hello, good friend

Ladies and gents, we have officially propelled ourselves past autumn into full-blown winter. It snowed yesterday. I asked my mom to send winter coats. Humbug. Meanwhile, my darling brother sweats bullets in the near 70 degree South Carolina version of fall. Which reminds me, I’m going home soon.

I enjoy college, don’t get me wrong. But every year, without fail, Thanksgiving break arrives much too late. Tensions are mounting in our apartment . . . and most likely every other apartment and dorm room on campus. And probably off. It’s contagious. Here’s a brief inventory of the recent (by “recent” I mean within the past five days) catalysts for B302’s emotional explosions:

roommate A breaks up with boyfriend
roommate B gets engaged
roommate C accepts a job offer
roommate D’s boyfriend accepts a job offer, roommate D commences job search, roommate D hires lawyer to combat her newly-acquired “criminal charges” (traffic violations, nothing felonious)
roommate E completes grad school applications before December 1

In addition to regular schoolwork, of course.

I write this in the kindest tone possible: it’s a wonder we haven’t drop-kicked one another. To say we’ve been “edgy” would be a gross understatement. That’s why we’re all very thankful to our Rape Aggression Defense class which yesterday required us to suit up in sparring gear and legitimately pound … erm, defend … one another.

All this to say, tomorrow I will fly home, shut off my cell phone, and spend at least a few days riding my bike along the coast (and filling out grad school applicationsgrumblegrumble). Excuse my absence.

To share your emotional explosion stories, please e-mail me at ar1233@messiah.edu. I won’t publish your accounts, but I guarantee that the ladies of B302 will appreciate the humor.

I cannot work while listening to music. My boyfriend works to music all the time. In fact, I doubt he can work sans music. Music motivates him. My roommates, too, diligently complete homework while playing background music. My brothers do it, my sister does it, even my first-year roomies did it. (Granted, they all listen to worthy tunes, so I appreciate them.) But, seriously, people. For four years I have vainly attempted to coax myself into becoming a music-jamming-homework-tackler like the rest of you. I have tried and failed.

Last week, for example, my roomie and I settled down at our kitchen table for a nightly homework session. We are the night owls of our apartment (she even more so than me), and we routinely see hours like, say, 3:00am. We employ faithful iTunes to encourage ourselves through this seemingly endless stretch of time. However, on this particular night – who am I kidding, this happens every night – I spent the hours between 1am and 3am memorizing song lyrics and compiling new albums for my collection. When we finally called it a night, she had completed all of her assignments. Me? Zero.

Currently, I’m sitting at my desk in Old Main, attempting to harmonize my article-composing with Iron & Wine tunes. I’m remembering why this doesn’t work for me, music and writing: I’m infatuated with words. I like words so much that when someone like Sam Beam sets poetry to guitar melodies, I grow more distracted than a chubby kid at a bakery. (That analogy is more overdone than my mom’s Thanksgiving turkeys. Bah. Thanksgiving comes sooner than…ok,we’re done). After a mere five minutes of lines like “there are things that drift away / like our endless numbered days / autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she made,” I lose myself. (How could you not, that’s what I’d like to know.) Suddenly, half an hour has passed, and I’ve only penned a headline. A lousy one, at that. Why am I so shocked? How can I generate barely coherent words when flawless ones are flowing into the other side of my brain? It’s like constructing a Lego tower – erm, attempting to – with the Egyptian pyramids looming over me.

Back to work. Over and out.

Let me paint a picture for you. Imagine with me that you and a friend are teaching a jazz dance class. (Hypothetically, of course. Hang with me.) All but two students in that class speak Spanish as their native language. None of them have ever taken a dance class. They arrive in jeans and sneakers, stumbling in from neighborhoods a few blocks down. They eye you with silence and awkward glances. As you start the music, they stand with hips popped, arms crossed, refusing to budge. You and your friend increase the enthusiasm factor, yelling work-out video battle cries like “C’mon move it! You can do it!” and “Lookin’ good!” to no avail. Although the two of you are bouncing around like five-year-olds on Red Bull, they don’t respond to your motivational energy. Or your bubblegum pop tunes. Or your irresistibly appealing classical choreography.

You obviously have no choice but to force them to learn more dance moves. Endless repetition, that’s the way to win ‘em over. More of tombé, bourre, chasse, grand jete combinations please. Boy, things are going splendidly.

And then, out of the corner of your eye, you notice a boy in the back row. He looks about nine years old, definitely the youngest member of the class. He’s not watching you, or your friend, or even the other students. He’s not concentrating on counting the music or executing the proper choreography. He has his eyes closed and a goofy grin plastered on his face, and he’s just…well, flailing. Wildly. Like a windsock, actually. He’s throwing his arms across his body, jumping and skipping at tempos audible only to his ears, randomly tossing his head and shoulders at whiplash-inducing speeds…and he’s smiling. Laughing. He’s bumping and body-slamming into the other kids, and they’re shooting glares in his direction, but he doesn’t notice them, of course. He’s absorbed in his own world, cracking himself up. Dance-flailing.

Every ounce of training in you screams “Kid, just do the choreography! Stop rebelling against proper form! You’re ruining art!” The other kids are pouting now, but you just let the spectacle go. You and your friend exchange amused expressions. He’s kinda…entertaining?…to watch.

At the end of class, he offers you a running high five, accompanied with the signature cheese grin. “That was awesome!” he says.

Huh. Ok. Glad you had…fun?

I was thinking about the kid the other day, this dance-flailing extraordinaire. Currently, my world feels like a jumbled mess of protocol and procedures. Under these stressful circumstances, I can’t help but appreciate the dance-flailers of the world. Sometimes I have to encourage myself to abandon all the correct choreographies and just…flail.