Move-In Mayhem

A few days before every semester the population of our college town doubles triples and everyone (mostly single college students) starts moving into their places of residence. Because our school has three semesters, this means that this happens three times a year. Because most students only go to school here for two of those three semesters, this also means that there is roughly the same amount of people moving in every semester.


And because this madness happens all at once, our poor little college town turns into a huge black hole for about three-four days.


Trying to think ahead of the impending doom, Husband Man and I trekked to around town today, trying to get everything done in one fell swoop and thinking that the majority of students would move in tomorrow.


We were wrong. So horribly wrong.


At first, we thought that we really had succeeded. The bookstore on campus wasn't nearly as crazy as it has been in the past. And Albertsons was kind of ok too. However...


Walmart was PACKED. It was disgusting. I wanted to tear my hair out over things like waiting for a woman who was waiting for her daughter to make up her mind whether she wanted spaghettios or not so that they could move so that I could have spaghettios. (And spaghettios were only the third thing I went to pick up.) I stood in one of their fridges trying to find a carton of eggs that weren't broken. I had to dodge and weave around people to get anywhere, and cut people off if I wanted to get in another aisle. On top of all the millions of people milling around our not-supersized Walmart (which I DON'T understand), there was stuff EVERYWHERE, because we all know that every single college student in this town has to have a plastic 3-drawer thingy-whatever in their room, and four ladels, and every kind of chips available with corresponding salsa. And a shower curtain. Or six. Plus there was a huge stand for football necessities, which was completely unnecessary and just created a roadblock for people trying to buy frozen food.


On top of it all, the DI was closed, and our teachers still weren't on campus. So even though we planned ahead, and tried our hardest, we still have to leave the house AGAIN. Also, even though the roads aren't horrible, there are still crazy drivers out. They don't watch for pedestrians, and they have a hard time watching for other cars. Black hole, I'm telling you!!

Every semester I want to just hole up in my apartment and distance myself from the mayhem... but it just doesn't matter. There's no way you can ever plan this in advance. You have no choice. You are stuck trying to avoid injury, mental and emotional trauma, and certain doom before your semester even begins.