A Six-Legged Anecdote

Alright, as I promised, it's story time.

At SLC, students are not permitted to have pets. I would happily comply with this, since I’m not really in a good financial position to regularly buy dog food or cat litter. Nor, while my room is fairly spacious, do I have the space for a cage or fishbowl. Plus, I’ve noticed that I’m having an odd enough time taking care of myself. Nothing’s going wrong; it’s just been nearly a week and I haven’t done any laundry. That being said, little things here and there make me feel like I’m caring for myself. Yesterday evening I walked into town with some newfound friends and came back with two bags of “groceries”…by which I mean snacks. Among those snacks: nutella and a loaf of bread. Breakfast, for as long as it lasts.

Wow. Tangents.

Back to the tale: no pets at SLC, which is fine by me, because I’m still getting used to caring for myself. Thank god I’m not out in the real world yet.

So this evening after my “teacher interviews,” official walking tour of Bronxville, and a kraft mac ‘n cheese dinner in my friend’s apartment style dorm, I came home to my nook to sort through emails. Suddenly my roommate got my attention, very calmly, and said, “Look at that bug.”

Classically, this bug turns out to be a tarantula, a cockroach, a beetle, a bee, a silverfish, or a moth. So then classically there’s a moment to acknowledge the severity (or often lack of) of the situation, be it by jumping up on the desk, fetching the John Green from the night stand to squish the bug, or simply saying eww.  

This bug, however, was a cricket. And he was actually kind of cute.

The tiles on our floor that aren’t covered by the rug (and even the ones that are) happen to be white and brownish-gray, so if you’re a tiny little brown cricket, you’ll blend in for a while. We’ll notice, as we did, your practically useless mating calls¹, but we won’t actively seek you out. From what I’ve heard, this is a popular alcohol policy at colleges and universities across America. SLC’s is complex enough for its own paragraph.

From what I understand, the college won’t actively seek out underage drinking. I live on a substance free floor, so I’ll get kicked out of housing if I’m caught with alcohol in my dorm room, I think. I can’t run around with an open container. That being said, there’s a Good Samaritan rule that says if I’m with someone who blacks out from drinking and I help them, or (God forbid) vice versa, neither of us will “get in trouble.” Of course underage drinking happens here, but the students are smarter than to get wasted then walk around campus; they’re crickets on a tiled floor.

Back on track, so there’s this cute little cricket on the tiled floor. A few of my first thoughts:

Oh! It’s like The Cricket in Time Square.  

This was a book that my mom read me when I was a child. I don’t remember anything about the book; no bells ring when I look over the characters list or synopsis. I remember the title, I remember the  cover, and I remember being unamused by it. That being said, in a letter my mom wrote me, she said that “[I] you hung on to every word.” Memory is strange; maybe I did like it and I’m remembering an evening that didn’t enthrall me. I remember it enough to think of the title at the sight of a cricket.

Are crickets really that little?

Yes. Grasshoppers are bigger.

Let’s keep him…or her/it.

Crickets are lucky, right? What an asset! Besides, it wasn’t actively bothering anybody. No stingers, no wings. Sure, he/she/it was a bit noisy, but there were crickets outside our window, so we hear the chirps regardless. However, he was hanging out on my roommate’s side of the room, and she didn’t seem too enthralled to letting him/her/it stick around.

Besides: no pets at SLC. Even if he would normally be pet food, it would probably bode better for everyone if I didn’t keep him as a refugee.  

For those reasons and other obvious ones we decided to let him free in the real world.²  So Bug Catching 101³: get a cup and a piece of paper, trap the bug in the cup, slip the paper underneath, wrap the paper around the bottom of the cup, go outside, unwrap the paper, free the bug. I’m the roommate who got down on her knees to catch the cricket, but little to my surprise, the cricket didn’t want to be caught. No, he hopped around on the floor, off the wall, and even on me; it was almost too much effort to care to catch him. But I got him, wrapped him up, and took him outside…

…but not before showing him/her/it to my RA.

My RA was hanging out in her room at the end of the hall, next to the door to exit the building. I showed off my new buddy. She was vaguely impressed. Then, as climactic as the story goes, I took him outside into the warm, dark evening and set him free on the quad.    

So I’m sure you’re thinking, “Wow, there’s so little going on that you’re writing about a cricket being in your dorm room. Pathetic."

On the contrary, I’ve been swamped for the past several days. SLC has an “interview process” for class registration, where, ideally, students “interview” the professors about the courses they teach. Essentially, I have to meet with professors before I can sign up for classes. Sprinkled in with the professors are general meetings, activity expos, theater auditions, and orientation events. Yesterday I walked into a doomed-from-the-start Introduction Genetics “Interview,”⁴ several theater meetings, a cognitive science group interview⁵, a Pre-Med general meeting,⁶ and others that I’m forgetting. Today was all language: I interviewed three French professors, a Japanese professor, and, to mix things up, a math professor. French is probably not going to work out because the level I’d like to take, Intermediate II (which I’m told is where I should be) meets at the same time as my required First Year Seminar Course. Putain. Introduction to Japanese would be great, but it would mean that I couldn’t take the math course⁷ I’m interested in. It does mean that I could take another course that I still have to interview for, like “Synapse to Self…”, “Reading Oe and Murakami”, “Bullies and their Victims…”, or “The Bible and Literature.” I’ll only sign up for two more courses, since the basic package here is three courses, and one of those three courses is already “The Playwright’s Gym.” Three of the four courses I just listed are ones I still have to interview for tomorrow. I also have to turn in my registration form by 16:00 tomorrow. Before I can turn in my form, I have to get my academic advisor’s signature, assuming she's okay with my choices…my confidence has diminished with every interview. I don’t totally know what I’m going to do.

So I could’ve spent more time discussing my scheduling adventure, true, but college isn’t just about the big things that usurp all your daylight; it’s also [I think] about little things, like enjoying an evening walk on campus, meeting someone who loves the same book as you, complaining about the heat, and trapping crickets, even if you can't keep them for good luck

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END NOTES/FOOT NOTES/FURTHER EXPLANATIONS  

1.      They may not be useless; perhaps we house more crickets than we realize.   

2.      I was just listening to “Ain’t It Fun” by Pandora. “Take a Walk” by Passion Pit is on now.     

3.      Because we’re in college, right?  

4.      The meeting was going well until I discovered that I lacked the “General Biology” prerequisite. Whoops. On the cool side, the professor had a lovely Jamaican accent.

5.      This professor was from South Africa.  

6.      Just in case I do an academic 180.

7.      “Beyond Perspective: Mathematics and Visual Art.” It really is a math course. They like creative, flowery titles here at Hipster College.