My First Year; A Triple Threat

When I got accepted into my university, I found out that I would be living with three people in a two person dorm room. A typical two person dorm room has a perimeter of about 40 feet. To get straight to my point, dorm rooms weren’t built to accommodate three people. The beds you sleep on sit high to the ceiling resulting in bumps and bangs on your forehead when your alarm goes off, your closet space is everyone else’s closet space so you have to deal with wrinkled clothes before you go party and luggage bags, Ramen noodles and your favorite accessories from home flood the floor. Being “tripled” as upperclassman like to call this dorm arrangement is not entirely downbeat. Since there is an extra roommate I met friends’ faster, scouted girls quicker and looked out for each of my roommates when we ventured the untamed roads of Light Street on weekends. And for the first semester of school, that’s exactly what happened.

It was a hot August summer day and I showed up at my University on official freshmen move-in day at Elwell Hall around six in the evening. I got out of my spacious Jeep Cherokee that held all my belongings, and I looked at my parents. The word nervous danced around their forehead like Emmit Smith on the television show Dancing With The Stars, I could tell they were just as tense as I was. The summer sun was beating down on me like a certified boxer, I was sweating a lot. From the Jeep I crossed Main Street and walked through the lobby doors of Elwell. It was a zoo inside, parents and college students swamped the entire Elwell foyer. It looked like a scene from the movie Jumanji. My legs became heavy and my sweating increased; there were people in every direction. To my left was a registration table lined with bickering parents and dazed college students, to my right were my parents holding onto my dorm possessions and in front me was a line for the elevator longer than the lines you see at Darien Lake Six Flags for the Superman roller coaster. So being the Griswold family that we are, we took the steps, all six floors of them to my room. We carried all my baggage up the steps that ranged from clothes to bed sets and even a mini-fridge. I remember carrying the mini fridge because I dropped it on some kid’s foot who later became my second semester roommate. When we finally had everything on the sixth floor (Rocky Balboa would be proud), my parents and I headed to dorm room 619. I put my keys I had received at registration into the door, took a deep breath and swung it open.

Inside the room stood two boys, a mom and a brother all arguing about where the television should go. It was like watching a promo of Family Feud. I let the argument continue for a few seconds and then let out a fake cough. You know, the kind of cough you do when you enter an awkward situation. Their conversation stopped in mid sentence like I had said “Simon says stop arguing” or something. I stared at them and they stared back, maybe I should have sneezed. The staring contest slowly turned into a chess game between the two families. Someone had to make the first move. My dad the ever so clever knight and my mom the outgoing queen jumped into position and introduced themselves, I just stood there like an unimportant pawn. My parents first cornered the two boys and put them into checkmate. Their names were Tim and Tom they resided in New Jersey and were best friends. The mom was next to fall to the swift moves of my parents and we found out that she was Tim’s mom. I can’t recall anything about Tim’s brother because he just stood there unimportant, like me, like a pawn. I immediately turned my attention away from Tim and Tom and looked at the beds. The only bed on the ground level was taken, and the only one remaining was above it. Despair filled my lungs; I would be sleeping on the top bunk for a whole semester. The last time I slept on bunk beds was at a basketball camp when I was 12. I shook it off, Tim and Tom seemed like some real cool guys and at that point it was my only concern. My family, Tim’s family and Tom all fit our stuff into our compacted dorm room. We had Jeans and shirts mixed in one drawer, socks underwear, deodorant, small pixie sticks and shirts in another, Ramen noodles, Rice Kris-pies and Easy- Mac stacked on the television and soap, shampoo, mouth wash, toothbrushes, hair clippers and more all over our study desks. It was almost depressing to know that they could do this to freshman college students. It was not the first impression I imagined when I enrolled into my college. In spite of all the negative things that were going on around me, depression soon turned into satisfaction when my parents finally left to go home. I was finally on my own, and that meant more freedom to do as I please. I could stay out till three in the morning at some cuties house and eat pizza all three meals of the day without my mom even knowing. My mood then went from satisfaction to excitement when a knock came at the door of our dorm room around 9 p.m. that night.

A group of short-skirted, tan skinned, blond haired girls and a brunette stood outside our door. It was as if the blonds had a gold aura surrounding them that blocked out the brunette from any of my attention. I remember Tim looking at me and saying, “You boys ready to party?” Tom and I both gathered our tongues off the floor and we nodded our heads up and down implying yes. That night was the first night we tamed the wild Light street beast. The three of us, hunters on the prowl, looking to show college just how acquainted we already were with the party scene. As we scampered from frat party to frat party we took down any beer pong challengers that dare cross the 619 trio. With three people on our pong team we were able to have two shooters and one heckler whose main job was to manipulate the other team. Pong balls kept sailing our team’s way as we got re-shot after re-shot, we couldn’t lose. When we got tired of winning in beer pong we hit the dance floor with a Top gun swagger. Tim was Tom Cruise aka “Maverick”, Tom and I were his co-pilots “Iceman” and “Goose”. We teamed up and met as many people as we could but girls were our main target. We must have met 15 of our current friends that night. The procedure was simple, Tim would introduce himself to a stranger and Tom and I would follow suit. When Tom and I introduced ourselves to a stranger Tim would follow suit. It was like multiplying our popularity by three every time we met someone new. Sadly, by three in the morning the parties started to flake out and close. So we picked up our droopy feet and walked out the door of our last frat destination in a huddle. My head on Tom’s shoulder, his head on Tim’s shoulder and Tim’s on mine. We faltered through the Elwell doors not as a couple of drunken roommates but as a band of brothers. We walked into our dorm room and raided the Easy Mac and Ramen noodles stacked on the T.V, knocked over the toiletries spread all over our desks to make room for card games and threw my bunk on the floor so it could be used as a trampoline. A lot of weekends were spent like this my first semester of my freshmen year at college, I made memories I will never forget and some I don’t remember. At the end of the first semester I was notified that I would be able to be de-tripled by the end of winter break. I didn’t even have to think twice about this decision.

Once winter break was over, I headed back to college and showed up at room 610 not 619. I was finally in a two person dorm room, with one roommate and plenty of space. I had room under my bed for Easy Mac and Ramen noodles, my own closet space for my Aeropostale shirts and American Eagle jeans and a bed on the ground floor. It was everything I needed to be a normal college student. But who wants to be normal anyway? Being normal is boring and dull. If it weren’t for the abnormality of living with three people in a two person dorm room, then I wouldn’t be the student that I am today. I walk through the campus with a girlfriend around my arm, an impressive reputation with my friends and a confident swagger. I would go back to being tripled in a flip of the middle finger. The roommates of dorm room 619 were unquestionably a first semester triple threat. We were the pump fake, hesitation step and fade away of the freshmen class. Nobody knew what to expect, and there is nothing dull or boring about that.