in which They All Come Out to Play
We have very regular class times every day -- 8 o'clock, 10 o'clock, noon, 2 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 6 -- when students stream from the residents halls on the East side of campus to their classes on the West. I love walking against the tide, West to East, letting my fellow students swirl around me, chattering about classes, girls, boys, parties, food, everything, bobbing their heads to the music that flows up from the mp3 players clipped to their backpack straps or hidden, snug, inside their pockets. The ratio at the school is so evident as I walk opposite the flow -- three girls for to every seven guys -- and everyone's eyes are roving. Sexuality is like a living thing within this crowd. I can almost see it snaking its way between the unwashed, reeking, geekoid engineering kids, the bubbling-with-energy greeks, labels bright on their chests, the colorful otaku with their multi-hued hair and baggy pants, and the vast majority of people who fall somewhere in between these all-too-evident, walking stereotypes. College students. We fall so easily into categories, even more so at this school. We are mostly young. We are mostly unburdened by spouses, children, mortgages, and jobs. We are mostly relying on our parents. We are mostly engineers-to-be. We are mostly all completely different from one another, even as we are similar. It's all too big to ponder, as it nears 2 o'clock and the crowd thins down to a few half-jogging stragglers, late for class, and I hope desperately to myself that there will be mail in my tiny rectangular prism of a mailbox as I shuffle up the steps to the mailroom door.
I can't wait to see this for myselfff!