Treasure hidden in a field

Originally posted Tuesday, September 2, 2008 at 3:13am

A few thoughts from my first two weeks back at school.

One of my best friends, Christopher Krychokins, is my RA. This year is going to be so much fun; I'm going to invent so many imaginary problems with my room for Chris to deal with. For example, the flux capacitor in the room isn't working. The wall outlet had a short and nearly killed Anthony when he tried to plug in his whosy-whatsit. The room isn't big enough or pretty enough. Oh, and I just ended a sentence four sentences ago with a preposition, which Chris might object to, but which I know better than to care about.

I flew in to Oklahoma on a Wednesday, and the next day was freshman move-in day. I didn't actually help any freshmen move in, because I'm . . . cool like that, but my hats are off to all of you who did. I wanted to, though. They had the tents outside the dorm with all of the random free stuff, and ordinarily I lack the willpower to resist free things, but this year I decided to focus only on those things I can eat. I'm tired of finding things in May that I got free in August, not having a clue what to do with them, and leaving them on the table in the social lounge. (Chris, if you find any random crap on the table in the social lounge in May, it wasn't me.) The following Sunday afternoon more free stuff was being given out. I went to help the Reformed University Fellowship people hand out fliers and freeze pops, but there were a lot of other Christian organizations out there too, which made me feel a little bit strange. Don't get me wrong, it's great that so many Christians are all out there trying to reach people and spread the word, but I just felt strange. What really got me is that before I even reached the RUF table, the Lutheran vicar tried to Lutheranize me. He gave me THREE different things to read without even being asked any questions. Hopefully I will enjoy reading them, but I can't eat them, now can I?

Now, last spring I went to a fantastic missions conference in Glorieta, New Mexico, where the speaker explained why most of the things missionaries do don't actually work. He said a lot of local people get hooked onto "Jesus plus": they accept Christianity because they can get food or jobs or shelter from the missionaries, and then when the missionaries leave, they go back to their old lives. (Which is not to say that helping people is bad, because obviously it isn't, but following Christ should be valuable for its own sake.) Anyway, long story short, about a week ago I went out chalking the sidewalk with RUF to promote their ministry, and I kind of felt like a horrible person for deciding to chalk "Jesus + root beer floats."

It's amazing following my roommate Anthony around, seeing how everyone is always calling him, texting him, and yelling out to him from the streets. Have you ever been hanging out with a friend when you run into somebody you both know, and they give your friend a hug and you a handshake? That's happened to me at least half a dozen times this year already. Not that I mind, really. It's a good thing I don't like hugs anyway. (Sniff, sniff.)

The first day of classes, I came back to my room late at night, and Anthony was already in bed. Now, because I like to talk to Anthony while he's trying to sleep, I started talking. He, in turn, felt the need to give me some kind of meaningful response, so he summoned every last reserve of energy he had, and responded thusly: "Eurgh." And then he fell asleep.
After that, I didn't see him again for a day and a half, but he must have remembered something of our conversation, because he had already told at least three people that story by then. Clearly, this extended separation is a sign that our relationship is in trouble. I've told Anthony that I'll kill him if he gets married this year and I find out on facebook.

I'm not sure if I'll like my classes yet. One of my philosophy classes is with a professor I had two years ago. I discovered that I most likely won't have to buy one of the required books because it's included in a coursepack I still have from that previous class, which is great, but I'm hoping we won't cover all of the same things again. Most of my classes shouldn't be too too difficult, but I have a pretty busy schedule with lots of activities.

It's weird working at Crossroads again and dealing with all of the freshmen who don't understand how meal plans work yet. Also, last week a customer told me that all of our employee nametags say "(First Name) Crossroads" on them because it's a family business, and you know, I really think that makes a lot of sense. President Boren did tell us at his annual Convocation speech for freshmen that Chris suckered me into attending that the university is like one big happy family.

This weekend I did a lot of socializing with my awesome friends, which was awesome. On Saturday we played the story game again, which is the super-fun game where you write part of a story, fold over everything before that part, and then pass it to the next person to continue the story. I just love how we fill half our stories with gratuitous Catholicism every time our token Catholic friend Alex Kelley plays with us. We love you, Alex. But I digress.

I had a great Labor Day hanging out with lots of friends, but the holiday kind of screwed me up. What with not having any classes and all, I somehow forgot that Crossroads is open 24/7 and forgot to go to work. I also forgot that if my newspaper story was going to run on Tuesday, I needed to turn it in on Monday. The office was closed, however, which probably means I was supposed to turn it in on Sunday. I did turn my story in eventually, and hopefully if the editors don't hate me my first story will appear by Wednesday.

Happy belated Labor Day.