I am learning how different college can be and I need to grow up

One soon finds out that college is different.

In high school, I was the closest to an actual popular the world has ever seen. I was acne-less, and with no competition, one of the cutest boys in school. I was funny, I was cool, lots of girls wanted to date me. Alas, none of that applies here. No teachers to defy, no one-liners to throw in the middle of class, no shortage of older guys. Instead, we have… dorms. And parties. Dorms and parties. Parties and dorms. And junk food. Do the students decide what food is available? If so, should that make me more or less indignant? And why do the old guys need to be so loud?

Well, I suppose that’s enough complaining for now…

My main problem is girls. Ain’t high school no more, this is bloody adult swim. Turns out they haven’t heard of me here. Go figure.

I was nonetheless dismayed at finding the note in my room. Notes are for shy high school girls, they have no business here! Especially when my roommate says he hadn’t let any girls in the room that day. And yet there the note was, sitting on my printer. Might not have been noticed if it had been placed among the clutter of my desk. This implies no hurry, enough time to consider where to place it. As follows, this kind of Veronica Mars logic got me in trouble.

The note was well-folded, clearly by a girl. Its contents were… ah… strange. This is what I can remember of it:

I totally have a crush on you. I want your bod! Your intelligence turns me on. I hear you have a huge stack of books … I’ve liked you since I first saw you two weeks ago, and I hope you feel the same way about me. –Shannon. Call me. 818-555-1111.

Clearly, the girl needed a bit of sanity, if she actually thought I would appreciate that. I’m awful with names, so I did not know who this was. Best way to handle it, just call the number and say no, and maybe find out how she got in…

The ensuing conversation follows:

“Hello?”
“Hey. This is Mark.”
(expectant pause) “Okay… which Mark?”
“Ah.. McWilliams.”
“McWilliams?”
(pause)“Yeah, I…”

Then she hung up!

Well then… I dislike pranks. Question is, am I the target, or is Shannon? The quiet, antisocial guy of the hall can hardly be expected to effectively creep a girl out. But then, no one here knows me well enough to want to embarrass me. Sigh…

I angrily asked my roommate if he had let any girls in. No, he had not, but maybe a guy threw it in, as he often entered our room just long enough to grab something. O-kay… next lead.

I had posted a note on my door the night before.. a joke, as I sometimes do. Someone wrote an obscene message on it, and signed his name. I found him, and asked if he did it. Subtlety is not one of my strong points. He said he had not, and I believed him, though he mentioned that a small piece of paper had been at my door for a few days. Thinking back, I remembered seeing it, but took no notice. Okay … next lead.

I had been planning to do this anyway, call Shannon and apologize:

“Hello?”
“Hey, this is the creepy Mark from last night. I called to apologize, and to explain.”
“…okay…”
“A note was left in my room yesterday, professing a crush, and signed with your name and number.”
“…Creepy.”
“Yeah. I don’t suppose you know someone at Riverside who would have done this? I don’t want strangers alone in my room.”
“I have friends at Riverside. I don’t know, though.”
“All right. Sorry it happened.”
(uncomfortable silence) “Bye.”

Okay, no leads here. I went to my RA, Kaleen, and announced, dramatically, that someone had been in my room. Was anything stolen, she asked? No, and thus no proof someone had actually been in my room, and obviously, nothing a pretty RA can do.

If I had left it there, it would have ended, on a puzzling but not overly troubling note. But, all my frustration at the emptiness of the past few weeks was coming out, and this I could not let go.

Jared, a semi-friend, had been there when I confronted obscene sign-defacer, and asked to see the note. He was trustworthy, enough, I thought. He read it, and called the number while I urged him not to. Anyone who knew me at high school would have listened. The 22 year-old Jared ... not so much. He called her, and pretended to have been given this number by his ex-girlfriend as her own. He struck up a conversation, which lasted a minute, maybe, and ended twenty seconds after he mentioned what college he was from. Sigh…

Fifteen minutes later, I got a call from a number I now recognized. It was Shannon. Sounding like she was in tears. That bloody redneck…

“I’m kinda scared. Another guy from Riverside called me. I want guys from Riverside to stop calling me.”

“All right…”

“My friend at Riverside is Lauren Brown. Please stop her from giving out more notes.”

“All right.”

“But, you won’t do anything mean?”

“I will not.”

“Okay…” (awkward silence) “Bye.”

“Bye.”

I proudly presented the name of the intruder to Kaleen, who asked what I wanted her to do about it.

Hmm.. probably should have thought of that.

Okay, no way to bring the weight of legal authority against her ... have to talk to her myself. Innocent until proven is vastly overrated, getting in the way of swift lynching.

I went to many people in my search of Lauren. This included the Resident Services Office, where I have a friend; she was unwilling to violate a few silly privacy rules for the sake of… well, me. Eventually, someone pointed me to the door down the hall. Yup, the girl I went so far to find, just down the hall.

She was almost cute, and showed a healthy dose of cleavage. She was also quite obviously taken with me. She showed me her hand writing; it was not her. I asked about other people at Riverside who knew Shannon. She said there were none, but she had had a friend over a week ago, who might have done it.

“Well, I’ll talk to Shannon, and tomorrow, I may have something to apologize for.” I left it at that.

I called Shannon the following day.

“Ah.. that second phone call you received was actually my fault; there was only the one note. I showed it to a friend, who I thought I could trust. He called you to find out what he could; I couldn’t stop him.”

“Okay, I just want guys from Riverside to stop calling me.”

“No worries. It won’t happen again.”

She giggled. I strode into Lauren’s room and decreed that if Shannon were to receive any more phone calls, I would come for a talk. She asked a few puzzled questions, I answered in my stoic, dramatic way, obviously accusing her of having done it.

“Just… get out,” she said.

I nodded slowly, and left. Thus began the tragic hero’s realization of faults, something Shakespeare used quite often. Anagnorisis, my 12th grade English teacher called it. Hmm, even if Lauren did do it, Shannon having been reduced to tears was my fault entirely. So I wrongly accused Lauren and alienated my RA. And Shannon’s second phone call. All because I take things too seriously. Son of a wombat!

I took my frustrations out on the local punching bag, in the tiny weight room of dormville. I apologized to Kaleen, when I next encountered her.

“Did you ever find who did it?”

“Not really.”

“Do you care anymore?”

“No.”

I tried to apologize to Lauren, but three times she did not answer her door, either because she wasn’t there, or because she did not want to see me.

Well… here I am…