One of those mornings.

I’ve had one of those mornings.  The ones where your shift starts at 10:30, but you don’t wake up until 10:26.  So the very first thing in your day is violently throwing the covers off and yelling “OH, S**T!”

Then you throw clothes on faster than you even knew was possible and run downstairs.  You didn’t have time to brush your teeth, so you seize a handful of those after-dinner mints they’ve had sitting out for weeks and shove them in your mouth.  And your sensitive teeth explode in pain as you punch-in on your time card.

They put you to work slicing things for four hours straight.  Cantelope, pineapple, celery, carrots, strawberries, bread.  Four hours.  And if you weren’t wearing a thick glove there’s a good chance you’d slice your own finger off..

To make it worse, there are “too many cooks in the kitchen” today.  Open House has them all running around in a mild state of panic, and there is hardly any elbow room.  Often they are so busy they forget about you, and it takes them several moments of hard thinking to come up with something for you to do that will keep you out of the way.  Not one of them will so much as look sideways at you if he can help it, because it’s all too common knowledge that “Stir-Fry” is having intimate relations with a student, and they don’t want that kind of infamy.

And you sneak bites of fruit when no one is looking, because in four hours no one so much as asks you if you’re hungry.

You learn that all those advanced classes and awards and good grades in high school won’t mean a thing in the real world if you can’t communicate.  Because here in the kitchen they have some kind of ESP or language of their own, and they haven’t let you in on it.  So you look stupid because you don’t understand; you need more explicit instructions than “All right, now strawberries.  What are you waiting for?”

And your eye is always on the clock, counting down the hours, mintues, seconds.

Why excersize makes me feel self-righteous.

“Oh my god, where did that come from?  I know I didn’t bring it with me to college!”

I discovered body fat a few days ago, and it’s weird.

I’ve always had a fast metabolism.  Always.  For as long as I remember, I’ve been able to eat whatever I want.  I’ve never had a problem before.  So when I realized I was gaining weight, I freaked out a little.  Actually, I use the term “gaining weight” a bit liberally.  I haven’t actually weighed myself because I’m too afraid to, but I’m sure I can’t have gained more than five pounds.  It’s more about the way I look and the way I feel than my actual number of pounds.

I spent the better part of middle school trying to gain weight.  I wasn’t allowed to do fun things like white-water-rafting, and my gym teachers always told me I was considered underweight.  When I was thirteen or so I coveted that cute, pinchable fat roll that peeks over a girl’s waistline on her sides and her back.  That was pre-puberty for me, so I was in part mistaking those “love handles” for actual hips.  Nonetheless, I think they can be adorable, but now I know I don’t want them myself.

That’s perhaps the worst part about this weight gain.  I used to think I didn’t care what I looked like, that I’d be just as happy to be an overweight girl as I was to be an underweight one.  But now I’ve found out that isn’t true.  I do care about what I look like, which makes me feel like a horrible person, in addition to being a flabby one.  I feel round, even though I know I’m not, and I feel like everyone notices even though they probably don’t.  I am totally overreacting and I know it, but that doesn’t make me feel any differently.

So in addition to body fat, I’ve also discovered excersize as a form of therapy.  I love it.  Putting physical strain on your body and then releasing it is wonderful, and I feel good every time I leave the athletic center.  So now that is my goal.  In addition to the diet change I instituted a few weeks ago, I have now decided to become a person who works out.  It’s going to be awkward at first, but I’ll get used to it.  And so far it has made me very happy.

Disclaimer:  I am not an anorexic or a compulsive excersiser.  In fact I’m reasonably sure I’m not and never have been suffering from an eating disorder of any kind.  Really.  I love food.  (That’s how I got myself in this predicament.)

Ahh, word games.

My friend Sander showed this to me, and it’s amazing.  This sentence is actually grammatically correct:

 Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

This works because the word “buffalo” has three meanings:

1) Buffalo (noun)- a city in Western New York

2) buffalo (noun)- a large, hairy mammal; a bison

3) buffalo (verb)- to bother or confuse

So the translation goes something like this:

Bison from a certain city in Western New York bother other bison from the same city in Western New York.

Thus:   Buffalo (city) buffalo (bison) buffalo (bother) Buffalo (city) buffalo (bison).

