I’d kinda like to go back to the college me, if only for a hour. I’d like to be young again. And I don’t mean in this weird, inhuman vampire pretend young life I live right now. I’d like a real hour again as a truly youthful person.
I liked being young. I liked so much of my college experience and I’d love to re-visit it and do it over again.
Hmm… but I’m thinking the wrong thing right now. I’m thinking that I loved college, even though I didn’t. I’m forgetting that I was confused at the world and directionless and unpopular and a drug addict and a sometimes cutter and all the rest of it.
But I want to go back, regardless, if only for an hour. It would be fun.
I want to see my old roommates again from my Freshman year. I want to play Goldeneye and watch Sifl and Olly with them just… one more time.
I want to listen to The Plain White T’s again in a car with my friends from Sophomore year. We practically wore that CD out on the trips we took to and from the local bowling alley.
I want to go back to the café that I used to go to my Junior year, and drink that familiar hot chocolate and work on those math proofs again.
I want to go back to the house I lived in during my Senior year and see my old friends there again. Just once. Even that cramped little room I lived in seems so inviting now. A lot of memories were made there, even though the room was only big enough to hold one person at a time.
And while I’m at it, I wouldn’t mind seeing the rest of my old dorm rooms again. Just for curiosity’s sake. Or the cafeteria, just for an ice cream cone. Or the science building. I want to see the old Unix and iMac labs. Or the performing arts building. I only went in there a few times, but I made sure to absorb everything I could on each visit. Or the old library, which I read was demolished five years ago.
I even feel a twinge of nostalgia for that hospital with the crooked doctor that got me hooked on so much horrible stuff. He was a greedy, unscrupulous monster, but I wouldn’t mind seeing the hospital again. It was a nice place, clean and inviting. Not a terrible place to wander for half an hour, and the cafeteria there had the best french fries.
I wouldn’t object too much to seeing the familiar frat houses again, even though I didn’t have many good experiences in the ones I went to. Has there ever been a more overrated thing than the alcohol fueled hedonistic party lifestyle of some frat houses? I tried that life for a semester. I was there, every Friday and Saturday and every week, for… what was it? 40 oz. Tuesdays. Yeah, that was it. Did I get anything good out of all that? I mean, besides knowledge of who I’m not?
And I wouldn’t mind revisiting the old internet, either. I remember trying to download Led Zeppelin from scour.net with my 38Kbps connection my Freshman year. It took I think 5 hours to get Stairway to Heaven. I remember well the night I downloaded it. I had to keep checking and rechecking the download every hour during a Saturday night party in my dorm suite. I wasn’t going to let it get away, no matter what.
I miss the old Google. I’d like to google “Anne Hathaway” and actually get a listing of Anne Hathaway fan pages again. That’s how it should be, I think.
I miss Netscape Navigator. And Mozilla. And the old goth message boards. And the Fametracker forum and Mrshowbiz and Wall of Sound and the Iconophile’s Celebrity Pantheon. I just checked Ain’t it Cool News. It’s the same as ever. Some things may never change, thank goodness.
I want to revisit my Junior year dorm. It was an odd place; it had been a women’s dorm for about fifty years before it was changed over to a men’s. The rooms were cavernous with high ceilings, deep closets, and makeup stations. Can’t say I put much makeup on in mine, but the mirrors and lights were certainly good for combing my hair.
My Sophomore dorm room was as shallow as my Junior dorm was deep. There was no TV in there unlike so many other rooms in that building, but I had Diablo II, so I was happy. My room was on the second floor of the building, directly above the main entrance, and my monitor was parked in front of a huge window overlooking the street in front. Some of my fondest, most relaxing memories of that year were of me playing DII on weeknights while people watching the crowds entering and leaving the building. I loved to just study the people as they filed in and out, and I remember listening to their gossip as closely as I could. I learned a lot about the campus goings on from that. I wish I still remembered some of it.
And for my memories’ sake… I never had much luck with the opposite sex in college, in spite of what I now realize was quite a lot of female interest. I was too shy and was battling too many health and mental problems, and that is aside from the drug addictions. And then there’s the truth that I spent so much time thinking about guys, too, so I wasn’t… quite… sure of what to do.
Of course, all of this ignores the I-know-this-can’t-be-real-so-I-won’t-speak-of-it relationship that I had with Winona Ryder for the last half of my college career. That surely wasn’t an actual, real relationship. My powers blossomed later. I’m sure.
… And I wouldn’t mind seeing my professors once more. Especially the CS ones. They had a way of making the most difficult computer projects seem doable, and even relatable. I hope that CS students today have professors like I did. Somehow, I don’t think many of them do.
That world is gone now, isn’t it? All of it… never to return. It’s a shame. I wish that I had appreciated more what I had back then. So many opportunities slipped out of my hands because I thought I would always have tomorrow. I didn’t realize how few tomorrows I actually had, and how quickly they would be used up.
This life is a short one. Make the most of it while you can.