By Shasta Webb

This week, The Mac Weekly sat down with Matt Hyde ’13, Peter Tynan ’13, Rachel Mueller ‘13, and Jack Wickham ’12. Friends since day one at Mac (except for Jack, who came into the picture later), this group has lived together in one way or another for the past three years. Now seniors, and one alumnus, Hyde, Tynan, Mueller, and Wickham survive under one roof (and a porch) by following strictly enforced boot camp rules, calling one another sea-themed nicknames, and hiding jokers in each other’s stuff. Jack Wickham: Something smells like corn chips. Rachel Mueller: It’s probably my feet! Sorry! Peter Tynan: Definitely Rachel’s feet. JW: Yeah, it’s Rachel’s feet. PT: How could feet smell like corn chips? Matt Hyde: I think we both shower way more than you two [to Jack and Rachel]. JW: I shower a lot. MH: You do shower a lot. You take really long ones too. JW: I do, I’m sorry. I remember I asked you about that once. MH: It’s cool. PT: It’s not about the money, Jack. It’s about the environ­ment. The Mac Weekly: How did you all get to know each other? JW: I was friends with Peter and then I became friends with Matt through Peter and then I became friends with Rachel through Matt and Peter. RM: He was living on our porch. JW: Right, yeah. MH: See, he tricked us. JW: Wait, what does that mean? MH: He said at the end of August that he had a bunch of things lined up, and that if every­thing fell through he might have to live on our porch. JW: That is a very unfair representation. Well, it’s kind of what happened. MH: This one weekend I went camping, and when I got back, Peter’s like “By the way, Jack’s crashing on our porch. Everything fell through.” JW: It did fall through! TMW: Do you guys do anything weird in your house? RM: We had this great rule when we first moved in. We had a pull up bar that was already in the house, in the bathroom. And the rule was every time you went to the bathroom, you’d have to do as many pull ups as possible. And that lasted for a while. PT: You never did it. RM: I did too! If I put my feet on the sink I could pull myself up and do like, two. JW: Weren’t you worried that was going to break the sink? RM: I’m petite. JW: Fair. PT: Weird things happen in our house. The jok­ers. RM: What happened to all the jokers? MH: I got a deck of cards from my boss, so we took the jokers out, and every time you found a joker in your stuff you had to do 20 pushups. TMW: This is like boot camp. MH: You would think it would have effects, but we’re still really weak. So one time, Peter was gone and I exacto-knived the side of his credit card envelope that had just come and I slipped the joker inside and taped it back. PT: I examined that envelope for like five min­utes. I knew something happened. TMW: Any other boot camp related rules? PT: We all have shrimp nicknames. RM: Peter is Jumbo or Mr. Plentywood. You don’t have to put that in. PT: No, make sure that gets in. MH: There’s no such thing as bad advertising. RM: Matt is Crusty. Crusty Shrimp. And I’m Mother Clam. PT: Mo clams, mo problems. We make weird noises at each other. TMW: How did you guys get to know each other? RM: Matt and I lived across the hall freshman year. MH: We went to the state fair together. And we went with a couple friends, and for some reason they thought that I should be romantic with Rachel. He tried to get me to win stuffed ani­mals for her. That wasn’t happening. PT: You guys were totally flirting. RM: I mean probably. PT: I met Matt at a party. JW: Really? That’s so cute. I didn’t know that. PT: I got a really weird text from this girl who I was sort of not really kind of with. And I was like, “Matt, you seem like a cool guy. What the f— do I say to that?” TMW: What did you say? What did she say? PT: Somehow marriage had come up. I kind of freaked out a little bit. This was like the second week of freshman year. She was from my high school. TMW: What were Matt’s wise words? MH: I don’t think I have wise words. I don’t remember. I think I was just like “Holy shit!” Then I don’t remember anything. We went to Domino’s that night. PT: It’s been the same ever since. TMW: Do you hang out as a house? RM: We went to Plums last week. PT: Plums is the best. TMW: Do you go to Plums every week? MH: Every other week, I would say. PT: More often than I’m willing to admit. TMW: Do you ever fight? MH: When we first moved in, Rachel didn’t do her pull-ups. RM: I didn’t. They got really mad at me. I also didn’t do my dishes in the morning. You can’t leave the dishes in the sink for more than, like, six hours, or else it becomes a very serious problem. MH: Six hours is a really long time. RM: You know, it’s not that long. I would say 24 hours is long. TMW: What do you like about living to­gether? PT: Nothing. RM: But Peter, why?! I like that they’re so clean. I’m the messiest. TMW: What happens after Mac with you all? RM: I mean, I’m inviting them to my wedding. MH: Which is taking place soon after graduation. JW: Is that true? RM: No! PT: She’ll be the first in the house to get married. JW: The story was, if the land­lords caught me, that we [ref­erencing Rachel] were dating. We didn’t have to pull that out though. TMW: What else should we know about your house? JW: They have their own per­sonal bike racks. RM: We used to have to keep all of our bikes in the stairway, which was a pain in the ass be­cause you can really only put two bikes there. MH: We asked our landlords and two months later we got them. TMW: Did you live together last year? RM: Yes. We’re long term. TMW: And sophomore year? MH: Peter and I did. TMW: A lineage! Any last words? MH: We should have done this interview before going to Plums. JW: Or two in the morning on a Friday morn­ing. refresh –>