Kately Days

Sometime last week, on a particularly not-good day a work, Matt called my cell to tell me that he had just watched a wrecking ball swing through one of my old dorm rooms at Tech. And I sort of felt like I was in a movie, though I can't figure out which one. Perhaps ... The Story of Us.

Fast-forward to this past weekend. I could not shake the desire to consume Popeye's mashed potatoes and gravy. And after a conversation with an old buddy from high school - concede that Popeye's must lace their food with some drug ... probably heroine or one of its cousins ... because really ... people NEED that stuff to survive. I consider the biscuits to be heart attacks with grape jelly. And I love them. Anyhow. I found myself sitting in Popeyes this weekend, clogging my arteries with spicy gravy, but beyond everything else - I found myself taking in the view and playing a certain movie in my mind.

That old dorm happens to be just across the street from Popeye's (terrible location - if you ask me ... no need to research the "freshman fifteen" folks). And I began to remember dorm life and the memories contained in the room that is now scattered about a fenced-in plot; re-bar piles here, jagged concrete rocks there, and those stoic red bricks in a pile just close enough to the boundary that you can almost hear them screaming "STEAL ONE OF ME!"

It was in that room that I woke up one morning to snow and classes were cancelled and I played for hours like a child, making angels and giggling. Same room where I called Matt and asked a strictly hypothetical question ... "what would you do if I said I was craving pickled okra?" He hung up and not eight minutes later was in the parking lot, hollering my name at the balcony ... a giant jar of pickled okra in hand. Pulled my first all-nighter in that room - back when I denied my speech comm roots and pretended to be an architecture student. The sign on the door said, "If you pass by and don't hear the keyboard clicking, then the 'architorture' student inside had died from working too hard." Experienced another first in that room - several times over. First time to actually hear/witness a roommate having sex. Several flavors each week. Several diseases on her sheets. Was recently pleased to see that she had put on a bunch of weight. That room was cold and an awful color with even worse contact paper half-way stuck to any surface that would allow it. But it held me and kept me. And that worked.

So maybe the movie I was reminded of wasn't so much a movie ... but more like a slide show. The Story of Me. Just one scene. But a memorable one. It wouldn't make the final cut. But I got to watch it get torn down - Saturday, over heart attacks and heroine.