We played with tinfoil sometimes.
When I was a freshman in college, my dorm mates and I decided to jump into a pool on the coldest night of the year. (Yes, I went to college in Florida, but it was North Florida, where temperatures actually dropped down to the teens!) The pool was behind our building, so after submerging in the water, we ran back inside to the safety and warmth of our shared rooms.
To keep the tradition alive, we decided to do it again sophomore year, only this time we were in different buildings, and this time we raised the stakes. With no pool behind our building anymore, we decided to race across the entire campus, jump into the fountain (which was normal to jump – or be thrown – into), and run all the way back home. It was far. We were wearing bathing suits under our jackets, and the temperature was around 14 degrees. We were stupid.
Still, five of us did it – three guys, two girls. We raced, we jumped, we screamed, we ran back. Icicles clung to my braided pigtails. I couldn’t stop shaking, and then everything hurt. I collapsed in the bathroom with my roommate as the water from the shower heated up the room and warmed our blood. About an hour later, the guys came by to check on us and we all had hot soup together, laughing about what we’d just accomplished. Needless to say, we didn’t try to recreate it the following year.
I’m still friends with many of these people, and oftentimes we’ll reflect on this event, along with the others that, in a weird way, shaped our early college years. (That time we dared him to eat all the cinnamon, that time we played assassins across campus with loaded water guns, that time she fell through the ceiling when trying to crawl from one room to the other, that time they rappelled off the building…). There are more memories, of course, more crazy nights, and it’s fun thinking about them, running them through my mind like a highlight reel.
A few of those dorm mates have kids now, just like I will any day now. I thought about this, while talking to one of them, joking that one day our kids will be in college and, maybe, running across campus in freezing weather. That they might replicate some of the not-so-smart things we did.
And that’s terrifying.
But also…we were good kids. Yeah, we broke rules, but we never did anything too bad, too dangerous. We knew what was right and wrong, despite the desire to break free. But most importantly – we had each other. And that was the most important part. We kept each other inspired, but also grounded. We looked out for one another. We cared, we loved.
So, yeah, it is frightening to think about my daughter going away to college in the future, to think about what she’ll get up to, to wonder if she’ll be shaking icicles out of her hair at 2 a.m., too. But honestly, if she makes a group of friends like I did, I know she’ll be just fine.
Lauren Gibaldi 