Day 1: 7 Years

Remember when I said I was going to write more? Well I guess I lied. But I didn't do it intentionally. I just didn't want to/was far too lazy. But I think I am going to do BEDA just because. So let's begin.

I woke up nearly 12 hours into April.

Late last night I returned home from my 16th, and last, Science Olympiad competition. I have been doing this for 7 years and I can't really convey the array of complex emotions I felt. If you've been through this then I won't need to explain. But it's relief and remorse and sadness and emptiness and freedom and something inside you saying "thank god that's over" and something else saying "I wish we could go back" and all and all exhausting. I feel like I've slept for the first time in 7 years. But I came in 4th place in Geological Mapping somehow.

On Friday we went to Niagra Falls and made friends with a black squirrel named Willis. We stayed at a fancy hotel along with the Fayetteville-Manlius team. (I will be honorable and not say anymore about them.) At the hotel there was also a beauty pageant and a dance competition. Some of my team members crashed the beauty pageant and I went with some friends to crash the recital. I saw a doppelganger of my little sister when she was 10 years old dancing to the Across the Universe version of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." She was wonderful.

After the events were over my teammates and the coaches and parents killed time for two hours playing games. My friend Casey hid in a cupboard with some guy from another team for 20 minutes because we forgot to tell her we had stopped playing hide-and-seek. We nearly missed the awards ceremony because we were so into our game of Pictionary.

This year the competition was at Canisius College and the campus just smelled funny and bad. The whole trip kind of did. I didn't like the school and everything was spread out and confusing. I spent a speed walk with a girl from Stuyvesant High School across the campus complaining about how we weren't at West Point.

Oh West Point. West Point is the most beautiful place in the world and holds this insane magic over all who enter. You come out changed no matter how short your time there was. And once you go you just want to go back.

At Canisius there were no stone monuments and panoramic views or historic chains. There were no astronauts buried on the grounds. There was no threat of getting shot if you got lost and no threatening signs telling you not to step on the grass. There was no charismatic Major Bird keeping us entertained while waiting for the awards ceremony to start and no recruitment video from 2006 with an old friend of mine it somewhere. And there was not the longest and loudest standing ovation I have ever heard when they introduced an officer recently returned from deployment in the Middle East. Not at Cansius. Instead there were instead Christian symbols everywhere and lectures from professors who said "this is killing me" in front of inattentive teams and doors in places they shouldn't have been on buildings and bad feng shui of the tables holding the awards.

God I miss West Point.

Eliot said that April is the cruelest month. The school librarian tells me that if you can get through March then you can get through to Summer. We'll see who's right.