The Flora and Fauna of My Dorm

In the fishbowl lounge lurk the gamers with their super high-tech laptops and games with two thousand pieces, pausing only for snacks or to tutor a wayward sophomore who has no idea what he is doing in his computer science course. The jocks in their basement triples yell drunkenly for their football teams, while next door the pot smokers wince and add more duct tape to the plastic bag covering their smoke detector. The movie girls burn the popcorn anyway, and the fire department takes its sweet time to respond, as usual. If there were ever a real fire, everyone would fumigate and die. The Thursday Afternoon Weekenders start their usual deafening, pumping disco party a few hours early, but only their immediate neighbors shatter their glass lamps against the wall in protest; no one else wants to be termed a douchebag for spoiling the party, and everyone’s always feeling the strain. It was raining today, so the germophobes take their afternoon shower and smear mud like blood in a horror movie all over the bathroom walls. My favorite was the perfect muddy handprint on the door, as if the girls were starring in a zombie movie. Classy. Half the students watch Comedy Central on their laptops and complain about the wireless and how much work they have to do. It’s a perfect time to catch up on one’s studies, but of course it is nearly impossible to study here. If there are any actual studious students, no one would ever know it because they hide in their rooms like wilting plants, pouring the best years of their lives into books for a degree that will make them a much better person in general, though not such a good burger flipper.