This weekend is Relay for Life at my college. I’m not attending, but it’s letting me think about a different relay for life, two years ago, at a different college, which I also skipped out on. This year I skipped to go play board games with friends. Two years ago I skipped, mostly accidently and had one of the stranger more memorable nights of my life.
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| Mary and me at the Super Moon party |
My best friend at school that year was a girl named Mary. Mary and I were inseparable from basically the moment we met. One day, tired at some dumb hour of the night, Mary and I came across a post on facebook talking about something called the “Super Moon.” I don’t know if there is any real science behind it, but the idea is that on this certain night the way would appear way more big and impressive then it normally did.
So Mary and I decided that this was a thing that we needed to see.
So Mary and I decided that this was a thing we needed to make more of a thing.
We decided that the right thing to do was throw a Super Moon party. We didn’t really know how to do that, but we decided we wanted to, and commitment and people showing up is basically all it takes to make a party any way.
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| Friends with food and flashlights |
The night of the Super Moon was the night of Relay for Life, which wasn’t a thing that we had realized as we grabbed our gear and headed down to the soccer field. We piled on sweatshirts and found our ipods. We walked by the football field, where the lights were on and music was playing as people walked the track in circles. We kept going.
Down on the soccer fields lots of friends joined us. They brought blankets and flashlights and speakers to play music. We talked and laughed and danced and played weird playground games. We ate way too much food- giant blocks of cheese and bags of chips and sodas that someone had produced from the back of a dorm room mini fridge, and when we ran out, went on an impromptu stealth mission to “steal” more of the food we were rightfully allowed to take from the campus co-op where half the group we worked.
We spent time just enjoying being with each other.
I like to reflect on the big moments a lot: the moments where life changes completely, the choices that decide everything. But the little moments are just as important. The moments of dancing to weird jigs on a soccer field and flashlight strobe lights and games of red rover in the moon illuminated late night fields. Howling at the moon, giggling until it hurt and then trying to make each other giggle harder.
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| The moon was, in fact, pretty incredible that night |
It wasn’t anything fancy. It wasn’t anything that took a lot of time or effort. It was something we threw together with about an afternoon’s notice and food we stole from the dining hall. But it was doing something with people I liked. Something unusual, just because we decided it would be a fun thing to do.
And it was fun. That night is one of my fondest memories from my time at Hiram.
I miss that place and those people. And nights like that one- doing nothing with people that mean everything- are a big reason why. 
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