Simply wonderful and absolutely true.  Use it in conversation some time.

I wasn’t homesick until I got home.

I went home last weekend to attend a funeral. I was excited about seeing my family again, but I wasn’t needy-excited. I hadn’t felt really homesick up to then. Yeah, I would miss certain things, but overall I love college and I feel great here. And I keep telling people that. When I got home, EVERYONE had to ask:

“So, how are you liking college so far?”

with that knowing grin on their faces. Understandable, they want to know. I tell them:

“College is AWESOME.  I love it there.  Wells is really a perfect fit for me.”

Which is completely true.  I have wonderful friends at school, interesting classes, brilliant professors, etcetera, etcetera.  Sometimes I tell them that.  Sometimes I figure they were just asking for something to say, they don’t really want to know.

But there was something about being home that was so much warmer than being at school.  It wasn’t anything measurable, really, like the way laundry is handled or the fact that I know the people I’m sharing a bathroom with better.  Those things are true, but they don’t matter as much.  It was the feeling of being home that was different.  I am more comfortable at home because I’ve lived there with those people for eighteen years.  All that “Home Sweet Home” business made sense in that it isn’t just about the house where you live, but about the home that you make.

So it’s a bit ironic, I guess, that the first time I cried about my homesickness at college was after I was already home.

*Huge, pathetic sobs*  “Mom… I don’t want to go back to school!”

Which was completely untrue.  I love school, most of my clothes and personal effects were there, I had friends there that I missed, I had work to do…  But for some reason there were a million things I never knew to miss until I had them again.  Like the way my dad and I stay up late talking even though we’ve both said we need to get some sleep, or the way Maddie has way a lot of energy all the time, or the way my mother is willing to listen even if I don’t make any sense at all.

While I was in my dorm, I kept saying things like

“When I get home, I need to buy some tape.”

But when I was actually at my house, I found myself saying

“I’ll save this reading for when I get home.” 

I’m conflicted about where my home actually is.  Sometimes when I’m out and about on campus, I refer to my dorm as home.  It took me a few weeks at school to start doing that.  But more often I stick to refering to my hometown as home.  It’s confusing, because as of last June the house where I grew up stopped being the place where I live, probably forever.  But does that mean it has to stop being my home?  That word seems like it should be reserved for something special, not just the place you sleep at night.  There are many freshmen here who refuse to call their dorms “home” because they wish they were back in their own houses sleeping in their own beds.  And while my friends here are becoming a sort of college “family”, it still feels as though I’m somehow insulting my nuclear family if I don’t call their house home.

Is there supposed to be some sort of set changeover period?  After two months, all students will cease refering to their family dwellings as home and convert to calling their dorms home.  Great college literature?  I don’t think so.  I feel as though between vacation visits, school-time, and working at summer camp, I am more of a rover.

“Through this world I’m bound to roam,

without a bed, a fire, or a home.

I’m just a wanderer, never standing still,

I must go onward to that hill.

*I am a Rover, rolling along,

Rover, singing a song,

I am a Rover

until the day I die.

Until the day I die.”

~Last verse and chorus of Rover, a Girl Scout camp song we sing at Timbercrest

That would be the fire alarm…

So there I was sleeping (and trust me, I needed it), when the loudest horrible ringing noise woke me up rather abruptly.  I said to myself

Wow, that is the loudest alarm I’ve ever heard.

But then I realized

Wait, my alarm doesn’t sound like that.  I’m pretty sure Jenny’s alarm doesn’t sound like that either.  What the heck is making that noise?

That would be the fire alarm.  At 6:30 A.M.

Since kintergarden it’s been drilled endlessly into our brains:  if the fire alarm goes off don’t talk, just get out of the building and to a safe evacuation site.  Don’t stop and pick anything up.  Don’t try to find another person.  Just go.  So that’s what I did.  I got out of bed, my eyes still half-shut, and went down three flights of stairs to the exit.  It wasn’t until I got outside that I said to myself

Oh.  I hope Jenny gets out okay.

And then as I was walking across the cold campus:

Guess I could have put shoes on so I wouldn’t have to get dew all over my feet.  And I probably wouldn’t have died if I’d stopped to put my glasses on, because I can’t see anything.  Gosh, if there really is a fire I’m going to have to go blind for a long time until I can get a new pair.  And it’s cold, hey!  That girl was smart and put on a sweater and flip-flops.   I should have done that.  I mean really, I’m not even wearing a bra here!

