“And then it’s promptly finished by everyone else,” Traverso notes.

“Because if you don’t feel like continuing to eat what you’ve ordered…” Bakken starts to say.

“It’ll go,” concludes Mujalli.

“Yep, it’s gone,” Traverso affirms.

These seniors also benefit from the custom of freshmen “donations” of snacks for bus rides. They take great joy in controlling not only the supply among the O-line but also distribution to the other positions.

Snacks weren’t as easy to come by this summer, however, when their George Foreman grill was their primary cooking tool. Although it is hard to imagine how the grill could lead to unwanted mess, the offensive linemen insist that no amount of cleaning could rid their room of a mysterious smell.

“It had to be a health code violation,” Mujalli says.

“I pity whoever lives in that room in DeWolfe right now,” Traverso says.

“It was a freezer full of food, of all meat,” Mujalli recounts. “We would just grill up on a Foreman Grill. It knocked out the fat, but we put the fat somewhere where we probably shouldn’t have.”

Even with the smell, the three still couldn’t wait to get off work and eat together. Bakken worked at Mellon Financial, Mujalli worked at a tech start-up and Traverso worked on a research project. They would meet up after work to lift, then ate at Uno’s (all-you-can-eat Tuesdays) or raced home to the Foreman Grill.

Grocery shopping was a similar race among the three.

“We’d all have our own cart,” Bakken says happily. “Me and Joe [Traverso] went to Costco this summer.”

“We spent a lot of money at Costco,” Traverso says.

“I just went up and down every aisle and picked out what I wanted,” Mujalli explains his shopping technique. “That’s not really a very smart idea, especially if you’re hungry.”

“Somebody would find something that they liked, and we’d all rush over and go get it,” Bakken remembers. “So we’d all have piles of stuff.”