Villa Idiot Returns

Each time I return to campus after break, it gets more and more difficult.  I don’t just mean returning to the reality of classes and homework, but my actual physical arrival.

The struggle begins when I  must wrestle my fifty pound suitcase from the baggage claim carousel at the airport.  Then, after dragging it outside and waiting for the train, I lug it into the train and awkwardly push it down the aisle, searching for an empty seat.  Once I find a place to sit, I have to heave the bag into the seat, while a line of impatient people waits, watching me grunt and nearly fall over.  Inevitably, the suitcase wheels will leave a trail of dirty water on the seat, which I promptly sit upon in my effort to get out of the way as fast as possible.

When the train arrives at 30th Street Station, I am forced to carry my bag down a flight of very crowded stairs without toppling to my death.  Once I get up an escalator (WHY ISN’T THERE AN ESCALATOR DOWN FROM THE FIRST TRAIN?!) and wait, usually for ages, I then repeat the effort of getting the suitcase onto another train.

Once I finally arrive on campus, the journey really hasn’t even begun, as I must now carry fifty pounds of overpacked mess down the stairs under the train tracks and up the other side (Once, one of my professors carried the bag for me, which was possibly even more embarrassing than struggling with it alone).

Then begins the long trek to South Campus, taking the long way around so as to avoid extraneous stairs over the other train tracks.  Finally, I reach the final leg of the marathon, when I must carry the suitcase, which is honestly as big as I am, all the way to the third floor of my dorm.  This involves a system of hoisting the bag up one step at a time and praying that no sorry soul attempts to get down the stairs during my struggle.  When I finally reach my room, I look as though I have just climbed Mount Everest during a heat wave.  I collapse on my bed, soaked with sweat, thanking the Lord that I won’t have to repeat this humiliating and exhausting process for at least TWO WHOLE MONTHS!

Villa Idiot Gets Autumnal

I have always had a special fondness for crunchy leaves, and every fall I cannot control the urge to go out of my way to step on every crunchy-looking leaf I come across. The other day, while walking along Lancaster, I noticed that between the curb and the cars parallel parked on the street there was an abundance of crisp, crunchy leaves piled up waiting to be rustled by my feet. I look a little leap off of the sidewalk and jumped straight into the orange and brown pile, which gave a satisfying crunch. Just then, a car drove past, and a guy stuck his head out the window and yelled, “What did those leaves ever do to you?!” I promptly returned to the sidewalk.

Villa Idiot Does Some Laundry

Last week, I came to the conclusion that college is just a series of awkward encounters with hot guys in the laundry room, but at the time I didn’t even know the half of it.

Yesterday I went to go get my laundry out of the dryer about five minutes after it had completed. A guy was standing there with my dryer open, and all of my clothes were sitting on top of one of the washing machines. I’ve had to do this several times myself, so I know how awkward it can be.

“Oh, are these yours?,” he asks me. I smile and say they are, because I don’t want him to feel bad, but he continues to look uncomfortable. He steps back from what appears to be the empty dryer.

“You can get the rest.” I come closer, and there, sitting alone in the dryer, is a single pair of very lacy underwear.

I scoop them up as quickly as possible, and try to shove all my laundry in a bag at lightning speed, all the while chattering on about how I always have to remove people’s clothes from the dryer and that it’s always extremely awkward and that I understand and on and on and on. We still haven’t actually made eye contact throughout this entire encounter, so I don’t even know what this guy’s face looks like, although mine is undoubtedly blazing red.

He responds, “I think it’s more awkward for guys…” I laugh politely, and run from the room, wishing I could drop through the floor and disappear.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, about an hour later I go back to look for my missing sock, and GUESS WHO WALKS IN.

Villa Idiot Embarrasses Her Roommate

Today’s embarrassment doesn’t actually have anything to do with me, but with my roommate. We’ll call her “Emily” to protect her identity.

One day, Emily got back to the dorm and walked upstairs to our room. She entered the passcode to open the door, but the door didn’t unlock. She continued to attempt unlocking the door until the keypad began to beep angrily at her as if to say, “YOU’RE WRONG, GO AWAY.”

At that moment, the door swung open, and a girl Emily had never seen before emerged, looking annoyed. Emily looked at the room number printed beside the door. It was not our room.

In fact, it was the room located directly below ours.

Villa Idiot Does Some Homework

It’s a beautiful day; crisp fallen leaves lay scattered across the grass as the sun shines magnificently in the perfect blue sky.  I can’t concentrate on homework because I keep finding myself gazing dreamily out the window at this glorious weather.  I decide to take advantage of this perfection and make my way outside, lounging in the shade of a gorgeous tree outside my dorm.  Here, I am able to actually get some work done, despite a couple breaks to squeal when an ant scurried across my foot and to snapchat an artsy picture of my surroundings.

Everything is splendid, when suddenly a voice rings out at a startling decibel, “GET OFF THE GRASS!” This message is then repeated in several languages.  I shoot up and whip my head around, looking for the source of the disturbance, which is of course an audio clip from the best movie of all time, The Princess Diaries.

Unable to locate the sound, all I can do is go back to reading my textbook, knowing that somewhere lurking deep within the depths of Good Counsel is a kindred spirit.

I will look for you, I will find you, and I will befriend you.

Villa Idiot Goes to Class

There I am, heading resolutely toward my last class of the day, a mere fifty minutes between myself and the weekend.  I squeeze myself awkwardly into the very back row of the cramped classroom.  As the room begins to fill with people, I begin to wonder why this class has a different group of students on Fridays than it does on Mondays and Wednesdays.  After about a minute of slight confusion, the classroom is completely full of people I do not recognize.  I discretely whip out my phone and locate the picture of my schedule, which I had taken earlier to avoid looking like a fool with a paper schedule.

I read, THEOLOGY 12:30.  I check the time. 11:30.  This isn’t right.

Just as I’m grabbing my bag to make a quick and subtle escape, the professor begins the class.  He asks that we take a moment of silence.  It’s now that I begin to realize that a “moment” is approximately equal to a million years, and I am probably never leaving this room.  I’m poised in my seat like a lion; ready to pounce on the first opportunity to remove myself from this nightmarish situation, although also contemplating the option of just sitting through the class as if nothing is amiss.  Meanwhile, the rest of the class is still sitting in absolute silence, and it’s some kind of miracle provided by god himself that they can’t hear the intense pounding of my heart.

Just then, the classroom door swings open, and in walks a very large boy, probably a football player or a Greek god or something along those lines.  He glances around the room for just long enough to discover that every single seat has already been filled.  This seems like the perfect opportunity for me to announce that the reason he can’t find a seat is that I am, in fact, already sitting in it.  I rise and blurt out a nonsensical explanation as I swiftly extricate myself from the confines of the back row, leaving behind a puddle of my own shame, whacking several people with my bag, and avoiding the eye contact of every person looking at me (which just happens to include every person in the room).  I scurry out of the door under the amused stare of my professor, and walk away as quickly as possible without actually breaking into a sprint.

An hour later, I return just as class is getting out, and stand silently in shame as thirty or so students file past, seeing me and doing their best not to laugh until they are out of my line of vision (at least, I assume that’s what they were thinking).  When my professor reaches my name in the roll call at the beginning of class he can’t help but crack a secret smile as if to say, “I know what you did last summer.”  Except, like, “I know what you did last hour”…or something like that.  I just smile sheepishly and pray that no one ever mentions this ever, ever again.

Then I relate the story publicly on the internet for everyone and their cat to read at their leisure.