Jamie Scriber is a Trent student secretly living in a Lady Eaton College janitorial closet, out of preference. They often joke with their parents about it being fate them to be a writer, given their last name. Their parents often joke back that they’re ashamed of them.
It was certainly a busy year at Trent, and I’m sure we are all exhausted after everything that has happened these past seven months, from neo-Nazis invading our downtown to that day the café in Gzowski ran out of cheesecake.
A year of university is never easy, so I would like to take this time to reflect on the feelings that may be swarming inside each of us like badgers in a banana box — a banana box that, you’re just realizing now, is made of cardboard and probably not badger-proof. Please, for future notice, keep your badgers in a more badger-appropriate setting, such as the playground at your kid’s school or your neighbour’s bathtub. Who doesn’t love a furry surprise when you are at your most vulnerable?
And we are all vulnerable, all the time. We are, generally speaking as students, a tired people, and that makes doing things difficult. But do things, we did. When the TCSA wanted to take control of the Levy groups, we stood up and said no. When we discovered the wetlands were in danger of being built over (and still are), we stood up and said no. And when neo-Nazis entered our beautiful downtown, we stood up and said no.
Some of us shouted it, and some of us got arrested, but as the old saying goes: when the going gets tough, the cuffed get going in a police cruiser with a shiny new criminal record.
More important than any of this, however, was something that I have been holding on to since the very first month of academic year: Charleigh Chomko’s review of the Pizza Factory Caesar salad. Yes, I know this came out ages ago, but I blame this article for my sleepless nights since then — a problem which is definitely not related to the stress of school, a job, family and living in a closet with a horse.
Charleigh, what were you thinking when you called the salad “decent?” Don’t you know that it is designed to be achingly garlicky so you can accustom your insides to the burning pain of rejection in life? It is trying to help you, Charleigh. It is trying to help us all. Anyone who does not want to sit on their deck and shovel a fiery Tuesday night Pizza Factory salad-for-one into their mouth while watching their landlord and their husband fight over who gets the family cat in the divorce, well, I just don’t trust you.
Anyway, spring is here even if it doesn’t feel like it. Some quick suggestions for what to do during the next five months: go for a hike, swim in the Otonabee, fight with your roommates, brush up on your Latin, get a job, find new roommates, paint a picture, go to the Little Lake Festival, regret new roommates, get a tattoo, move into a single apartment, join a cooking class for one, drink with your cat, miss your old roommates, drink with your cat, call your old roommates while sobbing, organize your DVDs alphabetically, drink with your cat, and maybe, just maybe, consider living with roommates again. If you end up following my advice, write to me next semester and let me know just how you’re doing. You know, emotionally.
Well folks, that’s it. Trent is closing up for the season, with the exception of eager summer students and myself, staying in my closet. Get out there and have a good summer. I don’t care where you go but you can’t stay here.