Last One
Assignment: Biography.
My subject: my roommate. I’m dubbing her K for the purposes of this blog.
In real life, I made the piece into a kind-of-book that requires some flipping and navigating… but I guess, in this venue, it just takes on the form of a vignette-y essay. It’s long, so make your bathroom run now.
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On K
On pink
If an Easter egg were a room, it would probably be K’s. Take one step beyond the doorway of her bedroom, and a wave of pink rushes to greet your overwhelmed eyes. With a few seconds and some feverish blinking, you may begin to take in the occasional patches of light blue that also pattern her bedspread and walls, but the first, blushing impression inevitably persists. Glance up: a string of pink, translucent, and somewhat glittery butterflies adorn one of the corners of the ceiling. Below it, the faces of her friends and family smile goofily from their pink construction paper frames. On the top shelf of the desk hutch, she has filled a mason jar with what appears to be fake flowers; upon closer scrutiny, however, they prove to be a bouquet of flamboyant pens. Fuschia polka-dotted rainboots lay discarded by her armoire, a peek inside which holds no surprises – her wardrobe, though graced with the occasional splash of turquoise or cornflower blue, seems to include every single shade of pink, from magenta to coral to pale rose. An impressive number of dresses hang expectantly from the closet bar, but, in true February fashion, her hamper holds mostly sweaters and jeans, and a vibrant woolen coat graces the back of her chair. Having dealt with the wintry east coast for the better part of three years, K has retained a remarkable amount of Hawaiian springtime in her step.
Snow falling on Sophie
K’s first experience with snow – real-life, icy-cold, falling-from-the-sky snow – was over two years ago, in November of her freshman year. It was 7 or 8 in the morning, and most people were snuggled beneath their comforters in sweatpants and long-sleeved shirts, content to sleep in on a cold Saturday morning… but not K. It was almost as if she had a snowflake-radar; the moment the first flake touched the pavement, her eyes were open and the pink and blue blankets were on the floor. That morning, K could be heard scurrying through the halls in her tank top and flowered boxer shorts, alerting all of third-floor Perkins to the falling of three – no, now, four! – snowflakes from the swirly gray mass overhead, urgently asking for advice on layering techniques, and then rushing outside, head tilted heavenward, to catch a flake on her extended tongue.
K’s fascination with New England snow persisted through the first real snowstorm of the year… probably due in part to the sudden need for a slew of new clothing. Her favorite addition to the family was the East Coast Staple – the winter peacoat. K’s coat might as well have been designed to her specifications. The product of three separate trips to a seven-story mall, it features slightly puffed shoulders, hits her leg at the perfect length to complement her wardrobe of dresses, and, of course, is berry pink. Upon returning from the third shopping expedition, K unhesitatingly christened the pink woolen newcomer Sophie. A few days later, on a late-night walk from Jo’s back to Perkins, Sophie was baptized in the powdery snow of Power Street; a particularly mountainous snowbank proved too inviting to ignore, and K flung herself (with little concern for the tendency of snow to sink with applied force) into its billowy embrace. She left her first snow angel in that bank, three feet deep, and continued unconcernedly home with a thick layer of ice and snow powdering her back.
On the other side of the world
In spite of having seen countless angels and snowball fights, and even the less enjoyable wintry mixes and treks through wind-whipped ice-crystals, Sophie is still holding strong, currently slung haphazardly over K’s desk chair. K, though, has less of an appreciation for slush-falls in February, having become impatient with the unnecessarily drawn-out winters of New England. She sits at her laptop, tossing the occasional longing glance at the colorful dresses in her closet or dark glare at the descending mist outside the window. From time to time, she clicks on her computer’s Weather Box to justify her irritation with Providence’s flighty climate. True to form, the forecast unhelpfully proclaims temperatures somewhere between 49 and 31 degrees. She rolls her eyes and pulls up the forecast for her faraway home.
K hails from Oahu, where, according to the weather widget on her computer desktop, the temperature unfailingly stays in the mid-seventies. Until the seventh grade, she had not worn a single pair of jeans (a fact she often brings up while sorting through mounds of pants and sweaters on her biweekly laundry day). In fact, till then, her school didn’t even require that students wear shoes – her childhood was apparently a happy blur of bare knees and feet. Now, faced with Rhode Island’s grayest months, K attempts to make do with her daily odes to Hawaii, little bits of her home that she’s transplanted into her school-life. Her bed is pushed up against the windowsill, where it is certain to catch sunlight in the mornings – she likes waking up warm and bathed in natural light, as though from a seaside nap. Adorning her walls are pictures of her frolicking on the beach, lounging by a waterfall, dancing hula… activities that simply don’t translate into the life of a college student in the Northeast. And although she has, since leaving the island, amassed an impressive amount of footwear, more often than not, K walks the dorm floors barefoot.
