Friday 21 October 2016

a quick look back

     One of the best nights I ever had my freshman year was the night I was sexiled.

     To clarify, it wasn't the sexiling that was fun--it was 1 a.m. and my roommate texted me "hey bro, Mike is gonna stay the night!"
     Naturally, I had to GTFO. But where does one go at 1 a.m. when their roommate is a dickbag?

     Fortunately for me, I had a friend who also never slept. He was my band-assigned mentor and in the same competitive robotics team as me, and as such, we had grown to become very close friends very fast.

    So I went over, and for once, he wasn't doing ridiculous amounts of work; just settling down to watch 90210 for whatever ungodly reason and downing alcohol along with it.
And so I joined in. I sat with him in his bed and giggled as he drunkenly blathered on about the most random of topics in the most curious of ways, occasionally commenting on how hot he found various characters in the show. We gossiped on and hardly paid any attention to the show itself, which could not have been that much of a loss.

     That was what I loved. The intimacy. The trust we had in each other. The helpless fits of laughter. It was the comfort and easy fun that only comes with knowing someone else well enough for them to relax. That particular guy became the best friend I made at college, and in turn I became one of his.


     Another thing I loved was the way my dorm's fourth floor lounge was set up. Because the fourth floor lacked a kitchen (they shared with third floor), their lounge was twice as large as anyone else's. My dorm happened to be the science and math dorm with a helpful dollop of engineers added along as well. This meant, naturally, that everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) was a giant nerd. They all loved Dungeons and Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, Super Smash Bros, League of Legends, Hearthstone, and basically any other game you can think of.

    So what did they do? They put everything in the lounge. DS4, PlayStation, Wii, Xbox--everyone's personal gaming console went in the lounge, as well as copies of most every game anyone would ever want to play. And they just left it there, so that anyone could play any game they wanted at any time on any console. We watched one of our friends play Assassin's Creed for hours. We watched the guys duke it out with Mortal Kombat X. Four of them loved playing Grand Theft Auto on the weekends. When Dark Souls III came out, we laughed uproariously as they tried and failed, time and time again. Sometimes at 4 am, there would just be one or two guys in the lounge, gaming and having a good time.

     But by far the two most popular games in our dorm were Super Smash Bros and League of Legends. And oh boy, did those games completely take over the dorm. There were so many weekends where over a dozen of us hunched over desks and couches at four a.m, screaming when we made a misplay on League, or died one time too many on Super Smash Bros. When the World Championships for League came around, the entire fourth floor lounge was commandeered to watch the games. There was a weekend-long tournament for title of Best Smash Player, and almost seventy people joined. It was insane.

My freshman year was a lot of unexpected camaraderie and many late nights with good laughs. There are many more stories to be told (some that should come with their own warning label!), but I want to put them here so that in a few years time, I can read back over this and giggle a little at how hopelessly stupid we all were.