When I first arrived on the Whitman College campus for the beginning of second semester, I was disgustingly happy, an overexcited 6-year-old entering the gates of Disneyland, Mickey Mouse ears lopsided on her head, a Pixie Stick in one hand and a pickle in the other. My eyes were wide and wonder-filled. Everything was beautiful. Everything was magical. Everything was CLEAN. Being abroad was great and all, but hell, welcome back to the happiest place on earth.
For the first 10 days, I was that annoyingly euphoric 6-year-old about everything: Fire and Spice, the stairs in Maxey, the ducks: highly irritating my friends who had stayed around for fall semester. I wore proverbial beer goggles; I was attracted to everything around me: the boy from my freshman year Environmental History class, Jewett still looking like a missing part of the State Penitentiary, even the library (God help me).
It was the first time I experienced affectionate feelings toward the city of Walla Walla. I lovingly gazed at the street names: Alder, Main and Isaacs, all tasting sweet on my lips. I even came pretty close to smooching the walls of Sweet Basil when Stephanie (yes, I know the names of the SB staff) forked out a steaming cheese pie with those little ricotta clumps. No lie, I thought: the happiest place on earth, and I’ll be damned if I ever graduate. They’ll have to peel me out of here with a spatula.
It’s a sad but scientifically proven fact that all trips to Disneyland eventually end: so predictably, after those blissful 10 days, my reborn love for Whitman seemed less like reality and more and more like a hallucinogenic high that I was violently tumbling out of.
And then it seemed like I never left. The routine kicked in: get up, go to class, eat, go to the gym, shower, class, eat, library, same faces, same faces, same faces. Not that I don’t immensely enjoy those same faces, but it’s easy to get lost in the daily grind of Whitman (or anywhere else for that matter).
Thus, in order to prevent spending my remaining years at Whitman in one-dimensional routine and monotony, I have decided it is important to add a little dash of perspective to my days. Appreciate the small things. You know, cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels and doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles. Except it doesn’t have to be that nauseating. So, they probably won’t be the same as yours, but (sing along now) these are a few of my favorite things:
1. iPods. Easy to take for granted and understandably so: they dwell in cargo pockets and purses as common as old Kleenexes and Chapsticks. But really, consider the little square thing somewhere between the size of a matchbook and a deck of cards holding virtually any song you could ever want.
Life is no longer like a box of chocolates: it’s an eight gig Nano on shuffle. One minute you are dozing to Jack Johnson crooning, “and on and on and on and on it goes,” and the next minute it’s “HARDER! BETTER! FASTER! STRONGER!” and Daft Punk is banging on a cowbell. Brilliant.
2. Online episodes. No, you don’t have to wait a whole week for another installment of Jim and Pam. You can get addicted to TV shows at your convenience. I applaud the ingenuity of NBC.com: thanks to them, I am now a not-so-proud-but-dedicated viewer of “Friday Night Lights.” Embarrassing, but true.
3. Wool socks. They are the answer to the most pressing problem of humanity, which is, quite obviously, cold feet. Unfortunate that I have only just discovered them, when I grew up in the Northwest and thereby have lived nearly 21 years in soggy socks.
4. Friends getting coffee. Now this is tough. It’s hard to decide whether I mean Phoebe and Chandler in Central Perk, New York or my “real people” friends in Coffee Perk, Walla Walla. I might have to go with the latter, because there’s not a warm fuzzy in the world that beats drinking chai while vehemently arguing whether or not 10 Jake Kinstlers could beat up 50 Cent.
5. Cookies. Oatmeal and with milk, specifically. Cookies are a foolproof way to make anyone feel like the 6-year-old with Pixie Stick and pickle, probably even in 30 years when I’ve just paid the bills and I’m two shimmies away from menopause.
6. Lack of zits. Next time you look in the mirror, pick out every spot where you DON’T have a pimple, then give it the love and praise it deserves for being so flawlessly worthy of a Maybellene commercial.
Because I guarantee you, once an angry red sucker rises from the depths of skin hell, you will wish you hadn’t taken that non-zit for granted.
7. Tea. Green in the morning, herbal at night. That’s some soul-warming shit.
8. Lastly, brown paper packages tied up with string. Especially the ones that say ADLER, L and come from the Reid basement mailroom.
Make your own list, I promise it will go a long way toward alleviating the all-too-common Whitman doldrums.