So there I was, a college theater kid on a trip to San Antonio for a competition — performing Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class, a play already overflowing with dysfunction, livestock, and the slow decay of the American dream. Naturally, our director insisted on “authenticity,” which is how I ended up responsible for a real sheep in a Roadway Inn that looked like it had been decorated by someone who had beef with happiness.

The freshmen were upstairs, the sophomores downstairs, and someone — fueled by youth, hubris, and probably boxed wine — decided to call an escort service. The sophomores immediately panicked, proving that even in college, sophomores are basically toddlers with student debt.

I’m downstairs, thinking the drama is over, when the escort’s associate shows up and starts pounding on doors like they’re auditioning for a Sam Shepard monologue. Upstairs, downstairs, everywhere — like they were performing a one‑person show titled Bad Decisions Echo Through Eternity.

I decide I’ve had enough and bring the sheep inside. I tie it to the bathroom faucet because that’s the kind of problem-solving you develop when you’re paying tuition to perform existential livestock theater. Meanwhile:

• Wally is in the shower,
• Tom is passed out in a beer-can nest,
• And I’m standing there in my underwear ironing my clothes like a man who has accepted his fate.

There’s a syringe on the TV because the sheep apparently needed a little “Shepard sedation.” I didn’t ask questions. I was too busy trying to look respectable while living through a scene that felt like True West had a baby with Jackass.

And then — because the universe has impeccable comedic timing — the police walk in.

Wally bursts out of the bathroom in a towel like he’s auditioning for a Dove commercial. The officers freeze, taking in the full tableau:

• Me, half-naked, ironing like a suburban dad preparing for a PTA meeting
• A sheep tied to the faucet, sleeping like it’s method acting
• Tom, unconscious in a beer-can nest
• A syringe perched on the TV like Chekhov’s gun
• And the unmistakable vibe of “Sam Shepard would absolutely write this scene”

But THEN — the pièce de résistance — the cops decide they need to speak to our professor.

So they go upstairs and awaken our 80-year-old theater professor, the kind of man who had one single hair wrapped around his entire head like a halo of academic exhaustion. He emerges in his robe, blinking like a confused barn owl, and proceeds to smooth-talk the police with the effortless charm of someone who has survived decades of student idiocy.

He looks at us — the sheep, the beer cans, the syringe, the towel-clad Wally — and delivers his immortal line:

“You little shits… you little shits are gonna be the death of me.”

And somehow… SOMEHOW… that was enough.

The cops sighed, wrote us all tickets, and left. No arrests. No handcuffs. Just the lingering scent of disappointment, sheep, and San Antonio humidity.

And that, my friend, is how a college production of Curse of the Starving Class turned into a full-blown absurdist masterpiece featuring me, a sheep, two exhausted police officers, and one elderly professor who saved us all with nothing but charisma and a single heroic hair.