Oatmeal

There are two things you should know about me: first, I can keep track of maybe two things in my life, and I lose everything else. Second, I love oatmeal, but loathe raisins. Keep these facts in mind; they will come up later.

This semester, the locks on all of the dormitory doors changed from a keypad (press 2, then 6, then try to press 5 and 7 at the same time while also balancing your biology book, that delicious package of cookies your dad sent, and the cellphone on which you’re talking to your boyfriend in New York who may or may not be breaking up with you) to a card swipe system. Everyone was issued shiny new school IDs with a little patch of magic in them. It took a couple of weeks for the faithful locksmith crew to change over all the doors, and when they finally did, it meant we had to have our IDs with us all the time in order to get into our dorms. There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth (and propping of doors) as people struggled to remember their IDs. The silver lining to all of this? The little note that the locksmith crew left on all of the doors, explaining how to wave our card in front of the card reader so that the light would flash green. It was signed, “With Love, The Locksmiths.” And you know what? I think they meant it. I think it WAS done with love. And that’s why I’m a fan of the work program. It means that the people who are changing the locks on our doors, and making our pancakes, and photocopying our final exams, and mopping our floors and pruning our trees and fixing the waterless urinals, are our friends, which makes more of a difference than you’d think.

This morning, after having lost my ID for a day and a half, I finally found it and got to go the dining hall like a whole person (if you don’t have your ID, you have to print out a temporary meal ticket, and the cafeteria manager scoffs at you). Before I could say anything to Emilene, who is the breakfast server at Cowpie (the vegetarian and vegan dining hall), she said, “I know, I know, it has raisins in it, I’m sorry.” She then proceeded to explain how she thinks of me every time she makes oatmeal, and—without me saying anything—went to amazingly painstaking lengths to scoop me a bowl of oatmeal that was one-hundred-percent raisin free.

That’s what I call love.

Lindsay