One time, freshman year...

Do you ever have those songs that spark memories? I heard one on the way to work this morning that reminded me of something that happened to me freshman year. And I figured I'd share, just for the heck of it. (No judgements, by the way. I was quite a naive freshman. It was before I was really introduced to the world. I had a sheltered childhood. Now, with that said...)

This is the song that started it all:

Let me set the scene: I was still in my punk phase for most of freshman year. I lived with 12 other girls on my suite, most of which were definite girly girls. I didn't identify with them much, so I spent a lot of time hanging out in one of the guys' dorms across the quad (yeah yeah, it's not as bad as it sounds). At one point, the RA from the guys' suite and I became pretty good friends. He used to play his guitar all the time, and my favorite song for him to play/sing was "When You're Gone" by the Cranberries. To this day, when it comes on, I crank up the volume and drown everything else out. Oh, and I should probably include that my familiarity with drugs ended at marijuana. I really hadn't been around, hadn't seen, and didn't know much about any other drugs.

On to the story: The girl who lived next door to my roommate and I was notorious for "borrowing" things and not giving them back. She had borrowed a couple of t-shirts from me and some things, including a pair of earrings, from one of our other suite-mates, C. One day, when she was off at rowing practice (she was really muscular & strong, important to note), her roommate came over and said, "Hey, L is gone. If you guys want to come look for your stuff, you're welcome to." Perfect, we'll go find our stuff, take it back, and pretend like nothing happened.

C & I walked over to her room and started looking for our stuff. I can't even remember if I found my t-shirt or not, but I was helping C look for her earrings. I found a small plastic box on her desk, and thought, "Maybe she keeps her jewelry in this." Wrong. I open the box, and what do I find? A couple of bags of white powder, a tin of MJ, and a couple of bags of pills. In my stupidity/naiveness (which is a word, btw, I googled), I flipped out, screaming about my fingerprints being on her drugs, and how I was going to get thrown in jail and kicked out of our dorm (dramatic? not me!). What did we do? The most rational sensible dramatic thing to do: we went to our RA. Who of course was "required" to call the campus police. They came in, confiscated said "white powder", confirmed the tin was full of marijuana and waited on L to come home.

I was terrified. Here I was, sitting next door, where the cops were waiting on my suite-mate to come home so they could arrest her. And my name was the only one on the police report because I was the one that found her stash. All I could think about what how badly she was going to beat me up when she found out. Here I am, scrawny as all get out, and she rows 6 hours a day, 6 days a week: I'm screwed.

The only sensible thing I could think to do was call up my RA friend from the guys' dorm and have him come protect me. Very sensible, right? He came over, I locked the door behind him and we waited it out.

As much as I'd like to say there was a huge climax & she came running at me & RA friend jumped in to save the day, reality was quite the opposite. When she came home, they told her what happened, took her drugs, and left her alone. We both went before the judicial board - her for obvious reasons. I, on the other hand, was interrogated for why I felt meritted to go through her stuff. The board told me that I could've been arrested for looking through her things without permission. According to the books, she should've been kicked off the rowing team and out of the dorms. Instead, they didn't do anything. In fact, I'm pretty sure I got into more trouble than she did.

Needless to say, her relationship with everyone else was pretty strained from then on out. What made the whole situation worse was that her parents decided right around that time to make a 2 hour move to my hometown. Meaning from then on out, whenever we were at home, I had the chance of running into her again. I've actually only seen L a handful of times since then, and none of them have been at home.

I look back on that whole situation and laugh at how naive I was. If that situation had taken place at a later time, I'd have put back what I found & pretended like nothing had happened. But, hey, it makes me laugh everytime I think about it, so making an idiot of myself was good for something, right?