On the big rock
K speaks of her temperate home and sun-soaked childhood as a grandmother would speak of the first time she fell in love – with a smile playing in her voice and a fondness for the minutiae that an outsider would dismiss. She acknowledges Hawaii’s beautiful beaches and year-round greenery, but admits that she was never one for shimmying up trees. Instead, she focuses on the people who remained with her on the ground. Hawaii, K says, is really just a big rock; in such close quarters, it’s difficult even to go to the grocery store without encountering a familiar face. On one occasion, she tempted her luck, venturing to an off-campus, Expressly Forbidden 7-Eleven near her school during her lunch hour. Upon K’s return home, her mother inquired about her day. Woefully unable to fib to her devoted mother, K promptly spilled the beans about her whereabouts. Her honesty paid off, though, because her mother already knew – Mrs. Lau had spotted K amongst the aisles of the taboo convenience store and called in the transgression. The moral of the story, according to K, is clear: in Hawaii, someone is always watching.
In spite of her failed rebellions, K is a community person; she thrives in close-knit groups, often spinning the threads that bind them together. Whether by holding conversations with the regulars and vendors at the local Farmers’ Market (“Hey, how’s the lettuce today?” “Oh, much puffier than usual…”) or hanging glass Christmas ornaments with volunteers’ portraits around her high school’s service building (her own half-adorable, half-creepy idea), K manages to cultivate groups from unsuspecting individuals. Even at Brown, she has found ways to recreate the original ‘big rock’.
Moving on
Her freshman year, K effectively appointed herself Official Unit 14 Cheerleader and Event Planner, organizing Christmas parties and dorm-cooked dinners, Perkins Girls’ Dress Days when the temperature hit sixty degrees, and Official Snowball Fights when there were only three inches of white powder on the ground. Near the end of that year’s spring semester, the entire third floor baked a cake in preemptive celebration of her June birthday and delivered it to her door, along with a number of makeshift construction paper Perkins yearbooks. The perpetually shorts-and-tanktop-clad birthday girl answered the door with her usual smile; two seconds later, less than one line into the rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday”, tears were running down her flushed cheeks. After being momentarily buried in a mass of comforting arms, K resurfaced with the justification for her tears: “I just don’t want Perkins to end!” Within a day, she approached her fellow Perkinites with a gift of her own – a homemade slideshow of the year, complete with a cheesy a cappella cover of a Beach Boys song and exclamation-point-heavy captions – and demanded a group screening. This time, everyone wept.
While printed copies of the Unit 14 slideshow photographs still hang, framed and glitter-glued, on the wall of K’s bedroom, the group itself has somewhat disbanded. This natural drift began with the start of K’s sophomore year, despite her best efforts to maintain the bonds of the community. During move-in, she ‘acquired’ the back-pillow of a former Perkinite who was slated to live in a separate dorm for the year. Later, she only half-jokingly explained to her confused housing group that the owner would eventually have to pay her a visit, if only to retrieve his pillow (whom she had by then dubbed Enrique). Effective though her methods were in the short-run, K’s pillow-stealing was simply not enough to reconstruct the atmosphere of the original Unit. Enrique is noticeably missing from K’s current collection of bedding paraphernalia.
On staying put
Since her underclassman years, K has mastered the skill of Never Being Alone. She has unfailingly opted to live in a double, with a roommate… that way she always has someone at home to whom she can return (not to mention always having a partner in interior-decorating crime). She also still organizes almost ritualistic bonding-sessions for the groups that have emerged in Perkins’ wake; her most recent feat was the organization of a Princess Party for a small group of close girlfriends, complete with fancy dresses, a playlist of Disney songs and nineties pop, and conversation topics that would make most guys cringe.
Remarkably, K is almost constantly seated comfortably in a serious relationship. In fact, of the two full years she has spent in college, she has been available for only two months. Yet, on a scale from Optimistic to Cynical (with regards to men in general), she has professed that she lies toward the latter half. She genuinely fears that perhaps The One has already come and gone, unknowingly bypassing the perfect, permanently unavailable girl.
