The Deserted Bandwagon

Author: Matt Kunzweiler

Returning to college, I was anticipating the usual first-week struggles: forgetting my mailbox combo, my handwriting - unpracticed for four months, resembling a small child's - my inability to tell which sentences in my textbooks should be highlighted...and my eventual decision to highlight only the sentences containing boldface words. I was prepared for these minor hang-ups.

But on the first Monday of the fall semester I found myself sitting in the LIS office, watching a couple of computer-savvy student employees prod unsuccessfully at my laptop's keyboard - the screen catatonic for the past several hours. Eventually they abandoned the prodding and one turned to me with the same wry expression local TV news reporters often get when standing in front of used furniture stores that have burned to the ground. "Your hard drive is dead."

I would've preferred him to say that it "passed on" or "sprouted wings," but LIS employees aren't paid to euphemize. They are supposed to use simple terms that we can all understand. I noticed that most of the others in the office had overheard the news and had now turned their heads or swiveled their chairs so to indulge themselves with a view of the catastrophe.

I eventually moved from a state of shock to one of profound self-pity. "All the documents I've saved since eleventh grade," I said, "all my digital photos, all 30 gigs of illegally acquired music, my legally registered copy of Snood - all gone?" I heard a yes. They're not big on sympathy, the LIS boys.

For the rest of the day, whenever I walked by an acquaintance on a path and he made the mistake of asking "How's it going?" I told him exactly how it was going. I complained about how my proof of beating Minesweeper on the expert setting in 119 seconds was gone forever. To others I explained how it would be nearly impossible to find that photo of Eddie Van Halen on stage next to synthesizer player and composer of the Miami Vice theme, Jan Hammer. "And I have to check my e-mail in Sunderland."

The sympathy I received from my classmates was overwhelming. Many had experienced the same devastating inconvenience in the past, so they were attuned to my pain. They consoled me with pats on the back, kind words and hot tea. One friend said, "It's just the most awful thing that can happen to you at college."

"Woe is me," I mumbled as I approached the dining hall's all-you-can-eat buffet and sat down at a table with a view of the mountains, where the people I met for dinner laughed at each other for being so self-involved as to talk on their cell phones during dinner. It was a fitting time for me to air my grievances.