Town/gown - 12/03/09

I always get especially sentimental around the holidays. Perhaps it’s how they don’t change. In my family, the month of December means skiing, cookies, a Christmas tree and my mother’s nutcracker collection parading across the mantel in our living room. There are things about the holidays that you can depend on, and I always start to reminisce as Thanksgiving rolls around and the holiday season begins, suddenly aware of how things have changed in the past year, in contrast to how, after so long, Christmas really hasn’t changed at all.

Regardless of the reason, Thanksgiving comes and I’m looking at baby pictures and watching “Stepmom” and movies of the tearjerking sort and contemplating life more than is probably good for me.

It was in this spirit that I found myself quite the emotional wreck last week, reflecting on the fleeting nature of our college relationships. I suppose it’s inevitable that people come and go from our lives, given our environment. We can’t be expected to forever keep in touch with that person in bio lab who lives in Arkansas — not only do I have no desire ever to visit Arkansas, but I find her exceptionally annoying. Annoyance aside, it’s sort of sad to think that in two-and-a-half years I’ll probably never see her again. We bonded over carbon molecules, for God’s sake — surely that means something?

You’d think I’d be used to this by now, what with the disposable college students parading in and out of my pre-college Middlebury.

There was the baseball player and his beer. Every Friday night he was at my parents’ store, purchasing a 30-rack and maybe a ping-pong ball or two. It’s not that he had such a huge impact on my life or that we even exchanged many words other than:

“$24. 34, please.”

“Do you take Visa?”

But there he was every Friday until he wasn’t, and then I never saw him again. There were other regulars from the College: the blonde with leather jacket and peach Snapple, the couple that split a vegetarian wrap with Frank’s red hot on the side, the squirrely-looking kid on the Atkins diet who ordered Philly cheese steaks sans roll. I felt like I knew these students after a while, and the overly sensitive part of me wants at least a postcard. Is that really so much?

Of course, others have come and gone with a more direct impact. For a while in high school, our assistant ski coach was a Middlebury student. I worked one July with a recently graduated ES major who was spending the summer in town before starting a job in Oregon. Junior year of high school I had a student teacher in my English class who graduated from Middlebury that spring.

Gone, gone, gone.

I don’t mean to suggest, however, that our fleeting relationships are too disappointing in the end to be worth the trouble in the first place. On the contrary, I count myself very lucky to have known these students, even for a brief amount of time. Furthermore, as someone who understands the benefits of such interaction, I would encourage people here to find some way to be a part of the off-campus community (you know, with all that extra time you have kicking around). Coach a team, volunteer in a classroom, go down to the cannon and shoot the breeze with the kids playing hooky.

But whatever you do, for heaven’s sake, follow up with a text or something. At least during the holidays.