SHE said

First day of college. We’ve all been there. You just moved in. Your parents have just left, but not before taking you to one of the finest restaurants in town. There you order your last real dish of food.

As you wave your parents goodbye, the harsh reality hits you. No, not the fact that you won’t be seeing your family for months to come; not the bone-crushing fear of massive amounts of text to read; what hits you is the sudden urge to drop the kids off at the pool (yes, it’s true boys, everybody poops – get over it).

So, you walk to your dorm and then something else hits you. You now share a bathroom with 35 of your soon-to-be closest friends. As you walk in for the first time, you glance around at the strangers. All of the stalls are empty. There are some girls looking into the mirror and a couple have even decided to brave the showers; but a few are just standing there, staring, trying to figure out what to do. You are one of them. Enter your RA Jenna, who walks in holding a CD player to “ease the awkwardness.” Crisis averted.

A couple of months have passed, and you’ve gotten to know a lot of girls on your floor due to similar schedules and similar bathroom visits. Your favorite radio station is 95.9 since no one ever bothered to take out that weird girl’s “Best of Mariah Carey” CD. You’ve learned that 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. are the absolute worst times to try to take a shower (and even if a stall was open, you wouldn’t use it unless it was “your stall”). You also know all of your floor mates’ boyfriends by name, as you’ve recently found yourself brushing your teeth next to them. Just don’t make any late-night bathroom visits. Two pairs of feet in the shower instead of one is no longer an uncommon occurrence.

Dorm bathrooms are the perfect girl-bonding location. Long showers in the winter lead to lengthy conversations between you and the girl to your left, and a Saturday night wouldn’t be complete without holding back the hair of one of your neighbors while she gets rid of her townhouse party in the toilet and on the surrounding tile (I lost a great pair of shoes this way).

Though friendships can flourish through this freshman year Rite of Passage, I wouldn’t go back to a communal bathroom if you paid me. After all, who knows who’s been showering in “your stall?”