Pajama pants and an oversized tee-shirt.  That’s about all.

It’s not like I’ve never had to wake up that early before.  In high school I woke up at 6:30 or even 6:15 every day.  But here I’m staying up much later at night and going to class much later in the morning.  Just one of many ways my life has changed since coming to college. 

It’s interesting to think to myself everything that would be lost if a fire really did destroy my dorm.  I moved my whole life into it, and everything would be gone.  Laptop- there go a lot of priceless pictures and unpublished writings, not to mention my entire paycheck from the summer.  Clothes- and who am I going to borrow from until I can get more?  Most of my friends are in my building.  Glasses- I really need those.  Etcetera.

When we got to our evacuation site, my friends and I cuddled to avoid the cold.

Eulogy

I read this eulogy at my grandfather’s funeral on Saturday:

On Saturdays, when the rest of my family was out of the house, Grandpa Schlick would call me up, and we’d chat.  Being a historian and a genealogist, I loved the stories he would tell me.  Some of them he told over and over, and if you knew him I’m sure you’re familiar with at least some of them.  The day a dog walked into church and stole his thunder in the middle of a sermon.  The day he bridged a language barrier by saying “choo-choo” when he didn’t know the words for “train station”.  But some of the stories he told me were whatever recollections he had on his mind that day, and they weren’t always ones I had heard before.

He told me that when he was a young man he would hitch-hike to Chautauqua Institution to work as a golf caddy for the rich men there.  One day while he was working, a helicopter landed on the green and out stepped Thomas Edison.  I was amazed!  You don’t always think of your own family when you’re sitting in a history lesson, but here was proof that my grandfather had lived through more than I could imagine.  Edison was an old man by the time grandpa saw him, but the encounter made an impact on him all the same.  It struck me how much the world has changed in my grandfather’s lifetime, going from a time when the light bulb was a fairly new innovation to an age of cell phones, iPods, and the internet.

When I turned sixteen, grandpa told me stories about driving.  He and his father Clarence learned to drive together, presumably because cars were just that new.  Coming from a time when every adult already knows how to drive, this surprised me.  I tried to imagine what it must have been like having to learn something so complicated when there was no one around who was in the least bit familiar with it.  Grandpa also gave me a long dissertation on the difference between the mechanical brakes he learned to drive on and modern ones, but I still don’t think I fully understand.

My grandfather, as I’m sure you know, had a true passion for music.  He was an excellent musician, whether it was as a singer in the church choir or as a pianist at simple family gatherings.  For the last few years, we have gone to his house for Christmas and sang while he played the carols on his keyboard in rich, harmonious chords.  His love of music also extended to the dance floor, and I wish I had known him in his nimbler years because I know there is so much he could have taught me.  Recently, at the wedding of his wife’s grand-niece Amy, grandpa tried to teach me to polka dance.  Just as I was beginning to understand, the song changed to “Dancing Queen”, but we kept dancing anyway.  There are few things better in this world than doing the polka to Abba with your ninety-year-old grandfather.

A few weeks ago, he decided it was time for him to die.  As with everything else in his life, he changed his mind a few times, but once he was sure there was no stopping him.  He left this world as he lived in it- on his own terms.  I know that he has found peace wherever he is now, and I wish him well.  If we can learn something from his life, I think it will be to laugh more and to dance more.

I don’t speak Chemistry.

I stopped understanding my Environmental Science teacher the other day.  She was giving a mini crash-course in basic chemistry, and I was thinking

“Hey, I took this class to avoid the other sciences!  I don’t speak Chemistry!”

I’m reasonable sure most of my class was thinking along the same lines.  Alison and I were doing well for a while when we discovered that the answer to everything was “Hydrogen Bonds!”, but now we’ve moved on.

 Let me tell you a little about my background with chemistry.

In high school I hated chemistry.  Really.  I couldn’t stand it.  The amount of math required (especially once we got into Stoichiometry) was way too much for me.  I never took physics simply because I heard it involved even more math than chemistry did.  No matter how different they are, once that connection was made in my mind I couldn’t bring myself to take physics.  Since leaving the class I have put it from my mind so completely that I don’t remember a thing about it at all.  This includes everything from the material I already knew going in to my grade on the regents.  I was serious about this total erasing of memory.

