The Road Not Taken (Yet)

A Conversation with a Friend

By Tyler Doyle

Professor Der-Yeghiayan

10/16/07

It didn’t take long for everyone to notice. Despite my best efforts, every precaution I had taken, I failed. Not the kind of fail like “Oh, I got a 59, just barely failed,” no, we are talking Maginot line here. I was the French, and they were the Germans invading my so delicately crafted protection. I’m starting to rant, and I apologize. Frankly, I’m not sure what I should do. For the moment, the circumstances are contained within a small group of people, few ‘in the know’ so to speak, but eventually it’ll hit Facebook, or Myspace, or heck, even Youtube. When it does, I will have no escape, nothing, zip, zero. Wait, I never introduced myself, I’m sorry. I mean, you already know who I am, but not who I am. My name is Tom Carver. I am 19 years old, and I live on campus at Lewis and Clark College. I’m currently, though not permanently enrolled as an International Studies major, possibly minoring in something random, Music Theory, Theology, something as such. My first year in college has, thus far, been a smooooth ride. Now that we’re somewhat acquainted, beyond what we already were. I can tell you my story. This is how I managed to get myself into a huge mess.

Monday, December Fourteenth, Two-Thousand-and-Seven, I managed to scrape through my finals with little bleeding. Lewis and Clark doesn’t like to let people fail (failers are bad numbers on college rankings), so they offer this nifty little service known as a ‘Math Lab’. Now, I’m not horrible at math. I’m not great, but I’m not horrible either. I just don’t like it. Numbers, equations, adding and subtracting, it’s just not for me. Do I care if 1+1 is 2? Not really, unless it involves cash, then I suppose I do, but otherwise, no, definitely no. As such, I go to this little office where people who have nothing better to do than to learn math, and like it, and assist me in my somewhat-impeded math homework. It’s a great system. I wouldn’t pay 30 grand a year to another school, just so I can have this neat little feature. Again, I digress. I made it through finals, alive, and anxiously awaited the weekend. When it came I decided: Hey, it’d be fun to go to Canada. Who doesn’t love Canada? Socialized medicine (hippies), Marijuana (hippies), and kilometers (hippies), are all loved and adored by many who visit. I wanted to experience this. Badly. I called my friend John.

“John, I’m thinking of heading to Canada, what do you think? I mean, even though we’ve been before, we weren’t in college. You, me, a car, and a debit card. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?” Needles to say, through a use a charm, wit, and a bit of bribery I was able to coax my friend into journeying to Canada. Canada, land of the… socialists, or something…

We packed and left. Rather than spending hours locked in a car with John, we opted for the train. Tickets are cheap, travel is easy, and there is a place to plug in laptops for the ride up. Now that is high-class.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to turn your music down.” To this day, I don’t know how or where this man came from. Perhaps a secret compartment in the ceiling. He waits, silently, observing the passer-bys. No one is bumming a ride on his train.

“Excuse me? I can’t hear you, my music is turned up,” John was interrupted, and angered. His music was his special time.

“Precisely the problem, sir,” the banter continued between the two for some time. When I finally decided to tune back in I believe the argument had been reduced to a mutual understanding between the two parties. John turned his music down, and the attendant watched his step when walking by. Pulling out my phone and hopping on EDGE, I attempted, somewhat successfully to check the web. Facebook – nothing new, e-mail – empty, news – boring, nothing was happening. It wasn’t until I was about to take a nap, did something pop up.

“Ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring banana phone!” My phone’s ringtone managed to alert the entire train to Raffi’s musical stylings. The conversation that ensued involved important people, psych evaluations, tests, Prozac, drugs, and other related topics. What I don’t get is why you never mentioned anything about it before. Granted, you don’t talk much anyway, but still. Couldn’t you have at least hinted at it? Whatever. They’re wrong anyway. I know exactly what I’m saying and who I’m saying it to. I’m a politician who knows his audience. If I’m talking fast, I know you can keep up. And you might not answer, but whatever, I don’t care. Canada wasn’t the help I thought it would be. The doctors there told me the same thing about you that the American doctors told me. Have you seen Sicko? Wait, yes you have, we saw it together. Anyway, it’s like that, American doctors are all in it for the profit, and the HMO’s fuck everything up. Why don’t they just have doctors like the Canadian doctors? Although the Canadian’s were equally useless. Wouldn’t you know me better than them? Why don’t you just tell them?

Anyway, the whole point of this tale now comes to light. For years we had kept it a secret that I, Tom, was clinically insane. Technically, that is, I don’t agree, but who does if they’re crazy? When we were sitting in Canada, we had a discussion about some things. And in the heat of the moment, I forgot John was coming back soon. He came into the room, and you looked at him… I know you tried to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen. He watched as we fought. I started ‘acting weird’ as he said. I don’t know. It’s not like we went through and burned down a building of screaming babies whilst singing the theme song to Borat. No, definitely not Borat. I might loudly proclaim my love for a band, or sing, but not a burning building full of babies. We aren’t that crazy. Ha, there is that term again, crazy. What does it even mean? And how does ‘The Man’ define it? Am I crazy because I talk to myself? Are we crazy because we talk to each other? Our friends will find out, and then they won’t talk to me. They’ll realize that all those times I was ’singing’, I really wasn’t. That the pills we stopped taking weren’t for my bones. When they find out what will they do? Will they still listen to me? None of them listen to me as well as you do. You’re the best friend I have.

Today was the conclusion of the first week of school. Well, rather, today is seven days from when school began. And a story I have to tell.

