I’ve told this short story plenty of times, but it bears repeating today. On the morning of August 23, 2007, I woke up in my bed in Rockledge, PA, and I immediately threw up. That’s how nervous I was for college.
Ten years later, the fact that I felt like I had any reason to worry about going to college seems fucking preposterous, but there I was. About to embark on a new journey.
Always being nostalgic to a fault, I spent a lot of my day reflecting on the ten-year anniversary, what it meant to me then, and what it means to me now.
Maybe I threw up because I was fooling myself into thinking this was some sort of "big change" for me. I mean, it was to an extent—I was living on my own, after all, no longer under the same roof as my parents. But honestly, looking back, thinking my life changed all that much was me just being stupid.
College for me meant moving 20 minutes away from my hometown. It meant going to school with at least 40 familiar faces from my neighborhood, at least a dozen of whom I counted as close friends at the time. It meant every comfort afforded to me in my middle-class upbringing was still intact, there was just an illusion of change.
That’s not to say anything negative about moving to college. It’s just me thinking back to the fall of 2007 and rolling my eyes instead of tearing up.
Moving from Rockledge to 20th and Olney changed nothing about me. I was the same little shit I had always been. Living four years at 20th and Olney? That was the experience that changed me. For the tenth anniversary today, I’m not celebrating move-in day being life-changing, but I’m celebrating the beginning of that journey.
But Jesus fucking Christ, there were some times to be had.
It’s cliché to talk about how college was "one big party," but for real, that was my life freshman year. It started before my parents even left my dorm room, because unbeknownst to them, they had helped me move in a case of Coors Light hidden in a backpack.
The second thing I did at college (after the first thing, that being obstruct the truth about my drinking from my parents for the 43258th time) was meet my roommate Pat. The tale of Joe and Pat is a classic one, and it all started that day. I hid my backpack beer from Pat that day too, because I was still feeling out the situation. Living with a stranger is hard.
But living with a stranger is fucking rewarding when it goes right. And my relationship with Pat went right. Eventually.
The way I see it, there’s a spectrum of personalities. On one extreme end of the spectrum stands all of the college kids who came to school with a thousand beers under their belts already, who like to party and don’t let anything get in their way, who act like assholes to get what they want, drinking-wise. On the other end of the spectrum stands all the college kids who come to school with the expectation that we’re here, primarily, to learn, who can't/won't put up with rule breakers, and who, in equal amounts, respect and fear authority.
On August 23, 2007, Pat and I started out on the opposite extreme ends of that personality spectrum. And like any Oscar and Felix, there were plenty of bumps in the road because of that dissonance in college expectations. I was a obnoxious sweaty drunk blowhard who pissed himself in his sleep. Pat had never had a beer in his life and reasonably expected not to have to put up with loud assholes.
Great friends are often made in the most trying of circumstances, even if you are each the trying circumstance to each other. Eventually, me and Pat both met in the middle of that spectrum. I give Pat credit for forcing me to become a little more mature that year, and appreciate that the world doesn’t revolve around me, and that my inconsiderate actions, however inconsequential they may seem after a dozen Natty Lights, do indeed have consequences. And as for Pat—at my 19th birthday party that year, Pat was there, playing along to the Roxanne drinking game. He played with Dr. Pepper, sure, but he was fucking there, man. The Pat of August 23, 2007 would not have been caught dead surrounded by underage drinkers and a Police song.
I may have digressed a bit with that, but it brings up an important point about my freshman year of college—I was kind of an asshole.
Here’s what I wrote on my Xanga back then (I know, Xanga! Jesus christ):
It’s still strange sometimes though. Like, I look around now at my dorm room, and it still surprises me to think that this is it, I’m living on my own. If I wanna leave trash all over the floor, I can do it. If I wanna lay around naked, I can do that too. It’s very relaxing, this aspect of college, the part where I really don’t have to care about anything, because no one is breathing down my neck telling me to do this or do that... Goddamn, I really couldn’t be happier. I’m living on my own, so there are no rules.
There’s that illusion again, the one where I thought that I was free to do whatever I wanted. And judging by what followed on my Xanga, I felt like I was free to be a dick to everyone.
