Minimally Eschew

It was maybe midnight and we were the kind of tired where everything is just funny, even when it has no right to be. It had been a long day, at the tail end of an even longer week, and we were the kind of tired and worn out where your brain just starts to feel a little looser—a little sillier.

Friends and Food and Flags

It was February, I think, or maybe it wasn’t, but it was cold and there was snow on the ground and
snow that caught on the tips of my eyelashes whenever I dared to walk outside. It was late and it was dark, and we were in the kind of small town that understands the concept of streetlights, but comes up a little shy in the execution.

The thing about going to school in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere is that you have to make your own fun. There aren’t places to go, or events to be at, so you get really good at being more then content with a few friends and a room where you can all just be together. There was one bar in town, but only kind of—in my two years there it had 3 different names, and twice as many owners, and probably about a half dozen health code violations. There were dorms and town houses, and--if you were lucky-- houses on the edge of campus that your friends had managed to get permission to live in where you could come hang out on a Friday night.

Sometimes weird objects show up,
and sometimes I stick those objects on my face
and take pictures.

Then there was the co-op. It was a vegetarian cooking co-op, and for most of sophomore year it

became my home away from home, even though I was never technically a member. There were murals on the walls and good food cooked by people I liked, and a mountain of pots and pans I could scrub and clean the corners of whenever I felt the need to put a little strength and aggression in to something. People had shifts cooking meals and cleaning, and everything was shared. There was the kitchen, of course, but also a big dining room with long wooden tables and big windows and decorations that had clearly been cobbled together with a little luck and a lot of love. I loved it there.

So we were in the co-op and it was late, but not late enough that people were rolling in to make late night drunken munchies. I was with a handful of friends and we were yelling about something, or nothing, or everything, and watching the snow fall through the big windows. We drank tea and ate cookies and watched, for seemingly forever, at a loading screen on my laptop.

A mountain of scones
and my favorite cook

Someone had had the idea earlier that day that it would be fun to play a video game using a projector on one of the walls in the art building down the hill. Make the game 30 feet high and 40 feet wide, and immerse ourselves in something fun.

I’m not sure if it was technically allowed, but we had a key and we weren’t going to wreck anything or make a mess.

But before we could even get to any of the not-really-breaking-and-entering-because-it’s-sort-of-allowed-in-a-weird-way nonsense, we had to figure out how to download the game.

See, the internet on campus was never great, and that night it was being particularly awful. The download started at maybe 10 pm, and by 10:30 we were a little annoyed. By 11:00 that annoyance was starting to grow. By 11:30 we were the kind of frustrated that seems almost delicate—like anything could set it off. By midnight we’d somehow passed the stage of frustration and started to realize how ridiculous the entire situation was.

It was late. It was late and we were tired, and my computer wasn’t doing the one thing we really wanted it to do.

a person i enjoy and a mural that makes me smile

So someone turned on the music. Because there is no better release for all those mixed up feelings then dancing like an idiot with people you love, when all of your emotions are frazzled and your brain just feels sore. There is nothing like singing—or really shouting—lyrics to songs you adore late at night and not caring who hears the cracks in your voice and your utter lack of pitch. It’s freeing and it;s fun, and I think it’s impossible to not at least crack a smile when you see someone start to disco to punk rock songs.

So we danced. We danced and we laughed, and ignored my laptop as it attempted to chug along.

I think about that night a lot. How we didn’t really do anything, and how much fun it was. How much I love those people. How much I love that place.

dancing and singing
because sometimes you need to dance and sing.

There’s a comfort in knowing that moments like that are possible. Moments of pure joy and silliness. Moments of smiles and laughter and ridiculous, summoned—as if by magic—exactly when you need them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Exactly When You Need Them

Super Moon