New/Old

The South Asian students that populate the apartments near my house moved in a couple weeks ago. I drive by makeshift cricket games on the way home from work. This week the rest of the domestic freshman move in, blessed by comfortable temps when it's very easy for the dorms to become stifling, A/C less hellscapes. I remember moving in with 90 degree weather, in fear of my roommate, trying to fill the time with WoW and avoiding contact with every human I saw. I hope nobody else feels that way.

The construction that permeates the summer on campus is now over. Shinier buildings, prettier landscaping, 100s of thousands of dollars spent in the college arms race to lure students and their money. A full time semester at the local 4 year now costs 12 thousand dollars. To attend for four years then would set you back just shy of 100k, more money than I pocket in 5 years, a seemingly insurmountable number.

The crickets start chirping now at 6:30 instead of 8:30 like in mid June when the sunlight drapes over us until 10pm. The days are shorter and the warmth is shorter and the summer is over, effectively, Labor Day serving as an unofficial end when the temperature becomes too cool to go swimming anyways, so the Great Lakes merely become a vessel for disquieting lake effect snow instead of the refreshing swimmable landscape they once were.  It'll start all over again in June.

I feel and look older but wish I could be new again, do things over again, maybe luck out and not get a perniciously violent roommate, maybe luck out and not be so socially anxious I skipped class, maybe luck out and not cut myself and try to kill myself. But I suppose those are bygones now and all I see are the new students playing cricket on the green grass, smiling and laughing, a swing of the paddle, and the ball is flying, over the trees and into the sun.