Little Boxes

It was a room designed for sleeping and studying.

Two single beds, each pressed up against opposite walls, two small desks each with one small lamp, two sets of wall mounted shelves, two identical chests of drawers, one tiny window. The space was efficient and sterile, much, I imagined, like a convent room might be and the thought of two long years here filled me with anxiety and hopelessness.

This particular college was faith based - at least in principle - and it regularly turned out crop after crop of cookie cutter people, well behaved, solid, tax paying and rule abiding graduates who went on to become well behaved, solid, tax paying and rule abiding citizens - teachers, architects, engineers, marines and more teachers - people who fit nicely and comfortably in little boxes, who didn't question authority, didn't protest war, didn't walk on the grass. There was just enough space here to breathe, providing you were thrify in doing so.

My roommate, a mousy little thing with oversized glasses, asthma and a gift for silence, was from some small town in upstate New York. She wore flannel pajamas and floppy slippers and studied with a vengeance, often reading the same paragraph a dozen times over - outloud - and making detailed notes. She rarely left the room aside from attending class and bathroom breaks - she would pull on her flannel robe and creep down the hall in the semi dark, reminding me of a cat burglar, then tiptoe back, hoping to be unseen and unnoticed. We had nothing in common apart from being away from home and we spent the months in a quiet and dry stalemate, coming and going in careful solicitude. It was very civilized and considerate. On weekends she had the room to herself as I went home to stay with friends and I suspected that she'd have been more than delighted if I'd found some reason to stay away. We were, each in our own way and for our own private reasons, loners - parts of the out crowd - and we never joined forces or shared stories, never became more then random roommates thrown together by luck of the draw. She wanted to be boxed, gift wrapped and graduated and while I had no clear idea of what I wanted, I was more and more sure that I wasn't going to find it at at this small, catholic minded school.

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes all the same.

Malvina Reynolds