Dorms

Classes start this week at Concordia. Students start moving into the dorms tomorrow. I always like this time of year. It brings back lots of memories.
I remember moving into the dorms my freshman year. I'd had these ideas that my roommate and I would be best friends, and we'd do everything together and be in each other's weddings and one day our kids would play with each other..... Those ideas went out the window when I met my roommate. Almost everything she brought with her was black, and she was sullen and had absolutely no desire to be there but her parents were making her.
She moved back home at the end of the semester and I got a new roommate for the spring. During the summer, roommate number two decided not to come back, so I was already on roommate number three when I moved back into the dorms for my sophomore year.
Number Three was a freshman from Maryland who was originally from Hong Kong. There was a night that first week when we were about to turn off the lights, but all of a sudden she screamed and jumped across the room from her bed to mine, yelling that something with a tail and stripes across it back had just run across her bed and that I had to get rid of it. It was a gecko. I hate geckos. Their tails fall off and wiggle and totally freak me out. I grabbed a wad of paper towels, picked it up, and, I'm sad and ashamed to say, I flushed it. (I was already in my PJ's and didn't want to have to walk downstairs and outside. It was easier to flush it.)
Number Three and I lasted one semester and decided we'd be better friends if we didn't live together, so I moved in with roommate Number Four during my fourth semester of school.
When we came back for our junior year, Number Four and I were still roommates. That was a fun start to the semester. During the first couple days in the dorms, a gas leak was discovered, so they had to turn off the gas in the dorm, which meant that we had no hot water. If we wanted to take a hot shower, we had to either go to one of the other dorms or to the locker rooms in the gym. That lasted for about two weeks. At the same time, we were having electricity problems and could only have one major appliance plugged in at a time, so it was either the refridgerator or the TV or the computer. That lasted a couple weeks, too.
Number Four and I were still roommates when we came back for our senior year, but we had moved to a new dorm. Three years in Studtmann Hall was enough for us, and we'd decided to try out the old Inn. I moved in the day before Christine did. I had accumulated so much stuff that Mom had to follow me to Austin in the station wagon. She was not excited about me living in the Inn. "Are you sure you want to live here? Don't you want to go see if they can move you back to Studtmann? You're so close to the highway. Someone could break your door down without even trying...." And many more such comments. I'm sure Mom & Dad both prayed for my safety every night that year.
Those were fun times.....