Joe Krzyston
Section Editor
Despite some unseasonably warm weather earlier this month, Roanoke College is now, without a doubt, in the thick of autumn. The air is getting cooler and crisper, the leaves are changing colors and falling to the ground, and students across campus are coming to the unpleasant, inevitable realization that people they’d thought were cool for upwards of six weeks are actually just weird and really confident.
Most of us, and perhaps all of us upperclassmen, have been here before. We meet somebody, and they seem different. They like to put up a hammock between trees on the back quad, they eat weird Japanese snack food, they’ve seen a lot of Wes Anderson movies (though probably mostly the recent ones, if we’re being honest), and they just generally seem like they march to the beat of their own drummer. For a few weeks, these people are awesome. They’re fun, they’re sort of flirty, and they’re always willing to explore on campus and off.
Now, unfortunately, we find ourselves in a period of reckoning. The chickens are coming home to roost. The friend you thought was cool and different and perceptive has just gone off and done something bonkers. Maybe they took your car and drove it into the indoor pool at a Holiday Inn in Lexington, Kentucky. Maybe they started calling your Mom late at night to talk about the possibility of a long distance relationship. Maybe they interrupted your long, detailed account of the birth of your beloved childhood ferret, (whose name was Glenn, if you were wondering). Maybe you just realized that those watercolor paintings of theirs that you thought were so cool in September are actually bizarrely xenophobic in their composition and themes. Whatever it is, you’ve figured out that the quirks you found so endearing at first might very well someday materialize and to their very best to stab you.
To you worried masses, I say this- breathe easy. There are plenty of people at this school, and there’s plenty of time left in the semester to find somebody more stable. At the very least, new friends defer this realization from happening again until December at the very soonest.
