Quirky People

College life is full of quirky people, and I do not hesitate to admit
that I was once one of those quirky people. The older I become, the
more it seems that the newer one is to college, the more quirky he or
she is. (I use the word "quirky" in the kindest sense of the word.) I
have noticed that in general, as one progresses in one's college
career, it seems that one gets sucked into the "homework" vortex, at
least if one is an over-achiever, as I happened to be and now regret.
Let me explain in hopes that all the new college-goers out there will
fully appreciate and revel in the joy of being quirky while they have
the chance.
So picture this in your mind. You get dropped off for the first time
at college by your parents, after the typical trip to stuff-mart and
the grocery store for college essentials (which of course your parents
pay for, that being a traditional college tradition.) You have just
graduated from high school, where most of the people are quirky
anyway, and you had fit right in. You are a bit worried as a college
freshman, because you are now supposed to be mature, and you have
heard that in college, you actually have to study to pass your
classes. Then, you walk into the dorm where you will be staying, full
of trepidation about meeting your first roommates. After the
preliminary "hellos" and "nice-to-meet-yous," and after everyone's
parents have left following tearful goodbyes, you sit down with your
roommates for "THE MEETING," where you discuss arrangements regarding
important issues, such as the dire punishments that will befall those
who are caught stealing someone else's milk, and who has to buy the
paper plates and plasticware when every single dish in the house is
dirty. As you talk, you discover with some amazement, that you should
fit in just fine, as your roommates seem to be just as quirky and
weird as you are, perhaps even weirder! Let me give you a case in
point. My younger sister came and visited me at college for a few
days when I was a freshman. She was shocked and amazed at how
quirky…O.K., for the sake of honesty, she termed it "immature," us
college kids were. My slender blond, blue-eyed roommate had just
dumped her boyfriend whom she had dated for a whole three weeks, the
eighth in a long string of guys who were madly in love with her. I
walked into our apartment after a tedious and boring algebra class
that my sister had politely declined to attend. As I entered the
apartment, I noticed the smell of rotting fish emanating from various
places throughout our apartment. I walked over to the trash can,
thinking that someone was in big trouble for not taking out the trash
after dinner four days ago. The trash can was almost completely empty
other then a wadded up piece of paper with a big red D- peeking up and
winking lewdly at me. As I sat contemplating the nearly empty trash
can, trying to determine another possible source of the smell, I heard
a shriek from the bathroom where another of my roommates had just
stepped into--then promptly out of—the shower. She was livid and
smelled like beef. Upon further investigation, it turned out that my
roomate's ex-boyfriend, (self-named "Ben the Bandit") along with his
roommate henchmen, had broken into our apartment while we were gone,
deposited open cans of sardines at strategic hidden places throughout,
and placed beef bullion cubes inside the shower head, oblivious to the
thought that perhaps completely innocent roommates would be the
unlucky recipients of Ben the Bandit's wrath. Where my sister was at
the time all this scheming was going on, I have yet to get a straight
answer to. She admits she was in the apartment, but claimed ignorance
of the "no boys behind THE INVISIBLE LINE" rule of BYU-I, telling me
the boys had simply asked to use the bathroom, but I have my
suspicions that she found this situation highly amusing and was in on
the whole deal.
Anyway, when the last of the sardine cans had finally been retrieved,
and the shower heads had been sanitized, my roommates and I held a
hastily called roommate council, where it was determined that we just
could not allow the culprits to pull off such a devious deed
unpunished. It was decided that we would go on a raid of our own.
Unfortunately for us, we were in such a rush to exact our revenge that
we neglected to plan carefully, and our kool-aid powder in the towels
and crushed cornflakes under the sheets were a poor excuse for what we
could and should have come up with. Not to mention we failed to look
on stalker net to find out the boys' schedules, and yes, they walked
in on us. We embarrassingly beat a hasty retreat, threatening that we
would return, but the boys did not seem too worried.
Lest you have forgotten my point to all this while reading such an
enthralling account of freshman quirkiness, it is, again, enjoy it
while you can! The longer you are in college, the more homework you
have. Then you get into your upper division classes, where each
college professor assumes his or her class is the only class you are
taking, and assigns homework accordingly. It just gets worse from
there.