Now don’t get me wrong, I can’t remember my regents grade for most classes, it’s just that with chemistry I don’t even have a good guess.  I honestly could have gotten anywhere from a 67 to a 99- I simply don’t know.  And not one grade in that vast range would surprize me in the least.  I’m resonably certain my class average was somewhere in the 80s or 90s, but again I just don’t remember.  I hated the class that much.

One thing I’m still hanging on to (though just barely these days) is my collection of Mr. Warner stories.  Mr. Warner was my teacher in high school, and I had a friendly love-hate relationship with him.  It started when I was struggling to keep up with him in class.  I asked questions.  A lot of them.  All the time.  He even started pausing at the end of each new thought to ask

“Are there any questions?…  No?…  Emily, do you have any questions?”

I also got into the habit of complaining or looking pained every time he introduced a new topic or elaborated on an old one.  I did it partially to keep myself sane, partially to irk him.

“There’s more?!  I was confused enough about the first part!”

It got to the point where the poor man apologized every time he taught us something new, so eventually I stopped.

I felt pretty guilty about forgetting everything I learned, so after I left his class I’d still go to visit Mr. Warner sometimes.  We didn’t have a whole lot to talk about other than my future and the “good old days”, but I visited nonetheless.  It was heartening to know that someone would remember me after I left my high school, even if the memory wasn’t a completely good one.  I know Mr. Warner wishes I had gone on to take AP Chemistry with him the following year, but there is no way I would have willingly subjected myself to that.  I told him so once in a rather harsh manner that I half-regret.

All in all, when my environmental class started discussing chemistry topics, I felt rather out of place.  Not only because I don’t remember chemistry, but because the setting seemed wrong.  There was no Mr. Warner to debate with, no Liz to help me understand, no musty old classroom with ugly lab coats and goggles.

Boys Have Cooties

“Gather ’round, girls.  I have a very important lesson to give you.  Boys have cooties.  It’s true.  Just learn that now, and it will save you future strife.”

I said this to every group of girls I had this summer when I was a counselor at Girl Scout camp.  They would inevitably start talking about boys, and I felt it my duty to step in and inform them of the facts.  I mean, they run a serious risk if they’re living in the dark about this.

I think this weekend was some kind of Bring-Your-Boyfriend-to-College convention that I was uninformed about.  Seriously, I’ve been introduced to so many boyfriends since Friday I’m actually starting to lose track of them all.  I sort of missed the boat on that one.  For one thing, I don’t have a boyfriend, and let’s make no mistake- I don’t need one.  I’m not one of those girls who sits around and laments the fact that she’s single.  Sure, if the right person came along I’d date him, but I don’t feel the need to have a boy to define my life.

Anyway, the other single girls on my floor and I found it a little depressing with so many people in love running around.  We solved this problem by sitting around eating junk food and watching chick flicks together.  Maggie says she thinks we are like addicts- we admit we have a dependency but we just keep on doing it.  She’s probably right, but it’s more fun to be lonely and heartsick with your friends than to do it alone.

You know how it is, you’re walking down the hall and some guy says hello to you in passing.  Then your feet get a little bounce to them and you say to yourself

“Oh my gosh, the hot religion major just spoke to me!”.

Of course nothing will ever happen between you, and you probably don’t even really want it to.  But it’s fun to imagine nonetheless.  Granted, around here appealing boys are about one in a hundred, and then they turn out to be gay or otherwise unavaliable.  I keep telling the other girls that if I ever do decide to look for a boyfriend I won’t be dumb enough to do it here. 

But I hate that phrase anyway.  To “look for a boyfriend” makes you seem so desperate.  I mean for goodness’ sake, there are other things in the world.  When you meet a guy, the first thing that runs through your head should not be

“Okay, would I date him?”

That is positively horrid and it turns girls into vultures.  If you happen to think someone is attractive, okay.  That happens.  But looks shouldn’t be the only critera for a partner, and if you think they are you have another thing coming.  When you fall for someone, it should be (as Shakespeare put it) for all of his traits at once.