Thursday evening, September 20th, 2007;
James and I were sitting at my house, having concluded a final day before our adventure began. I cut my hair, opened a bank account, took care of some other housekeeping kinds of things, and packed my bags. Come night time, I was sitting, as usual, in the dinning room, surfing the itnernet one last time as a free man. James came into the room and told me to get ready, we’re going for a drive. Puzzled, I asked why, to which he replied “Tyler, it’s our last chance to get a drive in.” I couldn’t say no. no longer woul dI be able to drive through the gorge on a whim, a passtime I had come to hold dear. We geared up, and left. The gorge never looked as pretty as that night, the sky was clear (as clear as it gets in Vancouver, Washington), and the stars were beautiful. The road I had driven so many times, felt slightly different as James took the corners. This is where I brake, this is where I shift, this is where I speed up, all the points rushed through my mind. Good bye Columbia river. Sleep that night was as sleepy as ever. I didn’t lay awake for hours wondering how tomorrow would go, I didn’t think about how life would be from now on, I didn’t even wonder if there would be traffic on I-5. All I thought about that night was wonderful, well-earned, sleep.

The drive to Seattle was somewhat boring. We took I-5. got the car pointed north, sped up, shifted into 5th, and just let her go. I arrived at UW, and helped James move in. UW wrote on my car, covering it in even more crappy paint. The University of Washington, bless their hearts, have some interesting ideas when it comes to living in a dorm. James lives in a ‘cluster’ a grouping of 9 impossibly small rooms, but they are clustered together and share a common-living space, which is unique, and kind of fun, in it’s own quaint little way. Not having any room to sleep in their dorm, I slept in the common-room, on the couch. It would have been cool to sleep on the balcony, but it is locked until everyone signs an agreement not to jump off or throw angry lobsters over the side, or something like that. Regardless, I awoke the next morning ready to begin my ‘Big Day’. And so we went, a hop-skip-jump away, I landed at SU, checked in, registered, and let SU move all my crap for me. Such hard times, I know, but fear not, it gets better. The first person I met, I believe, was Jen, someone I ‘knew’ from Facebook, and not sure of the protocol for such a metting simply introduced myself, and called it good. Since then I’ve met many many many people, all of whom are amazing, and will be great friends. My roommate, Chris, is the best roommate. Can’t be woken early, can’t be bothered by anything, save maybe being totally naked for an extended period of time, and is pretty funny. After some searching, I managed to find a few friends from orientation as well, and we’ve kept in touch. SU is an amazing place, it’s small, so I will run into everyone sometime, I promise.

Having said that, and inserting a poor-transitition; Seattle University is amazing. I will repeat myself for emphasis, and humor: Seattle University is one of the best places I have ever been. Granted I haven’t traveled the world, heck, I’ve rarely left the United States, but I can’t deny how freakin’ awesome it is here, Seattle, or college life in general. Many of my friends back home, whom I miss, had breakdowns about college life, frankly I don’t understand it, I love it. I do my homework because I want to. Sometimes, once in a while, I even do my homework when there is light outside, something unheard of to all but the most sacred Gods. Anywho, right now, at this very moment there are people playing guitar on my floor, and sitting in the hallway cheering, lauhging, talking, and having a good time. I love it, any of these people are someone you can just walk up to and talk to, something I didn’t feel in high shcool.

Schoolwork is a subject, as many of you know, that I’m not very fond of. If life were a video game, and you had to collect Homework/schoolwork points to level up, I’d be a lowly twink mage, whilst everyone else would be do-it-from-behind rouge rapers. Math is math here, nothing exciting, the professor is pretty cool, and I know a few people in the class, which is never a bad thing. English and history are another subject entirely. English, my earliest class, has proven to be the hardest thus far. The teacher is great, the classmates are good people, and it isn’t too much of a trek to journey to. Yet, the time presents a problem. 8:25AM, meaning I must wake at 8:00AM, and, because it’s an English class, I was up reading the assignment until 1:00AM, providing me with only 7 hours of sleep. This worked well in the High school world, but not in college, where I’m used to 11:00AM classes, minus English. I’ll learn to live with it, and have, thus far, enjoyed the readings. Faulkner isn’t my thing, but Melville actually did well for himself in Bartleby, although the first few pages were rather lengthy. History is two hours long, but isn’t bad. Western Civ is interesting to me, and there are some cool people in the class. Also, any class that uses online discussions is approved in my book!

College life has begun to fall into a routine. I have a job (Campus IT), that I enjoy thus far, I have a group of friends, I call my
family when I find the time. I eat 3ish meals a day, or at least I snack. My RA’s are good people, Xaiver is a wonderful hall is
wonderful to live in. Life is good. College students are different from high school students, and friends, in one major way.
They want to be here, they aren’t being forced, generally, to go to class. This makes the populus far more pleasent to talk to,
listen to, or otherwise be around. My roommate is relaxed, I’m relaxed, people are just friendly and chilled. And I’ve got my
high school friends near to hang out with. As a tangent, I had pizza with Amy last night, and discovered the most wonderful
chocolate cake I’ve tasted in many, many moons. And hey, I’ve even run into a girl or two that simply win. For the guys, you
can relate: Sometimes there is a girl that you meet, who you can not contain yourself around. The kind where she walks into
the room, and everything your mind was doing, simply stops. All thought processes cease to function, and redirected at her.
Basically, you become a smiling idiot who has little going on inside. You melt, in essence. It’s always an interesting
phenomenon. Not all girls do this to me, mind you; I’m half-gay in the sense that I often get along with girls better than guys anyway, so a lot of the people I hang around with at SU are girls. This doesn’t mean I automatically am interested in them as more than a friend, and I don’t want to come off that way. However, there are a few girls that are very intersting here
Well, my rant is slowing, and I’m at work, which I’ll rant about more later, so I shall end this 1337 word blog, and say good night