Friend From High School Also Liking FSU so Far
It’s five minutes before your class starts, and you’re at least a 15 minute walk from HCB. While passing the Shores building, you suddenly make eye contact with the last person you’d ever expect or want to see: the one kid from your high school who goes to FSU. You’ve been able to successfully avoid them for the first few weeks of the fall semester, but now you have to make a decision: rapidly avoid eye contact while power walking away or give them that awkward, closed mouth smile and subtly wave. Before you have a chance to make your next move, you realize that you never stopped staring at him, and he’s now beelining straight toward you having confused your dead-eyed stare for an invitation to converse.
“Hey dude, how are you? I can’t believe I haven’t run into you already. Do you know who else I saw? Taylor. You know Taylor, she went to Brookside. No? Oh, she’s super cool. You guys would totally get along. Anyways, we should definitely go out sometime. Have you been to Bajas? It’s kinda far but they have a bus that picks up right near the Sweet Shop. It’s fye, dude. What’s your major again?” said Jackson Davis, the former captain of your junior varsity lacrosse team and the newest member of the FSU College Republicans, giving you no time to respond in between sentences. “How are you liking FSU? Man, it’s unreal, right? The campus is so beautiful; the Chick-fil-a could be in a mall food court it’s so freakin’ clean, dude. It’s just so hot right now. Have you been to the cat cafe? My girlfriend made me go. Do you live on campus? I live in Cawthon, right next to Strozier. It’s like, super convenient! Not that I go to Strozier a lot - I’m way too busy with all my new friends - but whatever.”
“Oh shoot! What’s up, Jackson?” said an unfamiliar figure. After being introduced to you as one of Jackson’s orientation friends, the stranger boldly attempted to learn every aspect of your life. “You and Jackson went to high school together? You’re a freshman too? What’s your major? That’s cool that you guys have friends that go here. No one from my school goes here. We should all hang out sometime. Do you have a snap? Mine is ‘karatenick2001.’ I know it’s embarrassing, but I made it in like sixth grade. I’d make a new account, but I just can’t give up all of my streaks. It’d be dope if we just watched each other’s stories and never spoke again for the next four years.”
Now seven minutes have gone by, and you’re still stuck in a three-person conversation to which you did not consent. It’s not until the conversation pivots from yourself to Jackson and his friend catching up that you see an opportunity to exit without hurting the feelings of a fellow Creek High Panther. An exclamation about being late to class leads to light disappointment from Jackson, but you’ve become so numb during the conversation that you’ve forgotten how to feel. Even as you walk away, you can’t help but think about the next time you might run into him and the many ways in which you will try to avoid conversation.