Sunrise, Sunset

Ahh.. Today, while my stomach decided to revolt and I prayed for a swift death, my mind went off into la la land. In other words, I had a flashback.

I was in college, all of 18 years old. I went to this private all girls' school in upstate New York. It was a very small college set on a pretty lake. The campus was gorgeous. I swooned daily from the beauty of it all. Until I moved into the dorm with the geese, but that's another story.

A lot of the time was either spent at a neighboring university or hanging out on the dock at the lake. Many a sunset was spent there. Since it was a small school, we bored easily. We would find entertainment value in the silliest of things. And if it kept us up all night? All the better. Sleep deprivation makes everything more fun!

The school also had many odd little rituals and ceremonies. Either massive amounts of alcohol or sleep deprivation were involved. Sometimes both. Like I said, we made our own fun. On this night, we were required to stay awake all night. Most spent the time drinking. Some moved their dorm's couches out onto the lawns. We could be heard calling to one another across the campus all night. My friends and I had a prime spot and a comfy couch. We decided at dawn, we'd watch the sunrise on the dock. If you were paying attention earlier, you'd see the flaw in our logic. Shh.. Don't tell anyone yet.

We partied it up. Anything to keep awake. I even recall jogging around the building to stay conscious at one point. A bit before dawn, we grabbed our stuff and headed for the lake. We sat and waited. And waited. We noticed the sky getting lighter, but no sunrise. We didn't get it. We determinedly faced west and waited some more. Ahh.. I see you caught it that time. Yes, we faced west.

After it had gotten pretty light, I blurrily wondered what the hell was up with the sunrise. I looked at my watch. Well, past the right time. I turned to look back at the campus. That's when the anvil fell. My excuse is that I was drunk and seriously lacking in sleep. I'll stand by that till the day I die.

I turned to my friends and told them how stupid we were. There was a lot of face palming. We groggily gathered our things and slumped back to campus to watch the seniors do a little ritual dance around a very phallic tree. No, it wasn't May Day. We did a maypole dance then, too. This is what they did before graduating. Then we all went to breakfast and watched the seniors get hammered on mimosas. There was dancing on the tables.

What? You didn't do this at your college?