What follows the quote is post after post of accounts of my shittiness. Stories about being obnoxious with no thought about who was affected, stories about being so drunk that I was trying to get into fights with football players. Stories about peeing on the bed, next to the bed, next to my roommate’s bed. Stories about just being a general jackass and appreciating that I got away with it.
Ten years later, reading not only about what kind of shit I did, but reading me congratulate myself on it, honestly all I can do is cringe.
Don’t get me wrong, I still get drunk and do stupid things and occasionally hurt people these days. But when 2017 Joey does that shit, the remorse and the regret and the apologies are immediate. 2007 Joey just didn’t care. And that’s the part that made me a true asshole.
That’s me making a judgment of myself ten years ago, with ten years of wisdom shading my memories. And yes, it’s important to note that I made mistakes, but I can’t forget the good times, either.
And this hasn’t even been noted yet: I had a girlfriend for the first semester and a half of college.
I had met Chrissy the summer before during a dinner for the nerds of the upcoming La Salle Honors Program Class of 2011 and their parents, so we made fast friends when we moved in two doors down from each other on the third floor of St. Basil’s dorms.
Our story mirrors the one I already told about Pat above. Okay, not exactly mirrored, because I didn’t live and share a bathroom with Chrissy, and I certainly wasn’t making out with Pat at the top of the football stadium bleachers. But there’s a certain theme that’s repeated in both stories. That theme being how much of an irresponsible jackass teenager I was.
Sure, at the end of the day, we were too different to ever make it as a couple. I didn’t need ten years to come to that conclusion. The day I broke up with her in February 2008, that was my reasoning. That we weren’t a good fit.
But today, for the first time ever, really, I tried to see things from her perspective. And man, does that not make me feel good at all.
Imagine, you’re this nice, sweet, intelligent freshman, and you start to like this dude who lives right down the hall from you because he seems nice and he’s amusing at times. And then the more you date him, the more you witness him devolve into some drunken puddle of a boy, and it feels like all he cares about is going out and drinking with his friends on a Thursday night, his girlfriend be damned.
I described college as a place where "there are no rules at all." Imagine dating someone who thought that.
Maybe I’m completely overselling this new theory of mine that I was a secret monster the whole time. Me and Chrissy are cool. We see each other maybe once a year still. I genuinely enjoy seeing her. She’s married and owns a house and holds a full-time job and is happy, just like I am. I’m not trying to make our autumn 2007 story into something that was life-changing or scarred either of us or anything like that.
The general point I’m trying to make is, I guess, that looking back at myself ten years ago, and I barely recognize me.
It’s possible that I’m being a little harsh on myself. It’s probably more common being a little prick at age eighteen than any 28-year-old would be willing to admit. But still, it’s worth noting that at least I know this now.
For better or worse (mostly for better), I am a different man today.
ALL that being said, with all the low points and cringe-y behavior and unapologetic mistakes made plain, I still... I still can’t help but look back and feel fond memories.
I remember later in the day on August 23, 2007, finally cracking that case of Coors Light in my dorm room, with about a half dozen friends from home and from high school that had joined me in my college adventure. Drinking beers and shooting the shit. Nothing’s changed. (See the above photo!)
I remember the rest of that opening weekend. It involved some more drinking, sure, it always did at La Salle, but it mostly involved doing lame orientation activities, as lame as they were, enjoying all of it, because I was meeting so many great people, so many lifelong friends. Some friends I still see regularly, some have been lost in the sands of time, but all were important to me then and were loved.
The thing I remember most is that sense of excitement. That feeling that something special was happening.
My time at La Salle was something I will always cherish, even if there were some low points through the four years I attended. I learned so many life lessons, had so many goddamn bonkers nights, met so many friends, and really just plain ol’ grew up there. Truly grew up.
And it all started ten years ago today. Fuck.
This post had barely anything to do Candy Crush, I acknowledge that. I could’ve tried to weakly tie it in by, I dunno, talking about the dumb computer games that I was addicted to freshman year, or maybe utilizing the word "crush" more in regards to the immature romantic experiences I had with women back then.
But honestly, at the end of the day, I have jack shit to say about Candy Crush the game. As I played it today for the first time, I was going through the motions, moving candy into triplets, not even thinking about the game. I was thinking about move-in day at La Salle, back at the end of the summer of 2007.
And just like the candy in this stupid, pointless game, once I lined up enough experiences at La Salle, it all disappeared.
Love,
Joey
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