It wasn't until last weekend that I considered them real Dartmouth students -- not prospective students and not trippees, but real Dartmouth students just like me. The '04s aren't just pets with inconsequential names who live outside my door. I may climb on them and eat their food, but the '04s have thoughts and beliefs and opinions just like us.
I saw them as trippees well into the school year. Classes started, and whenever I saw a '04, I automatically pictured a smelly, nervous kid who could barely salty dog and who didn't know where "the Collis" was. I saw them scared and nervous, walking to the showers in their matching robes and towels from the laundry service. I saw them herding across campus and excitedly diving into frat windows.
On my way up to my room recently, I stopped by one of my favorite '04 rooms on the second floor. I walked into the room, creatively decorated like every other room on the hall with free art posters and Christmas lights, and sat in one of those pseudo-rocking desk chairs, prepared to dispense sage advice and answer all of their questions about keeping up with classes and women. Before I knew it, though, I was being serenaded by '04s -- two on guitars, one of them singing, and one backing them on cello. So maybe I wasn't being serenaded, per se. So maybe they were just playing and I happened to be there. But still. It was almost like having the Three Tenors live in front of me. Except with instruments and pop music. So maybe it was more Counting Crows than Three Tenors. (The numerical theme, at least, is constant.) They astonish me.
As they sang and played and concentrated on their music, I thought "hey, these people are cool." They are real people. College students, even. I was sitting there and it was, admittedly, the first time I really took the '04s seriously and realized that I could be friends with them. We even had a real in-depth discussion. Granted, it was about how none of them had had any luck with the lady-folk all term and the most intellectual question asked was: "How come all the hot '04s have boyfriends at Princeton?" I wish I could answer that question for them. But I can't -- they must learn some things on their own. I did encourage them by telling them the accepted truth that as they got older, they would have more and more women chasing them, whereas all of the '04 women who were violently rejecting them would soon (in a few short months) be pounding on their doors. This did not seem to appease them one bit. And then they inferred that I was speaking from experience and began patting me on the back and saying things like "Spinster Jourdan, I'll let you babysit my kids!" and "Aww what's it like being an old maid at 19?" I then reminded them of their success rate with Dartmouth women and all was well.
I see my '04 buddies across campus, and by now they seem comfortable here, and except for that one kid who ordered a strawberry, peach, mango, and chocolate milk smoothie at Collis, they seem to have picked up on where to eat on campus so that their tastebuds are continuously intrigued. I especially am impressed when I ask them where a building is on campus (for example, a math or science building), and they know. I don't know these things.
Of course, there are still those times when they come running up the stairs begging for someone to hold them -- when they're scared or having nightmares. But for the most part, they are pretty mature.
More mature than me, sometimes. But very rarely. Especially now that we're friends and I'm rubbing off on them.
