This morning, I climbed down off my rickety top-bunk bed and realized: I will only have to climb down from a bunk bed for five more nights of my life. This Friday, I'm moving out of out of Basils 249, out of the dorm life forever, and out of a life sleeping on the top bunk.
It's certainly been an interesting living situation this year. For those of you who've never visited, 249 is a quad consisting of two rooms and a bathroom. Normally, each room has two occupants. Here, we put all four beds, desks, and dressers into one room, and left the other to hang out and watch TV (and drink) in.
No one thought it would work. Four people living in a room built to squeeze in two. How could we stand being so cramped? How would we deal if someone brought a woman back? Would we get sick of each other?
As it turns out... all those problems existed. It's fucking claustrophobic even now as I sit here typing on my laptop. There have been many occasions where someone was refused a room due to the plethora of women passing through (joke...?). And there were times when I wanted to kill my roommates—December was probably the nadir of our relationship.
But the great thing about Mike, Kyle, Sean, and me together is that we are ultimately rational people. We get in little tiffs and arguments, and we'll get pissed at each other, but at the end of the day, we all know it's not worth letting it get out of control. First of all, if we're going to live together, we can't let ourselves be bothered by the small things. Secondly, we're friends; I don't care how many times Mike doesn't flush the toilet, he's still gonna be my friend. So in the end, I feel like I was blessed to live with these guys in our little corner of south campus.
And damn! We've had some great times in here—the great times are inevitable, I suppose, when you sneak in 100 cases of beer the first semester alone. I'll remember fondly all the parties we threw, from the Power Hour on my birthday (even though it ended badly), the nights of beer pong, and the banger during which we counted at least 70 people passing through. I'll remember to the lazy days enjoying ourselves: getting hammered and watching Spongebob, the Phillies, and Family Feud; turning the couch around with our neighbor Bee and enjoying the view from the second floor window; blasting Bob Marley and getting stares from the Treetops-goers; the one and only afternoon that we all were there, sober and single, and decided that all needed to change; the prank war we had going that seems to have culminated in multiple residents getting Kool-Aid thrown on them while showering. Some damn good times.
There are some shitty aspects about this place, I'll admit. I hate when I'm trying to sleep and no one seems to want to even try to be quiet. I hate when I try to enter a room only to find that it's locked. I hate how goddamn disgusting the bathroom is. I hate how everyone insists on turning the air conditioning to "frigid" even when it's cold outside too. I hate hearing hip hop and classic cock rock music from miles away because it has to be loud. I really hate climbing up a ladder to go to sleep.
But to quote Scrubs: "You might find out that thing you hate so much is the very same thing you miss when it's gone." It's true. On move-out day, I'm gonna to miss everything, all the good times, and the crazy times, all my petty annoyances, everything.
There was a time when I honestly thought I was going to be banned from living here. I was so close to letting that happen. I was sad because they were trying to ban me from my home. This place, this disgusting pigsty at the end of the hallway, it's a place I have learned to call home.
Though bigger and better things await me at my new home on Beechwood Street, I will cherish the time I have spent here.
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| I'll miss you too, Hulk and Hannah and Miley |
