Marine Machine

Last night I went over to my friend Linda's house to help her put her stuff in storage before she left for Marine bootcamp today. When I had called at noon to see if she was ready to perform the grand move, she had said that no, she still had to finish her paper and do a million other things. At 8 PM, the situation was exactly the same, only she had ordered dinner. Whoever says college students aren't productive is a liar.

I got there and immediately I felt like whatever I said was The Thing to Do. Linda, get your stuff out for bootcamp. Linda, throw away all your papers. Linda, stand on your head. Linda would submissively comply with all these things while our arms churned like windmills through clothes, papers, books, bedding, boxes, and lotions. I thought it was absolutely hilarious she was relying on me to motivate her into moving, since my current tactic to moving is to not unpack from the previous time you moved. Which is why I still have a ton of my stuff in boxes and why they're all on top of my desk, which has probably been opened a total of ten times this year.

By 11:30 we had basically finished putting everything into storage, and sat down with a bottle of champagne to figure out what 4 unarmed liberal arts majors could do to get rid of a bed. Without the correct tools, we didn't have the option of disassembling it and without a chainsaw or an axe, we weren't (yet) sure how we could break it apart. Carrying it down the narrow hall and even narrower stairwell wasn't an option. So as the champagne bottles got emptier, the solutions became increasingly creative, such as pushing it out the window, burning it, breaking down the wall to get it out, or eating it. Finally, brute strength was the answer as we started twisting it like clothes being wrung out. Only since Linda's room is only slightly larger than a matchbox, the whole process was conducted by us contorting ourselves into increasingly odd positions to actually break the wood that was holding everything together. Making a bed to be broken the way that we broke it was truly the apex of IKEA design and ergonomics.

This morning in the lobby of the library I ran into Linda looking extremely disheveled, panicked, saying that she was supposed to have left a half hour ago but still had to print something out. She left with "What am I thinking! What am I doing!" That's not really an easy question to answer. But after seeing her rip into her bed last night to break it apart like a gladiator, I think I can safely say that the Marines had no idea either what they got themselves into when they accepted her into the program. I fully anticipate that by the end of the summer the Marines will be called Linda's Legion and she will come back to school in September with their anthem being a remix of Justin Timberlake and all members being required to own one pair of spandex glittery shorts. