed from the walls. In the distance, Lake Michigan has turned to blood. Trumpets blaring through the streets barely mask the sound of children screaming in agony.

I jump through the floor. My new family jumps with me. There are a few tunnels we have to walk through and we got lost for a couple minutes, but we finally stumble into a room that seems to be wallpapered in crushed velvet curtains. Rhapsody in Blue softly plays. Out walks Wojo. He prepares to monologue.

“I see you have found my-”

We immediately jump him. Like, zero hesitation. Never let the villain monologue. Yeah he’s incredibly fit and all, but 6 reasonably healthy adults were easily able to take him down. Eventually he caved and unblocked us all. Order was restored. Fade to black.

Epilogue

I wake up strapped to a gurney at Aurora Sinai. Nurses are explaining to my family that I’ve had a series of mental breakdowns and that I’ve caused thousands of dollars in damages to Marquette by stealing a jackhammer from the Wild Commons construction site and trashing the atrium of the Al along with 5 mannequins that I stole from a Burlington Coat Factory. They think the plug should be pulled.

“I did it,” I muttered.

Like Will Smith in Hancock, I am a misunderstood hero. I never saw Hancock, but I think that’s the jist of it. They don’t know what I have done for them, but my actions are truly noble and I can finally see Wojo’s tweets.