Sophomore Year, Epilogue

I thought on the car ride home, which of course isn�t that much of a surprise because what is a long car ride if not �time to think.�

Reflections:

It�s been a good year. Not a fantastic year, but a good year and a better year than the one before it.

Jonas. My roommate this year and next. A guy I barely knew as a freshman, he turned out to be (unexpectedly) social, (strangely) funny, and (pathologically) accommodating. I knew we�d get along but I hadn�t expected to spend so much time with my roommate, certainly not outside of the room.

I played my first game of disc-golf with Jonas, and I suppose he�s also partially responsible for my first unquestionable drunken stupor.

We�re both lazy procrastinists, and living with Jonas �fun is fun� Hackett only made my procrastination worse. But even though my grades were slightly worse this year, I had much more fun and still managed to walk away with some actual knowledge.

A half dozen plays by Shakespeare� Prof Fritzell�s reading of The Adventurers of Huckleberry Finn� basic linguistics� Fiction Writing�.

Thursday was an especially good day. A good last day, really; I felt like there were talented screenwriters in the wings. It seems even better, now that I�ve so thoroughly romanticized it; Friday, even though it was my last day, was underwhelming in comparison.

Jubb, Jonas and I brought all the furniture from the room to a garage in Waupaca, then went to eat at The Golden Basket, a cheap Perkin�s without the stigma.

Six saltines in under a minute seemed doable. It is doable. But I was unable to refute Jubb�s odd urban legend. Doable just looks wrong to me. What a weird word.

Back at the dorm I started some half-hearted packing while Jonas fiddled with his computer. Sockless Pete stopped by to invite us to a White-Russian-themed Big Lebowski party, but no one seemed to have the motivation to sit through a movie on our last night at college.

Besides, there was a Co-op Party in a few hours.

I started some laundry, so we�d all have clean shirts for the party, then sidled into Sockless Pete�s room to make my orange-and-carrot juice a bit more Russian.

Jonas had cloves, so we walked down by the riverside with Jubb (and The Cheerful Cynic, making me seem like far less of a tag-along) and looked at our room for next year. Someone wished Ned was still around. We�re going to have a good quad.

I won�t see that room for six months; odds are I won�t see anyone from Lawrence for six months. It really makes me aware of the passage of time: everything changes in six months. But the quad should be, will be fun.

We went back to the dorm so I could stick the clothes in the dryer, then drove, sans Cynic, to the gas station for some cigars.

Back at Lawrence, we walked around outside again. The party had started but our clothes weren�t dry. We sat around, finished the cigars, and went back.

Of course, our clothes didn�t get dry. The dryer I�d put them in wasn�t spinning. Our clothes weren�t dry, and I didn�t have another token so we couldn�t dry them. Jonas lost a good sweater. We took what we could (I ended up wearing one of Jonas� shirts, which was probably a better idea anyways) and went to the Co-op house.

As with the last party, there wasn�t much to drink that wasn�t disgusting. For some reason I challenged Jubb to a jug wine drinking race.

Jubb is the most moral hedonist I know. He�s friendly and tends to make the right decisions. He works hard and even goes to church. He feels guilty if he doesn�t exercise and eat right.

But he also knows how to have a good time, drunk or sober. He had his third and final cup finished by the time I was halfway through my second. Stumbly Joe had won again.

He somehow got a live month into my cup, and I willingly drank it, well aware that a fluttering insect probably still tastes better than jug wine.

After that last glass I felt a pleasant sense of well-being, an innocent false confidence, and an inability to be annoyed by the annoying. I was exactly where I wanted to be, so I stopped drinking.

The party was just so much standing around, but it was pretty enjoyable. One good-looking super senior had a couple guys working their mojos this way and that; at the end of the night she probably had her pick. That (and a wayward mouse) provided most of the night�s entertainment.

Jonas, Jubb, and I walked into the woods (probably the only woods on campus) and had some more cloves. We sat down on some old railroad tracks and looked out on the water. A scene I somehow associate with Germany.


It was a good night; we got back to Ormsby late, The Cheerful Cynic once again in tow.

The next morning I woke up a little sick to my stomach from all the various tobacco products in my system. Jubb must have smoked six cloves that night; I smoked less and felt a little worse. Still, not too bad.

I ate breakfast with Colin, Jonas and Jubb, then packed up the rest of my belongings. Almost everything of value that I own was in The Deathtrap.

There were no big goodbyes, really. I shook hands with the guys and got a hug from Jinx. Until next year.