Shaggy's parents arrive in the Frosh Pit and shout for their son. He flips out -- they're early. "No Farting," Senior Shag reads from the poster on the door. "Well, that means you, pumpkin," instructs his wife. Ha! She's fabulous. She sounds like she's from Wisconsin. Yeah, I know they're supposed to be from Missouri, but I've never been there so I can only liken her voice to that of the Wisco folk. ["Isn't Sioux City in Iowa?" -- Wing Chun] Inside his room, Shaggy runs around frantically searching for a place to hide his guitar, because he hasn't confessed that he's a Music major, and I guess the mere presence of a guitar will tip his hand. That's so weird. I guess people in Missouri don't have hobbies. Like, I had lipstick in my room, but my mother never flipped her shit and assumed I was a Cosmetology major. Senior Shag wants his son to be a businessman. "He wants me to be practical. He works in an auto plant," Shaggy says breathlessly. Eventually, he shoves the guitar in a closet, while Ron recalls that Shaggy's supposed to be playing in the weekend talent show. Brightly, Shaggy decides that his performance will be the way he communicates his future plans. "They'll just know," he realizes. "Like in Billy Elliot." Ron nods slowly, amused. Shaggy's parents are growing tired of banging on the door, so he lets them in. "Hey, you made it!" Shaggy greets them cheerfully. "[I went] 80 the whole way," giggles Senior Shag. "Not a cop in sight!" Ma Shag grins, "No ticket, either!" She is great. Shaggy's dad is a heavyset man with a blunt-cut buzz, while Ma Shag has a perfect red coif and a constant toothy smile. Love her. Ron, meanwhile, shoves Maxim under his pillow, sensing that Eliza Dushku's varied charms aren't fit for this crowd.

Shaggy shows them around his tiny space. He has the greatest poster -- the old-timey blue one with a guy holding up a frosty mug of beer, as the slogan reads, "Beer -- Helping Ugly People Have Sex Since 1862!" Somehow, it makes me sad that Shaggy owns that poster, as if he takes that to heart, or something. If I owned that, I'd probably take it down whenever my parents visited. We didn't have a proper annual Parents' Weekend, though -- just a home football Saturday for which parents had a greater chance of getting tickets, because the game was the shittiest one. We did get Junior Parents' Weekend, so the school could organize special events (read: major-specific lectures) designed to make parents feel better about blowing so much damn money on tuition, and during which we compensated for that horror by renting a local bar with a hundred of our closest friends, getting our parents sloshed, and watching them dance to "YMCA" while guzzling well drinks. It was then that I learned my dad is utterly befuddled by the "YMCA" routine. The man is the best of Britain and a geophysics genius, but spelling with his arms while jumping up and down confounds him. He rules.