Sitting over a pint at Rennie’s last week, a buddy asked me a question.
“What are you going to take,” he said, “from this whole college thing?”
“What am I going to take?” I asked. I thought about my impending graduation.
“I’ll take that freshman feeling,” I said. “That ‘Yeah, I’m going to college’ feeling when you first get that packet of information in the mail. Yes, put me in the normal hall. Yes, sign me up for the dorm meal plan. The food can’t be that bad, after all.
“I’ll take all the crazy experiences I had with my roommate, who slept two feet across from where I slept. Everybody’s roommate was bad, but mine was worse. When I first stepped into that room, his stuff was sprawled across my bed. His stuff included cigarette packs and a sword. It was a fun freshman year.
“I’ll take that shot by Darius Wright, the one that beat Arizona State in the craziest basketball game I’ve ever personally witnessed.
“I’ll take drinking FIFA, the game that incorporated our two main activities from the first three quarters of our first year: drinking and video games. In drinking soccer, we took a shot from the bottle every time the other person scored. By the end of the game, we weren’t sober.
“I’ll take my end-of-freshman-year GPA. It was never quite that high again.
“I’ll take the Autzen apartments. Like a dorm with room to move around and a porch, the Autzen apartments had everything. Your own bathroom. Friends nearby. A parking spot. What more do you need?
“I’ll take fraternity parties. I remember scaling a fence to leave one of those parties, feeling like MacGyver after someone told us the cops were coming. I remember going out to the front, discovering there was not a policeman within eight blocks, and coming back inside to drink more fraternity-sponsored beer.
“I’ll take Info Hell. Anybody who took the journalism school’s weed-out class is with me on this one. It’s seared into your brain for life.
“I’ll take our house, which finally made us feel like adults. We had to separate our recycling for ourselves, which we never did, and pay our own bills, which didn’t happen. We had to mow our own lawn, yeah right, and not spill stuff on the carpets. Sure. We were the best house owners on the planet.
“I’ll take intramural football and hockey. We kept the same core group for three years and finally won a title in hockey. I say this without exaggeration: It was the finest achievement of my athletic career.
“I’ll take disc golf. I never felt more like an Oregonian than the times I threw a little plastic disc into a fan of chains out at Dexter Reservoir.
“I’ll take the creative writing program. For my dollar, there’s not a more passionate bunch of people on campus. The fact that there’s no undergraduate major for them — that the University can’t
recognize that passion — is sick.
“I’ll take the brutal build-up and eventual execution of my 21st birthday. I think everybody goes through this, especially those of us who turn later than our friends. The months before the big day are filled with more anticipation than ever. Then it happens, and you don’t lose that glow for another year.
“I’ll take shrinking class sizes. Would you rather have class with 500 people or 15? That’s what I thought.
“I’ll take poker. There’s nothing like sitting around a table and busting your friends for a dollar, then acting like it was half a million.
“I’ll take friends and foes, good times and bad. I’ll take the crazy road trips and the long nights of drinking. I’ll take the jobs that paid no money and the football games where we stood hip-to-hip.
“I’ll take the house filled with ants and the apartments with walls thinner than this sheet of newspaper. I’ll take memories and lessons. I’ll take it all.
“That was horribly self-involved, but does that answer your question?”
“Actually, no,” my buddy answered. “I just meant are you going to take your stuff with you. Like your couch. I love that couch. Can I have it?”
No, I won’t give up my couch. Memories may be important, but a couch that lived through those memories? Well, that’s priceless.