The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To

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All the newspapers and TV pundits are calling this fall’s freshman college class the “Symnitol Generation,” but if the activity up and down my dorm hallway is any indication, this fall’s freshman college class is the “Stand Around Each Other’s Laptops and Play The First Thirty Seconds Of Every Song On The Hard Drive Generation.” The noise makes it hard to sit and write this but not impossible.

This dorm is called Allerton and it’s old and it used to be something else but nobody can agree exactly what. A Catholic girls’ school dormitory or a Catholic girls’ school school-building or a clothing mill where lots of Catholic girls worked. I am not used to old buildings, and the things that are commonplace to you if you’re from the East Coast or anywhere people have inhabited for a while, like radiators or old brass doorknobs covered in several layers of drippy white paint or windows that creak when you open them by turning a knob, are sort of exciting. Everything where I grew up grew up with me. I think the first time I stepped inside a building that was built before 1950, we were out of state on vacation.

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