>>> The Rollercoaster of Drama
By staff writer Simonne Cullen
May 23, 2004
For most of you finals are done. The cramming of the brain has stopped, the books have been returned, and the binge drinking has been put on hold temporarily. It's time for you to take on your next challenge. Take a good, lengthy, look around and ask yourself. How in the hell am I going to fit everything I own in my car? And where in the hell did all of this crap come from?
It's amazing the stuff you'll find when your packing up. Underneath your bed lays the real land of plenty. Like the first aid kit your mom gave you the day you moved in. So THAT'S where it's been hiding. Lots of good that did you the end of first semester when you sliced your hand open and had to resort to paper towels from the communal bathroom and duct tape to mend the wound and prevent any more red ooze from leaking onto the carpeting.
Girls go through a big moral dilemma when packing up their clothes. The next time you look at a girl's closet, realize that half of the stuff in there doesn't belong to her. The original owners are her girlfriends, sorority sisters, and guys ranging from the random football player hookup to the guy who tortured—I mean tutored—her in Calculus, who left those comfy sweatshirts. But mainly, the big question is, “Does she give the property back to it's rightful owners?” There's a reason she has it in the first place—because she feels hot when she wears it. So really the only logical thing to do is pack all of it last just in case someone comes around asking for it. If not, it's fair game and she'll be wearing those duds all summer long. And believe me, girls will intentionally avoid contact all summer for fear they'll be asked to return the clothes. So they secretly reassure themselves by never mentioning it again. Kind of like a silent fashion barter system.
Guys are a bit more complicated. Guys tend to pool their money together and make joint purchases? Awww how cute, just like a married couple. But like most couples, when one moves out it's time to divide the accumulated wealth. You may have come into this relationship with the Xbox buddy, but you sure as hell ain't leaving with your Halo. So who ends up owning what for the next three months? I mean, the summer months are crucial. There's no entertainment living at home. You can't bring random hookups home, you can't binge drink openly, and you sure as hell can't discreetly smoke up in your room. Your survival depends upon the downloaded stash of porn on your computer and getting that damn X-Box. Ultimately, the winner is the last one to leave the room because guys can and will play a video game 'til the very last second. So the only thing going for the loser is the chance that he's the sole owner of the TV.
Organized people whose parents were card-carrying members of the Tupperware club are well stocked with those monstrous plastic containers than can store anything and then be neatly stacked in the car. Disorganized people are the ones frantically trying to find any sort of storage material. These people are easily identifiable because their rooms look like Super Wal-Mart came over and threw up its a day's worth of inventory on the floor and left. Here are these kids, flailing around campus using trash bags, shopping bags with holes and missing handles, and beer boxes that reek of mold because they've been sitting outside in the rain for the past five days, and finally they just give up. Suddenly DVD's, CD's, trophies, pictures, books, and golf clubs, have been propelled into the back of an '84 Honda Civic. And as you drive away onlookers can only determine that you're headed for that big flea market in the sky.
What I can't possibly understand are the people who have their parents come over and help them pack. What are these bunch of retards thinking? They haven't seen the room since they helped you move in the beginning of the year when they left it clean and organized. There your mom is so proud that her little child has gone off to college and survived on his own means, until she walks in and sees the complete and utter filth you now call home. Hey, at least the roaches have been productive, forming a community center under the pizza boxes in the corner next to the beer-soaked part of the carpet. Okay maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. But letting the uterus that bore you pick through your shit is the worst idea ever. Imagine the questions that would arise during the packing ritual:
“Whose are these?” There is your mom, dangling a box of Trojan extra lubricated condoms from her right hand. She's thinking these cannot possibly belong to her little angel, but most certainly by his devil roommate, and all she's looking for is confirmation from you. “Ummmmmm, those are Adam's mom. Him and his girlfriends are nymphos. Hehe.”
“What's this?” Fuck. How in the hell did she find that. And there, suspended in the air from her perfectly manicured fingers, is your economy-sized Zip-Lock bag full of wacky tabacky. “Umm, Adam's pre-med mom. It's from his bio class. Some sort of fungus. Don't touch it. You may die.”
“And where did all of these liquor bottles come from?” There she is glancing between the lineup of 50 liquor bottles standing proudly on your book shelves and your $300 books scattered randomly across the floor. But that's it. From that point your dead where you stand as she goes into ranting realization mode. “Did you drink all of these bottles? Why is there a make-shift bar where your bed used to be? When did you have time to construct that? And for that matter where in the hell do you sleep? This is where all our money is going? You're not coming back here next year. From now on it's community college and curfew for you mister. Pack up your condoms and your pot. We're leaving.”
There is only so much you can blame on your roommate.
If you live out of state, renting storage space usually seems like a great idea. At least until 15 minutes after you put down the eighty dollar deposit and realize that you have no car to move your futon from the dorm to the storage space halfway across town by 7am tomorrow morning when your plane takes off.
Then there's the RA check-out point. Which is really Nazism at it's finest. Just you, the biggest douchebag in your dorm, a clipboard, inspection gloves, and a hint of arrogance in the air. He now has the ability to charge you a year's tuition for the damage you've inflicted on your room. Suddenly, as you look at the hole in the wall from last week's drunken playful fist fight, you hope that it takes the attention off the conspicuous vomit stain in the carpet, but not so much the blood stain from when the duct tape fell off the paper towel, or the missing tiles in the ceiling…because that can easily be blamed on Res Life. But perhaps the biggest regret is drunkenly pissing on his door last weekend and giving him the finger at the dining hall the past year. Ass-kissing for next year should begin now.
There is a hint of sadness as we leave our dorm rooms. For the past nine months these rooms facilitated more experiences than the past 18 years combined. Especially for the seniors who are leaving. The past four years these shitty 12×9 bomb shelters you complained about have finally been forgotten. At least until you get your first apartment and it feels more like the Ritz Carlton. Either way, as long as you've got the X-Box you're ready for anything the real world will throw at you. Just make sure you bring the first aid kit. Employers frown upon those using duct tape and gauze.