“Decadence Week” is the term given by some to the period between the end of finals and Commencement, when most seniors stay on campus and hang out. I didn’t actually stay, but left Saturday morning, after finishing my last papers on Friday and mostly moving out of my room. My time at home that week was spent running, working out, and performing the massive task of cleaning my room…at home. It wasn’t very decadent.
For the past 4 years, my bedroom has been accumulating useless objects I’ve been too lazy to get rid off. It’s also retained much of its decoration and content from my high school years. Since I spend a relatively small amount of time at home, this didn’t bother me. But with my bedroom set to become my “primary” room for at least the next 6 months, I’ve set to cleanse it and prepare it for adulthood.
Books have been arranged neatly in my closet. My drawers have been vacated and re-stocked. Pounds of paper has been trashed. My file box reflects my new life: the college applications folder has been replaced by paperwork for Apparatus, and student loan information fills the file that Chick-Fil-A pay stubs from high school used to. A portion of my clothes are going into storage, a portion are being “handed up” to my dad, and a portion are being tossed. Everything on my wall has been taken down, in order for it to properly host some important new documents–like my diploma.
My diploma is a piece of work:
All that Latin…and they said it was a dead language.
Anyway, I did return for a single night. On Wednesday, I did a few errands around the College and also went to a party for FIJI ’13, put on by Sandy our cook. She made us all wonderful parting gifts: recipe binders, filled with her “greatest hits” as well as pictures she had been taking around the dining room the whole year.
On Thursday morning, I was about to shower and head back home. I grabbed my towel that had been hanging on my wall since I left last Friday. As I began to wrap it around me, I felt a sharp pinch on my forearm. I was shocked, and figured it was a bug, maybe a cicada, hiding in my towel and pressing its pointy legs into my arm. As knee-jerk reaction, I tried to swipe it off, but only felt it dig into my arm in resistance. At this point, I hadn’t seen my bare arm, but gave it a few more swipes and finally witnessed the intruder fall onto the floor.
It was a bat. It wasn’t an ordinary bug, it was the stuff of legends. A villainous and leathery creature, who swooped straight from Halloween stories and folklore onto my carpet. My first reaction was to trap it under my trashcan. My second reaction (and this is the wrong reaction) was, “Awesome! I need to go show someone!” So I showed a few people, and after the excitement wore off, I let it go from my window. No long-term harm done, just a cool story.
I did notice two apparent scratches on my arm, though. They must have been left by the bat when I was trying to swipe it off. They were parallel lines a few millimeters apart, each running about a centimeter in length. Though I entertained the possibility of a bat bite, and had actually compared the distance of my two lines to the distance between the bat’s teeth (they were comparable), I felt confident that I was scratched, not bitten. After all, if an animal suddenly lands on you, and you try to scrap it off, it’s not going to bite you to stay on, will it? I didn’t think I had much to worry about.
…Until I told my mom about it. The possibility of rabies first raised its head, and we started considering medical action. We ended up at the ER at Community Hospital South, and I began my rabies vaccine series that night. (And no, I didn’t get the shots in my stomach…luckily. They divided them amongst my limbs). I go back next Thursday for the final shot.
All in all, it’s a gigantic inconvenience, but a random occurrence and thus a fun story. As I told people it during Commencement week, they were always quite shocked. I wasn’t, because that specific top-floor room in FIJI has perennial bat problems. Well, by perennial, I mean that at the beginning of my fall semester, also in that room, we heard a bat walking around above the ceiling. Like then, this occurred after the room had been empty for several days. And in fact, the very next day, we saw a bat flying through (and out) our room. Perhaps FIJI is just a front for the Batcave…
Finally…since this is a post about Decadence, I’ll conclude by mentioning the Senior Golf Outing. Every Friday of that week, Career Services sponsors a golf tournament with graduating seniors and alumni. We’re paired together, so it’s a great opportunity to get to know them, while doing something they genuinely enjoy:
Not to mention a great way to learn golf. I had literally never played before, and Greg Estell ’85 was more than generous in attending to my nascent golf stroke. I can now say that the new President of the National Association of Wabash Men taught me how to golf. He even offered to give me his father’s left-handed clubs, which don’t get any use nowadays. Wow. Such a testament to the interest and care that Wabash men give to each other. And yet, when I look back at my Wabash career, this act is one of many such exhibitions.
PS…I don’t know what I’m going to do with this blog after I finish talking about Wabash stuff. Will it be a diary? A platform for opinion? Who knows. Regardless,
click here to