Similarity?

Author: Megan Licious | |

One might wonder what would happen if a lemming was left in the middle of the desert by herself. An adolescent lemming, at that.

Today I got to find out. After training for two days under my supervisor, it was my first day of "real work", manning the front desk of the housing complex by myself. In my morning prayer for help at work I had nervously included something about the refiner's fire, and I sure wish now that I could recall exactly what it was.

At first the fire only tickled. One Nathaniel was in the processes of switching rooms on a whim, and after an hour of phone calls, desperately trying to speed up in person an online process that I wasn't even authorized to do, with customers gazing over the desk, and only after enough conversation to grant me best friend status with both Nathaniel and the phone attendant in charge of his new building, my prayers were answered and Nathaniel had a home.

The fire grew hotter when a mom rushed in demanding to talk to head of Campus Accommodations (not really such a person, which she didn't understand) because she was very concerned for her daughter, who apparently didn't like her roommate and was sleeping on the floor in someone else's room to escape her. Nothing like a mama cougar to hunt down a Hall Adviser.

I had no idea, however, of the third degree burn that came walking in with gifts and brownies in hand. Two rather unidentifiable people wanted information for three girls living on campus in order to hand deliver care packages to them, which information I for some reasons was unable to give them. After offering many alternatives, all of which were loudly and straight up refused ("No. I think I want to talk to them in person. That's why we drove ALL THE WAY up here!") they slowly inched backwards out the door (all the while saying, "Can't you just point us in the general direction?!?"), complained to some other students in the doorway ("Well, in OUR day at school...") and finally left.

I soon after hobbled home, having discovered the bandaid over the humongous open blister on the back of my heel missing.

After changing I made the hike uphill (you all can ask to feel my iron calves upon our meeting) to purchase speakers for my computer, where I listened for a half hour to the short-handed cashiers squabble and the white computer guys behind me sing to Michael Jackson on the iTunes of a model computer. To a so sweet completion of my task ("I don't have a bag quite big enough for those") I again became the ant, capable of carrying ten times its body weight over terrain of a mean demeanor.

As the evening light reflected off the white top of the speaker box and into my face, adding another layer of extreme sunkissed love, I trudged along. Step by step, as I have taken it this far.

In convocation a challenge was issued to examine who we are as students and the truth of why we are here. As I walked back home, I heard resounding off the surrounding buildings the announcer of the football game a couple of blocks away, followed by the roar of the cougar. And the answer resounded inside of me. I am not a lemming. I am not an ant. And It's all for me. It's all for them. It's all for us.

The chant from the stadium matched the one in my heart. Cougars! Cougars! Cougars!