How the Watley Review came to be. Sort of.

Volume 4, Issue 5, May 16, 2006

Parents Discover Son Kept Tuition, Never Enrolled In Viking College

A respectable, educated couple in Oregon got a major shock last week when they discovered that the tuition money they'd been sending their son for 3 years had been largely spent on video games, sound systems, and a $45,000 sports car.

"We're frankly stunned that our son would deceive us like this," said Steven Thorpe, a pharmacist from Salem. "I guess there were some signs, but we just didn't want to believe them. In retrospect, however, it's pretty obvious."

Peter Thorpe was accepted to Eldgrim College over three years ago, one of the few institutions of higher education in North America offering majors in drakkar navigation, saga composition, rune carving, and pillaging. However, campus records show that Peter never arrived for fall orientation.

"Part of the problem is that Eldgrim only accepts payment in gold coins," said the distraught father. "There isn't much of a paper trail, if you know what I mean."

The Thorpes became suspicious when they found receipts in their son's jacket when he returned home for spring break.

"After almost three years, he should have been pretty much a full-fledged Viking," said Steven. "He shouldn't have been paying for living expenses by now; Eldgrim students are required to be pillaging their own books and supplies by their sophomore year." Suspicious after finding the receipts, the Thorpes asked Peter to bring home a boar for supper. When he returned home with a neatly dressed carcass wrapped in butcher paper from the local supermarket, they knew he wasn't following his studies.

"There was not a single spear wound in that animal!" said a visibly disappointed Steven. "I should have known it: his weapon was always just a little too clean. That's when we confronted him."

Wayward son Peter is slightly embarrassed by the deception, but insists that he has tried to tell his parents for years that Viking school just wasn't his thing.

"The dream of terrorizing the coasts and dipping my spear in the blood of my enemies was really my parents', not mine," Peter told reporters. "Mainly, it all just looked like a whole lot of work, you know?"

Gunnlaug Hauksen, president of Eldgrim, notes that the school is not a good fit for everyone.

"Some incoming freshmen are put off by the mortality rate of our program," he admitted, scratching his long plaited beard. "But it's really not that bad; there's a lot less alcohol poisoning here than at many state schools. Have you ever seen OSU on a Saturday night?"

Steven remains defiant about his deception, saying he will not go to Eldgrim and is saving the money to go to law school instead.

"My God," said his father. "I thought we were raising him better than that."

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