Wiest

"Friends are like a fist full of sand. When you let them go, the littler grains will slip between the cracks of your fingers, but the greatest ones will stick to your hand and will not fall through."

--Chris McKenna, 2005

I've felt like a little grain of sand lately, slipping through the proverbial fingers of many whom I have had the pleasure of calling friends. It comes with a great deal of guilt, of thinking I was never going to be this out of touch, but before I knew it, three months had past and I realized that I can no longer recall their numbers from memory. I have no regrets, I love my life and would not wish it any different. However, a part of me misses the past.

I think about my friends with a delightful reverence and I long for the times we spent living together in Wiest Hall. Times of Stan the Gun, "council" meetings, and on-call poker. Road trips taken for crushes and Heisman trophy winners alike, Tiger Woods golf, and real golf off of the roof, bluffs, and anything in between. I miss the front desk, Rose, Susan, and "those dirty bastards." Back then the nut fry made sense and your rank in life was determined by NCAA Football 2005. A door was always open and though the cafeteria was never any good, there was always someone to eat with.

Wiest holds a lot of memories for me. For the past 37 years it has stood sentinel over the southern end of campus, and for three of those years, it was home to my friends and me. I'm sure I'm not the only one who misses those times above and countless more unmentioned. They were some of the best times of my life. I grabbed a big fistful of sand back then, and many grains have stuck. I only hope that somewhere out there, I'm stuck to someone's hand too.