A Stroll Down Memory Lane...

My freshman year of college was an exciting and interesting year. I went to Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. A liberal arts college which I attended on both academic and athletic scholarship. I arrived two weeks earlier than the other students so I could begin training with the cross country team to prepare for the upcoming season. Our coach had set all the new athletes up so that we were roommates with another girl on the team. I remember being very excited to get a chance to spend so much time with someone who had similar interests and schedules as I did. Coming from a big family I had no problems sharing a room with somebody else, in fact, being by myself was a little too intimidating. The summer between high school and college I romanticized what it would be like to stay up as late as I wanted, sleep in if I wanted, have no rules or regulations. I wondered if my unknown roommate and I would become best friends, if she would be strict and regulated (like some distance runners can be) or if we would be completely different. I knew very little of my soon-to-be roommate except that her name was Sarah, she was a sophomore and was transferring from the University of Hawaii, but was originally from a small town in Oregon.

So I packed up my little 1999 Saturn brim full with all my belongings and made the 7-hour drive from Boise, ID to Salem, OR. Looking back, I am surprised that my parents let me leave for college all by myself. But, I was hungry for adventure and looking forward to this new chapter of my life. I showed up at my dorm, grabbed one of my duffel bags, and headed in to meet my new roommate. I was excited and anxious to see what she would be like. I walked into room 304 and was immediately greeted by a petite, brown-haired girl who was appeared to be a little shy. “Hi, I’m Sarah!” she said and welcomed me with a warm smile. We spent a few minutes with the regular ‘get-to-know-you’ type conversations. All of the sudden something silly came into conversation and we both burst into a fit of giggles. I don’t even remember what was said at the time, but I knew instantly that we would be great friends.

In a lot of ways Sarah and I were very different. I was extroverted, outgoing, and into ‘girly’ things. Sarah was quiet, a little shy at first, and more ‘outdoorsy’ than me. But we were perfect compliments for each other. As I look back at that first year of college, I realized that all my best memories were with Sarah and I wouldn’t have had the same experience if it weren’t for her. We shared some very funny moments and also some very silly ones. I started to jot down some of the times that make me laugh or smile when I dig them out of my memory.

*The trip to the Oregon Coast – Sarah and I both had crushes on these two twin brothers who lived in the building next to us. Their names were Loren and Laurence. We would stay up late and talk about the two-word conversation that one of us may have had with one of the twins and imagine about what it would be like to date on of them. The four of us were all good friends and had a big group of people that we would often hang out with. One weekend everyone decided to go to the Oregon Coast. Sarah and I had strategically planned it so that we were in the same car as the twins. Anyways…to get to the point of the story…there were probably about 12 of us on the trip. We had gotten there a little bit earlier than everyone else and decided to build a large bonfire. We had all brought our sleeping bags and the plan was for everyone to just camp on the beach. The twins, Sarah and I started to build this huge bonfire that we had planned. We loaded up a HUGE pile of wood, lit it with some kerosene, and watched as the flames erupted. After about 5 minutes we all noticed that there was a terrible smell protruding from somewhere….we started looking around and spotted one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen! There was a beached shark only a few meters from where we had just built our bonfire!! Some creature had come over and taken a huge chunk out of its belly area so the shark’s intestines were spewed all over the sand. It smelled putrid and we were in a bad situation. We couldn’t very well move the bonfire…it was enormous and would take hours to burn out. Plus, we didn’t have enough wood to start a new one. But, this was a large shark and the smell was so disgusting. After a few minutes of everyone saying, “not I!” somehow I got stuck with the job of dragging the shark to a different part of the beach. Luckily, the twin I favored stepped up and decided to help me with it. We each took one side of the tail, held our breathe, and drug the shark as quickly as possible to the other side of the beach. I quickly took out my Purell and tried to get the nasty fish smell off my hands, but it was impossible. We ended up having a great night, but what a memory! I will never forget the night that I dragged a half-eaten, rotting shark across the beach of the Oregon Coast.

*The Condom Experience – Sarah and I did some pretty silly stuff. This memory has some embarrassing but still funny recollections. I remember one night we discovered there were a bagful of free condoms that the health center had hung on the door of each room in the dorm. Sarah had heard this story that condoms could stretch insane sizes before they would break! We were 18 and immature…plus neither of us had ever really taken the time to take a part or examine a condom. So, I watched as Sarah unwrapped one of the bright purple condoms. She opened it up to see how big it would stretch!! We were laughing and giggling, all of the sudden one of our dorm-mates came over and showed us that they would even stretch over your foot!! We were kind of grossed out, but doubled over in laughter at the sight of our overweight dorm-buddy walking around with a condom over his foot. This led to a few other condom “discoveries”. We learned that if you put a condom around a quarter and push the quarter tightly into the end of the condom you can do your laundry for free! You put one quarter in each condom, push in the quarters, and they come back, but the washer machine will register as if you put money into it! Occasionally you would lose a quarter or two when the condom would break, but we saved a LOT of money by getting free condoms from the health center!

*Midnight Running Club – Sarah and I were both on the cross country team. Although we were running a lot of miles each week (around 50-60) for some reason we both were gaining weight! I can contribute the weight gain to the unlimited amount of cafeteria food and the grotesque amounts of calories we would feed ourselves. Although we were running a lot, we were eating too much, too often, and not healthy enough. So, in an attempt to shed the extra ten pounds we had gained, we started the “Midnight Running Club”. Each night at midnight we would go for a 10-25 minute run (in additional to the regular workout we did with our team earlier in the day). This was crazy, I know, but we did some pretty silly stuff. Anyways…it was working pretty well until one night we got bored of running around campus and decided to veer off-campus into the city. This was a huge mistake. We ran into homeless people sleeping on the streets, and some very sketchy characters. I remember being so scared that night. I swear to this day that we were being followed! Sarah thinks it was only a pizza delivery guy who couldn’t find the house he was to deliver to…from that night on one of us would carry a little hand-held bottle of mace that Velcro-ed to your palm.

*Goldfish – Sarah and I had gotten this little fish tank and put a few goldfish in there. Well, for some reason we could not get them to stay alive longer than a few weeks. So, we started this tradition (don’t ask me how this idea came up) where we would name the current person we were ‘interested’ in after each one of the fish. If the fish died, then we cut it off with the guy. And we actually stuck to it for a few months!! It was a good excuse for neither of us to ever get very serious with anyone.

*Dance/Clean/Dance – I am not the most organized person in the world. Usually I am actually a bit cluttered. Sarah was the opposite, very organized and tidy. Well, this posed a problem because we were living together. My half of the room would always be a disaster and her half of the room would usually be super organized. After a while, my bad habits started to wear off on Sarah and she wasn’t liking it. She noticed that she would become a little untidy or get messy herself and that bothered her. So, somehow we came up with this hair-brained idea that would make the idea of cleaning a little more enticing. We decided that we would clean for 5 minutes, dance for 2 minutes, clean for 5 minutes, dance for 2 minutes, etc. I still remember the first time we did this and at 5:01 the song “I feel like Dancing” by Leo Sayer started playing on her computer!! We broke into hysterics. You have to remember, we were two scrawny little white girls who had no rhythm and really couldn’t dance at all. But it worked!! It motivated us to clean and organize our room while still having fun.

The list goes on and on….at the end of that first year Sarah ended up transferring to Boston University and is now getting her Masters at Vanderbilt. I transferred to another liberal arts school in Idaho for the remaining three years. Sarah and I rarely talk anymore….our lives have gone in different directions. But, my best college memories are from that first year. If nothing more, I learned to laugh and enjoy life more than I ever had up to that point.