Old School

This time of year makes me think of moving into dorms, of leaving home for the first time, of buying sheets and laundry baskets and shoes and books and deciding whether I was going to write in blue pen or black pen for the year. Would I get another pair of Bass bucs or branch out into something similarly preppy but different? Suede Adidas, perhaps?

I wrote about living in the dorms, once, for my school newspaper. About how no one on my floor knew anyone else when we first got there. We were from all over: Okemos, Michigan; Elkhart, Indiana; Chicago, Illinois; Cleveland, Ohio. From the smallest small town in Indiana to the biggest of the old rustbelt cities. Our dorm didn't have suites. We had one big bathroom, down at the end of the hall. Four sinks, two toilets, four showers.

I wrote about how, if it weren't for those bathrooms, I don't know whether I ever would have had friends in college. My first weekend there, someone was hurling into one of the toilets, getting babysat by her new roommate. I walked in, having just gotten back from my friend from high school's room. We ended up sitting in the bathroom for hours, making sure the sick girl didn't get puke in her hair and learning everything there was to know about each other.

Remember how hot it always was? When you moved in? How miserably hot it was and how no one had air conditioning? Except the one girl, whose grandfather was a doctor and wrote her a prescription for one? She always moved in early and we'd sit in her room during frequent brakes, drinking beer our fathers bought for us at the corner store to drink after lugging boxes up three flights of stairs. They thought the beer was for them. How little they knew.

And how happy everyone was to see each other, after that first year? And how the first weeks were flurries of exchanging phone numbers? And looking people up? Gazing around huge lectures to see if you recognized anyone? Figuring out if you could make it back to the dorm for lunch during the hour break you had or if you had to go to the freak dorm to eat? Finding out who moved off campus? Who was throwing the party? Who was putting together the football tickets so we could all sit together?

I miss those guys at this time of year. I miss them badly. I miss celebrating Smithy's birthday right when we got back to school. I miss lounging on couches with everyone, watching bad talk shows. I miss walking to Taco Bell with Vanessa. I miss the first party of the year at Terra Trace. I miss football games and parties and just...being...with those people. We're scattered now. We don't see each other much anymore.

I wish I could change that.