Now, I’m probably the last person on Earth who should be giving relationship advice.  Lots of girls have asked me my opinion on various situations, but what is boils down to is this:  I have never had a boyfriend.  I guess all I really know is that boys have cooties.

Historical Figure #2: Gabriel Thomas

Gabriel Thomas was a friend of William Penn and an early settler in Pennsylvania.  He lived there for fifteen years or so before going back to England.  It was there in his homeland that he wrote a bit of promotional literature about Pennsylvania titled (I kid you not):

An Historical and Geographical Account of Pensilvania; and of West-New-Jersey in America.  The Richness of the Soil, the Sweetness of the Situation, the Wholesomness of the Air, the Navigable Rivers, and other Improvements there.  The strange Creatures, as Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Fowl, with the several sorts of Minerals, Purging Waters, and Stones, lately discovered.  The Natives, Aboroqmes, their Language, Religion, Laws, and Customs; The first Planters, the Dutch, Sweeds, and English, with a New Religion, in his second Change since he left the Quakers, with a Map of both Countries.  By Gabriel Thomas, who resided there about Fifteen Years.

Propaganda essays like this were common tools to encourage settlement in the British colonies in North America.  And if you think the title is long and tedious, you should read the essay!  No, on second thought I’ll just summarize it for you: 

Pennsylvania is better than England.  No, really.  Pennsylvania is WAY BETTER than England.  Seriously.  England has nothing on Pennsylvania.  The food is better in Pennsylvania, the money is better, the people are nicer, the crops are better, the animals are healthier, the wildlife is cooler, heck the children are even born better.  I’m not even lying to you.  I saw it with my own eyes.  Really.

This begs the question- Well then, Mr. Smarty-Pants, what are you doing in England?  Thomas seemed to realize this himself, so he moved back to Pennsylvania.  He had a fight with William Penn when he arrived, because Penn didn’t give him special treatment for writing such a wonderful (*yawn*), err, persuasive document.  If this seems unfair, I must remind you that Penn has a state named after him, while Gabriel Thomas is not famous at all.  Which is really a shame, because Gabriel is such a cool name.

Living in a Den of Spiders

Last night was really windy, so I thought I’d take out the screen and shut the window. When I got to the screen though, there was a Terrifyingly Huge Spider on it. Bold Girl Scout camper that I am, I made a sound (something akin to “aheughhhhh”) and went to knock on my friend Evian’s door.

“Hello? I need a spider-killer. Do you know anyone?”

Evian arrived on the scene with a tupper-ware container intended to trap the spider and bring it outside to safety. She’s such a pagan goddess. But I must say (and it almost makes me feel better), when she got there her reaction was more like:

“All right, where is this… OH!”

I’m telling you, it was a Terrifyingly Huge Spider. Think Godzilla of the Arachnids and you’ll be on the right track. Being the crafty thing it was, the spider quickly followed it’s web deep into the corner of the window, possibly outside into god-knows-where.

Evian did rescue three spiders of a smaller, less terrifying variety, but I know there are more around. My room is basically a haven of eight-legged beasties. I’ve personally evicted one, killed three, and lost one to the floor already.

Spiders are thought of today as scary creatures, and really I agree. The way they move is just unreal. It wasn’t always that way, though. Spiders in the Old World were considered storytellers. Like the famed Ananzi, they could weave tales and were the keepers of folklore and tradition. That’s very appropriate for someone living here at Wells, because our college is built on traditions. We rely on them to give us a sense of past and to provide us with something fun in the midst of challenging coursework. We need a storyteller or two to remind us who we are.

But I think it goes beyond that. As a college freshman, it’s easy to feel disconnected from the world. Our families are far away, our friends are scattered across the state, sometimes even across the nation. Not only that, but we are as of yet unfamiliar with the land we have been thrust into. We don’t recognize the local landmarks, public spaces, flora, and fauna yet. We haven’t fully begun to understand the people. The upperclassmen seem like spiders. They are there, among it all. They have social connections reaching out in different directions like the sections of a web. They are familiar with the area around them, they know each glossy inch of their home well.

My roommate Jenny says perhaps the spiders will give us super-powers and we will turn overnight into Spider-Women.  All in all, I think we must learn from the spiders. We must create a world for ourselves- one that makes sense, one that has meaning, one that is connected.