Read Online Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House by Meghan Daum - Free Book Online
Authors: Meghan Daum
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television set. The following Saturday afternoon, I moved my clothes, books, desktop computer (unbearably heavy in those days), and other assorted items down the stairs, across the quad, and into my new quarters. I remember being so determined to do the job smoothly and efficiently that I didn’t even detach the stereo speakers from the very large tuner/amplifier (a 1960s relic given to me by my father) to which they were connected. This required putting the whole audio system in a giant box, wires tangling themselves around the various components and curling out the sides like vines, and half carrying/half dragging it to its destination. I’m pretty sure there was snow on the ground.
I remember that I had to move the futon mattress, so I must have enlisted other people to help (despite the glum existence I’ve described, I did have friends who would have done mesuch turns), but to this day I have no recollection of who else was involved in this move. Likely, I was already embarrassed by what I was doing. As deranged with unwarranted melancholy as I sometimes was, I wasn’t so far gone as not to realize that there were better ways to spend your weekend than hanging your clothes in a new closet and waiting for your new life to start. Deep down (or even not so deep down), I knew that switching dorms was a strenuous but ultimately lazy way of trying to unpeel myself from the morose and rather ridiculous person I’d become since arriving at Vassar the year before.
But like those dreams where you try to scream but can’t make a sound, I felt almost physically incapable in college of simply studying or reading or even looking at a piece of art or running around a track. Instead, I spent nearly every waking moment planning my next move: What would I do over the summer? What courses would I take next year? (Never mind that I hadn’t read the books for my classes this year.) Where would I live (and what would I wear and what kind of haircut would I have) when I was finally graduated from this place and feeling human again? And because each of those scenarios seemed dependent upon some kind of relocation (insanely, even the question of what courses I’d take was followed quickly by questions as to where would be the best place to live when completing the course work), I’d often find myself lying on my futon and surveying my possessions with an eye toward moving them. How heavy is that bookcase? I’d wonder while lying in bed at 4:00 p.m. How many drawers’ worth of clothes could I stuff into one garbage bag? Could I carry three bags at once? Four? Could I carry my printer in one arm and an entire stack of bedding in the other? Could I do this at night so no one would notice?
These weren’t just little mind games. Over my remainingtwo years at Vassar, I would move seven more times. Please know how much this admission makes me cringe. Counting the moves up just now, I died a little death, not only at the thought of how many books I could have read or chemistry labs I could have taken (though considering I barely got through high-school chemistry, who are we kidding?), but also at the sheer amount of money and time I wasted doing everything in my power to avoid being a regular college kid who did regular college things.
The summer after my sophomore year, instead of working as a camp counselor or getting a Eurorail pass, I insisted on living in Manhattan, where I’d been hired as an intern (at $200 a week, which thrilled me) at an office at Lincoln Center. Having finally acquiesced to my pleas to not spend another summer in Ridgewood, my parents allowed me to sublet the Upper West Side studio of a woman my father knew through work colleagues. The apartment had exposed brick walls and a sleeping loft and, as it happened, was a fifth-floor walk-up in a brownstone (curiously, this fifth-floor situation had none of the unpleasant side effects of the fifth-floor dorm room). The woman who occupied it most of the time was a
I remember that I had to move the futon mattress, so I must have enlisted other people to help (despite the glum existence I’ve described, I did have friends who would have done mesuch turns), but to this day I have no recollection of who else was involved in this move. Likely, I was already embarrassed by what I was doing. As deranged with unwarranted melancholy as I sometimes was, I wasn’t so far gone as not to realize that there were better ways to spend your weekend than hanging your clothes in a new closet and waiting for your new life to start. Deep down (or even not so deep down), I knew that switching dorms was a strenuous but ultimately lazy way of trying to unpeel myself from the morose and rather ridiculous person I’d become since arriving at Vassar the year before.
But like those dreams where you try to scream but can’t make a sound, I felt almost physically incapable in college of simply studying or reading or even looking at a piece of art or running around a track. Instead, I spent nearly every waking moment planning my next move: What would I do over the summer? What courses would I take next year? (Never mind that I hadn’t read the books for my classes this year.) Where would I live (and what would I wear and what kind of haircut would I have) when I was finally graduated from this place and feeling human again? And because each of those scenarios seemed dependent upon some kind of relocation (insanely, even the question of what courses I’d take was followed quickly by questions as to where would be the best place to live when completing the course work), I’d often find myself lying on my futon and surveying my possessions with an eye toward moving them. How heavy is that bookcase? I’d wonder while lying in bed at 4:00 p.m. How many drawers’ worth of clothes could I stuff into one garbage bag? Could I carry three bags at once? Four? Could I carry my printer in one arm and an entire stack of bedding in the other? Could I do this at night so no one would notice?
These weren’t just little mind games. Over my remainingtwo years at Vassar, I would move seven more times. Please know how much this admission makes me cringe. Counting the moves up just now, I died a little death, not only at the thought of how many books I could have read or chemistry labs I could have taken (though considering I barely got through high-school chemistry, who are we kidding?), but also at the sheer amount of money and time I wasted doing everything in my power to avoid being a regular college kid who did regular college things.
The summer after my sophomore year, instead of working as a camp counselor or getting a Eurorail pass, I insisted on living in Manhattan, where I’d been hired as an intern (at $200 a week, which thrilled me) at an office at Lincoln Center. Having finally acquiesced to my pleas to not spend another summer in Ridgewood, my parents allowed me to sublet the Upper West Side studio of a woman my father knew through work colleagues. The apartment had exposed brick walls and a sleeping loft and, as it happened, was a fifth-floor walk-up in a brownstone (curiously, this fifth-floor situation had none of the unpleasant side effects of the fifth-floor dorm room). The woman who occupied it most of the time was a
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