Stories I Like To Tell

*Names have not been changed in order to incriminate the guilty.

I anticipated experiencing many different things my first year of college. Waking up on a Saturday morning alone on my English professor's basement floor was not one of them.

Despite that rather scandalous introduction, this story suffers from a severe lack of hanky-panky and a serious overabundance of Disney movies. Let's start at the beginning.

I went to a very small private college in rural Virginia. My first year there I was one of only 4oo students, and we were a tight-knit community. My roommates were friends with one of the English professor's sons, who was also a student. Let's call him Jared. I knew him somewhat through our interactions in choir and because of our mutual friends. At the end of the school year, Jared invited everyone (literally, everyone) to a party at his parents' house to watch Disney movies all night long. (Yes, we're all very Mormon.) After assisting us in dropping brownies off (in a very co-ed Mormon way) at the doorstep of a house full of cute boys, my friend (let's call him Luke) had given me and a few other friends a ride to the party where we met the rest of the group, including my roommate (let's call her Bethany).

The house was full of reveling Mormon college students looking for some post-semester stress relief. The Sprite and hormones flowed freely. My friends and I grabbed handfuls of chips and fun-size candy bars and headed down into the basement, hoping to nab some prime real-estate next to one of SVU's few eligible bachelors. I don't think I was successful in cuddling with the aforementioned Luke (who I definitely had my eye on), since he was at the time making overtures at another girl (who shall remain nameless because she didn't leave me alone on the basement floor). Despite the sad lack of passionate freshman cuddling, I did my best to enjoy the night, sandwiched among my good friends on bean bag chairs and pillows watching Disney movies to our hearts' content. Somewhere around 3 or 4 in the morning, just as The Fox and the Hound was coming to its heartbreaking conclusion, I began to fall asleep, sure in the knowledge that surely either my dear roommate or the gentlemanly boy who gave me a ride would wake me when it was time to leave. Surrounded by a basement-full of friends and acquaintances, many of whom were also dozing, I drifted into a world-famous deep Lauren sleep.

The next thing I heard was a strange hissing noise. Peeling my eyes open, I realized that the room was markedly lighter than it had been when I'd fallen asleep. I also noticed that my limbs had their full-range of motion--I was no longer shmooshed between thousands of sleeping college students. I heard the noise again and lifted my head to the stairs. Jared stood, perched over the railing, halfway down the staircase. "Hey, girl. Girl! Wake up," I now realized he had been saying/hissing. I was very much alone. On the basement floor. "Where'deverybodygowhattimeisit?" I sat up and squawked groggily. "Almost nine, and I don't know," he said, stifling a laugh. Apparently, sometime during the night he stumbled up to his room to sleep, which happened around the same time my friends LEFT me ALONE on the basement floor. When the respected English professor awoke and strolled down to his basement, he received quite the shock upon seeing my awkwardly sleeping form, ALONE on his basement floor. He woke his son, saying, "Jared, there's a girl in the basement."

Jared offered to give me a ride back to campus as I was still quite visibly confused as to what the hell just happened to me. I grabbed my jacket and tried to rub the nasty gunk out from the corners of my eyes and followed him up the stairs. The respected English professor's family sat cozily at the kitchen table, enjoying their Saturday morning breakfast, and respected English professor's wife graciously invited me to join them. Still trying to regain my normal person voice, I squawked out what I hope was a polite "nothankyou," scrambled out the door and into the car, and thus endured one of the most awkward five minute car rides of my life.

Properly deposited in front of my dorm, I climbed the stairs to the third floor (C-3 what what), promptly woke the offending abandoners, and demanded an explanation. I don't remember their excuses, which surely means they were pathetic and not worth remembering, but each of them found it OHSOFUNNY that I spent the night alone on the respected English professor's basement floor.

Who's laughing now, offending abandoners??!