Dry-Erase

I Wish I Could Go Back to College

When I asked for pictures of front doors, I didn't expect dorm room doors, but I received on, and it made me remember how much work we all did to make those too-small spaces feel like home.

At the University of San Francisco, aside from the usual renting of refrigerators, and turning dorm beds into bunk beds, we used our message boards – white squares designed for dry-erase markers – as much for decoration as to leave messages.

Among my friends, the trendy thing was to reproduce Calvin and Hobbes comic strip frames, on our boards. (I bet you never thought that Crayola markers were the perfect gift for your college student. Trust me – they are.). For the month of October, 1988, my door sported a young Calvin threatening an innocent pumpkin with a knife and uttering the words “Alright, Jack. Time for your Lobotomy.”

As my parents moved from Fresno to San Jose just after I'd started school, I felt more at home in the dorm than at their new house, where there really wasn't a place for me.

Hello, adulthood.

I wish I could go back to college.
In college you know who you are.
You sit in the quad, and think, “Oh my God!
I am totally gonna go far!”

How do I go back to college?
I don't know who I am anymore!

I wanna go back to my room and find a message
in dry-erase pen on the door!*

*”I Wish I Could Go Back to College,” Avenue Q

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