Ever wonder what Marty McFly and I have in common? You probably don’t. It doesn’t really cross my mind all that often either. But I have an answer and I’m gonna tell you anyway. The two of us crazy kids have each experienced the amazing, supernatural phenomenon called a time warp. He, to various points of interest in both the past and future, nearly destroying the fabric of the space-time continuum and preventing his own birth. And me, back home.
Sci-fi fanatics everywhere will call it heresy for me to compare my experiences to those of the deified main character of the Back to the Future trilogy. I don’t want to start a war or anything, but I will argue that the story of my life might blow Back to the Future out of the freaking water….But I digress, as usual.
My point in all this madness is one with which I’m sure each and every one of you is all too familiar; going back home for break once you’re in college is like entering a different world.
At first I was afraid I might have forgotten how to drive. Suddenly, though, I found myself sinking back quite comfortably into a seat of power, and hungrily accelerating off into the distance. The weird part was when I went to pick up a sandwich for dinner, and somehow ended up at my high school. I thought it would take an act of God to bring me back there unrestrained, but I suppose that when we are back in our old haunts, there’s no telling where our instincts will lead us.
Then there’s the issue of parents. The last time they saw you, the glimmer of innocent adolescence had yet to fade from your rosy cheeks. In their eyes, nothing has changed. Curfews are still v. real, and constant updates on whereabouts seem perfectly natural and acceptable. Little do they know just how much we’ve grown up in these short 90 days. After doing my first ever shot (in three gulps lol), riding the public bus to Cranston, and more than a few 2am treks up Thayer, I know what it’s like to really live. I am an adult and I know everything there is to know about anything!
In my time back home, I also had the opportunity to visit with many cohorts from days passed. My circle of friends has a GroupMe called #powertoyourmouth (I really couldn’t explain that if you put a gun to my head) and we have kept in touch via that. So it was still really cool/weird to see each other at a Friday night party after months of separation. I looked from face to face, thinking how much had changed in each of my friends: “Wow she pulled an inverse Freshman 15,” and “okay, his chin strap beard is not flying,” or “I think I like her a lot more now than I did before.” But then this terrifying thought crept across my mind: It’s me who has changed the most. This place, this city, the people in it — they’re all exactly the same. I’m the one who has come back with a new light on her eyes, and everything else here seems a bit dimmer as a result.
For a time in the beginning of the semester, I thought about what it would be like if I was still in high school with the people I miss. Every time it came into my mind, I eventually realized that wasn’t a time warp I wanted to go into. I’ve grown up far too much to fall so far back.
Maybe y’all feel the same, or maybe you hate college with all your guts. Either way, it’s a crazy realization that you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole into some other world, and that this ain’t Kansas anymore. Okay, I’m mixing my metaphors. But can you imagine a tea party with Alice, Johnny Depp, Dorothy, Idina Menzel, and a DeLorean for guests? That’s better than a Ron Swanson guest lecture any day of the week #noticketbitterness.
As I sit here in the airport, feeling sufficiently violated by the TSA and suffering from a headache induced by lack of sleep and over-eating, I reflect on the past three and a half days I have spent back home. I got to see everyone I still care about from the past four years, I spent quality alone time with each of my family members dogs, and I got more microwave kettlecorn to bring back to college. Now, we’ll just have to see what happens over Christmas.
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