Another, as of yet unconsidered possibility is that The One caught wind of K’s wedding plans and, intimidated, scampered off to learn graphic design.
On ENGN1930V: Engineers of the Future…
An innocent, girly conversation about the ‘dream wedding’ revealed that almost every detail of K’s Big Day has been meticulously planned out and hand-picked. The eco-friendly, pink substitute-diamond engagement ring, the Cinderella-inspired gown from the Designer Disney collection, and even the two front-running cake designs have all been selected and bookmarked in two or three different web browsers. Indeed, a tour of K’s future wedding could be conducted entirely on her laptop, what with the Sherwin-Williams color-splash site in her browsing history and the recent Google image searches of flower varieties. She has determined that her bridesmaids will wear the bluish green of her dorm-room towels (the same color as the ocean off the Hawaiian shore), complemented by classy leis of white and pakalana green flowers. The bride herself will have a predominantly pink bouquet with white stargazer lilies, to tie her favorite color back into the wedding décor.
As for the groom, K has very particular plans: the lucky man will be a good-looking Pixar animator. As such, he’ll be certain to possess all the qualities of the ‘endearing nerd’, but will still gain his wife access to a plethora of award shows and ballgown-worthy occasions. He must also be willing to return to Hawaii with her, so they can start a little community of their own. And, of course, he must be appropriately appreciative of the color pink.
K, somewhat surprisingly, has yet to bookmark her future husband’s picture in Firefox, but there can be little doubt that she has been keeping an eye on the credits-lists of animated movies for last names that would pair well with her first.
More on ENGN1930V: …Architects of Dreams
Still, for someone who has spent a significant amount of time bookmarking wedding dresses and rings on her laptop, K can function impressively well on her own.
“I hate people.”
She announces her latest revelation huffily as she taps the screen of her aqua-covered iPhone. I sit silently, knowing an explanation will follow shortly. She vigorously relates the situation that produced such a drastic conclusion – something about the other EcoReps failing to think an awareness event through, offering a haphazard proposal for something that deserves more attention, and then emailing her expectantly, hoping she could wave her sparkly fairy wand and make it happen. “Sometimes I just feel like, if I want things to get done right, I have to do them myself.” She interrupts her own rant with a double-take and quick intake of breath at a new email, then emits a series of excited squeals and a couple of elongated ‘ooooooh!!!!’s. “Where should I plant an apple orchard?”
Again, I sit silently.
K proceeds, frustration forgotten. “I just got an email, and this girl planted an apple orchard on her campus, and Ruth’s secretary is putting me in touch with her, and she said we could potentially do it here at Brown, although she also said we should think about the Haffenreffer because there’s just no open green space on campus… but yeah, I think I want to plant it on campus. How about on the Walk? Yes, that would be perfect, I’ll do it on the Walk.”
K is not to be underestimated; she has already procured a set of Walkie-Talkies for the EcoReps leaders (even though they all have cell phones), and is very close to acquiring a department-sponsored golf-cart-esque buggy to traverse Brown’s (unquestionably walkable) campus. There will be an apple orchard.
On K’s Facebook:
Facebook profiles are a strange concept; they require users to distill whole lifestyles and personalities into a few phrases, to parse themselves up into swallowable chunks that fall under the headings of “About Me”, “Interests”, “Music”, and the like. K’s ‘Info’ page is deceptively sparse, but as far as swallowable chunks go, she has chosen well.
The blank box beneath K’s picture – intended as a place for a Facebook user to “write something about [them]self,” but widely considered to be completely pointless – contains a single quote, originally from a Leigh Standley magnet: “I am fairly certain that given a cape and a nice tiara, I could save the world.” The favorite quotations section houses a clichéd, but for K, inescapably applicable quote: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
She’s already getting there… one snow angel, one stolen pillow, one apple tree at a time.
But even more revealing and descriptive than her chosen world-saving techniques are K’s ‘religious views’: “I believe in the God that only knows four words.” The God she refers to is from a poem by Hafiz:
The God Who Only Knows Four Words
Every
Child
Has known God.
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don’ts,
Not the God who ever does
Anything weird.
But the God who only knows four words
And keeps repeating them, saying:
“Come dance with me.”
Come
Dance.
