Last year I laughed about living in a “dorm” in Germany. It was funny at the time, actually a joke because, well, it wasn’t a real dorm. Karma has come back to bite me in my 27-year-old rear end as I return to the dorm scene. The real one.
Granted, it’s a nice building. Would be an apartment building were it not for the long hallways, almost 300 residents, and the fact that its foundation is built on a college campus. We (my roommate and I), however, plan to refer to it as ‘the apartment’ as often as possible.
See, I’m not even a student here. I am working as an intern in the Athletic Department and as an Assistant Basketball Coach. While I miss the days of college athletics, all my friends being close-by, and not having a real job, I’ve found I don’t really miss the dorms.
The first night here I knew we had a problem. The walls are paper thin. Or is it that my neighbors are extremely loud? I think it’s probably both, lucky me. I felt like I could participate in their conversation about Channing Tatum. We even heard someone’s cell phone go off above us last night. The phone was on vibrate.
Though I did survive my first weekend in the college dorm– it wasn’t pretty. I’m talking 3 am,-why-all-the-door-slamming?- ugly. I never enjoyed how loud the dorms could be even at age 18 and 19. At that time I had practices to be running in at 7:30am and I cherished seven to nine hours of sleep every night; something, it seemed, no one else did. My teammates even called me “grandma” sometimes, joking about my sleep patterns.
I’m too old for the dorm life. Last week, at a crowded bar, I actually used the phrase, “How ‘bout an excuse me?” as a guy shouldered past me. There is nothing I can do but be thankful for my free housing, my 25-year-old roommate, and my fan that drowns out most of the rowdy noise; cuz grandma is living the dorm life until mid-May.
