There are some things they don’t tell you about dorm life. They tell you you’ll have to adjust to living with someone unlike you. They don’t tell you what to do when you get out of the shower before your 10 a.m. class and have to say hi to your hall-mate’s boyfriend and pretend it’s perfectly normal they chose to shower together in a public restroom.
They tell you you’ll become close with the people in your hall. They don’t tell you if you leave your door open, people will have phone conversations right outside and you will find out not only who is sleeping with whom, but also where, when and their preferred brand of condoms.
They tell you how hard it will be to do your own laundry. They don’t tell you what to do when you drop your lacy black thong on the floor during that painful washer-to-dryer transfer, only to have your promiscuous panties graciously returned to you by that boy on the fifth floor with the persistent acne problem and endearing case of astigmatism.
It would appear much goes unsaid about the realities of dorm life. None of this day-to-day awkwardness is mentioned in emails from the dorm listserv. It’s a shame, really — competing for the most embarrassing moment would be a fascinating intramural sport. Can you tell how long I’ve been searching for a sport I could actually win at?
Yes, things were looking rough as I began my year in the dorm, but I thought I would ultimately be able to scrape by with minimal amounts of collateral damage. And this may well have been the case — if it weren’t for the octopus lamp.
Mine was a fine specimen I brought from home: a tall, five-foot beauty with plastic shades and a metal stand. But much like the infamous blue ringed octopus that terrorizes thousands off the coast of Australia, it would appear that octopus lamps are lethal within the dormitory biosphere. The fire marshals are not amused by octopus lamps, and thus, mine would have to go.
Obviously, I wasn’t about to ship my five-foot lamp back home; the tentacles were not amenable to easy packaging. We needed to find some place to hide it until after the fire marshal came. We brought it down to the lobby. We’ll fast-forward through that awkward moment as some silent kid in the elevator stood there with two girls and an octopus lamp. We told him the lamp lived on the second floor but had plans to spend the night. I live in one of the lovely new high-rises and assumed that in a dorm with a full kitchen, laundry facilities and cable television, no one would notice an errant lamp. I was wrong.
It stayed there for a week. We were a little worried someone would take off with it — it really was a nice lamp — but knew deep down no one would, not out of respect for the honor code, but because no one would want to stand in front of the Honor Committee and discuss the logistics of robbing a household appliance named after an elusive sea creature.
On the seventh day after our relocation mission, we got a listserv email from the senior resident in our dorm. It included a lost-and-found announcement. It would appear that someone had misplaced his, wait for it, octopus lamp.
What should you do in such a situation? The dorm was abuzz — we were about to be “those girls who lost their octopus lamp,” which everyone knows is even worse than being “those girls who continually keep their door open and blast Nickelback.” And those girls are the absolute worst.
We decided to play it cool. We strolled into the senior resident’s room (or mansion?) and pretended to be really excited that she “found” our lamp, because we’d been “so worried” after we “misplaced it” the other night. We thanked her for her vigilance on pursuing octopus lamp searches within the building. Yeah, things got pretty weird, pretty quick.
And so begins my year of dorm life.
Julia’s column runs biweekly Tuesdays. She can be reached at j.horowitz@cavalierdaily.com.
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