I LOVE KARAOKE, but I don̢۪t know what it has to do with homecoming.

Wednesday, from noon to 1 p.m., there was a karaoke contest in the pit in honor of homecoming week. I didn’t go, but if I had, I probably would’ve tried to sing “Father and Sonâ€Â or “Peace Train.â€Â

I love Cat Stevens.

What I did hear while walking across campus was, I believe, “Come Together,â€Â though the song’s famously unintelligible lyrics coupled with the caterwauling I heard coming out of the Kennel Bookstore made it difficult to know for sure.

The same problems make me wonder how much that song in particular really has to do with any traditional notions of “homecoming.â€Â

Maybe it’s dramatic, but when I think of “homecoming,â€Â I think of Odysseus. I think of the story of the prodigal son. I think of the lavish, elaborate feasts — the shanks of lamb and the fatted calves.

So really, the barbequed corn and jalapeño-eating contest that our campus saw this week just didn’t seem to cut it, in my eyes.

Perhaps I should just accept that things might have changed since antiquity — that my notions about what a “homecomingâ€Â should be have been tainted by a liberal education.

So I decided to give the homecoming events a chance. I went out yesterday to the events set up by Wellness Services.

Some of the events available to students included a face-painting booth, a fortune teller and a “haunted house.â€Â

The only one of these I went to was the haunted house, because the line for the fortune teller was too long and because I̢۪m allergic to looking stupid.

The most fascinating contribution to the celebration was the option to walk around wearing one of several pairs of Fatal Vision Goggles, which ostensibly simulate the sensation of being intoxicated at various stages and under different conditions.

I tried the pair that simulated a blood alcohol concentration of .25. Students were encouraged to wear these goggles while trying out either an inflatable obstacle course or an event called “human bowling,â€Â where participants were locked into a large, spherical cage and rolled around until it was absolutely apparent they’d suffered a minor concussion.

I’m a trooper. I tried both — with the goggles.

These goggles alone posed something of a problem for me. I wasn’t sure what complex science the makers of Fatal Vision Goggles must have employed to come up with what they seemed to think reflect severe intoxication — so I checked the Web site for the goggles.

The company, actually, is very careful not to specifically say their goggles are accurate representations of intoxication, but rather suggests that the obvious impairment the goggles provide is analogous to being drunk.

Wearing the goggles is something like looking at the world through a fun-house mirror and seemed to displace objects by about three feet to the right.

Convincing.

I tried the “human bowlingâ€Â attraction first. After watching several people repeatedly hit their heads against the ground, my primary goal was to save myself from a headache by using the handlebars inside the cage to push myself back against my seat. I succeed, more or less, but I think I also may have killed some of the “funâ€Â of the attraction in the process.

The obstacle course was a bit more exciting, largely because The Collegian̢۪s photo editor kept pushing me, trying to keep me from scaling the wall at the end.

Needless to say, I showed him.

In any case, the whole scenario seemed problematic to me. I fail to see how letting students participate in games while simulating drunkenness does anything more than reinforce an association of “drunkâ€Â with “fun.â€Â

At last, a connection back to the mythological roots that informed my initial vision for the celebration!

But I̢۪m grasping at straws.

What is “homecoming,â€Â then, besides the 15th episode of the hit television program “Lost,â€Â the ninth episode of the hit television show “Heroes,â€Â the 39th episode of former hit television program “Buffy the Vampire Slayerâ€Â and the sixth episode of “Masters of Horror,â€Â a television show that I had never heard of until yesterday?

In the loosest sense, I would anticipate at the very least somebody or a group of people coming home.

And while there will probably a good amount of alumni at the football game on Saturday, the bulk of the events this week, especially the ones I experienced firsthand, had a marked lack of people over the age of 23.

That these television shows, all with widely varying premises, can all appropriate the same title for their episodes is telling.

Homecoming, I suppose, means whatever a certain group wants to define it as.

And while I don̢۪t get it, it clearly means something to some people.

I̢۪ll let them have it.

I may even sing with them.