By: CAROLINE MURPHY

COLUMNIST

At first I was excited about staying on campus alone for a few days. I had to stay last week on Monday and Tuesday in order to continue my journey as a teacher in a senior high school, English class. I had about four students by the end of Tuesday in all of my classes. I usually have twenty-five. This semester has had me getting home on Fridays around 4pm. I always think that I will just take a tiny tiger snooze, and be ready to greet the evening with a smile and a firm hand-shake hello. This has yet to be the case, and seeing as how this Friday (literally as you’re reading this article, if you’re reading this article, I may be very well teaching my last class, OMG WISH ME LUCK) I think there is a large chance that me napping, won’t happen. Every Friday, I have come home, walked into my house, thrown my bag, and left again, only to come back between the hours of 3am and 4am. No nap, not once, ok maybe once, twice, three times at the mostest. Still when the Friday of Thanksgiving break came, and I walked into an empty home, I wasn’t too depressed. I was a bit relieved. I could nap. I could cook food in my robe… I could not leave my bed for 6+ hours, and have it not be weird. I napped, and by golly miss ol’ Molly, it was a nap for the books. I woke up, and made a smorgasbord of treats and yums. It was windy this past Friday, none of you lucky homeward bound travelers probably know this, but the winds were a blowing. When it’s windy I have learned, and my house is occupied by a single soul, a very easily startled single soul, my house shakes and makes noises. I laid in bed, my knuckles white from holding my blanket over my head, listening the creak and crank of every nook and door knob in 3 University. My once excitement over having some “me time,” began to run away with every gust of wind. Wednesday at 7am, flight 9K1810, out of Ogdensburg International, could not come soon enough.

Have I mentioned I hate flying? I am the twenty-two year old who cries (cried) into her pillow pet for two hours. I am that girl. I have snap chats to prove it. I hate flying. I am not made for air travel. I have barely mastered walking, how am I expected to handle altitude drops on a 9 passenger death trap. NOPE. I got home on Wednesday (that’s six days after all of you…I am bitter) to a packed Murphy household. A packed Murphy household means many things, it means a fire, laughter, multiple trips to our local “Packy” store, and above all else, some good old temper tantrums, the type that only descendants of County Cork can provide. I didn’t even have my left boot off before my aunt asked me my post-grad plans. I am only one woman, a woman who can barely make it from Monday to Friday without needing a psychologist, this woman, this family member, asking me about five months from now, made me want to crawl back to Canton. I sat my whole family down, looked them in the eyes… and had a temper tantrum. “I WILL BE SAYING THIS ONLY ONCE THIS HOLIDAY SEASON… THIS IS MY FIVE YEAR PLAN.” I can’t tell you what I said. I think I blacked out. I know I mentioned something about going West, my car, money, and training squirrels, the only animal I seem to not be allergic to these days. My family looked at me, nodded, and as good ol’ families will do, made me a bagel, and told me I looked “tired.”

Thanksgiving would be nothing (if you’re over 21) without the mostly awkward, over the top belligerent, high school reunion at a semi-cheesy bar. I didn’t even attend the high school for which I attended the reunion. I didn’t go to my hometown’s high school, but it remains that I kept in touch with friends who did. I was persuaded after one or two “Hometown Hero’s” (my new drink of my homeward bound, couch-lifestyle) to accompany some pals into the big city for the shindig. I should have said no, I mean I had so many opporunities to do so. It did not take long before I realized I was at a bar, with over 65+ people whom I hadn’t spoken to in years. People, who now wanted to know all about me, and why my instagram is filled with pictures of food, and Lil B.

I stuttered through many hellos, and ran from many good byes. I saw people who I had once been BFF’S LOL’S LYLAS with. I saw people who I had TOTALLY put their initials<3, in my away messages, when my mom called me to dinner. I had my first, and last, vodka tonic. It’s water. It’s literal death water. You have no idea how many you’ve had, because you feel like you’re hydrating like a non-NARP. I head banged to a 90’s alt-rock all boy bar band. No one has heard “Jumper,” by Third Eye Blind, till they’ve heard it while dancing next to your 7th grade boyfriend, who gave you a $10 Itunes gift card for your birthday. Before we had left for Hell, all my friends and I made a pact to, “For sure, stay with each other, all night,” and to, “Totally split an Uber.” We did none of the above, including the Uber ride home. Nope, I called my brother over five times, and had my mother and her Volvo drive me home. I also said goodbye to no one, including my friends, who I was, “For sure going to stay with, all night.” My phone died on the ride home, so my friends thought that maybe me and Itunes gift card boy, had found love during the fifth time the band played “Jumper.”

Holidays, man. They’ll pick you up, tuck you in, and then when you least expect it, they’ll take you for a ride. I don’t know about all of you, but I know that, my mother’s eyes, as well as her warm embrace, as I left to travel North once more this past Sunday, told me three things. We will never speak of the ride home she gave me. I need to start putting on pants before 2pm, and ditch the robe, when company is over. And that we would be doing this all over in three weeks. Happy Holidaze, my friends.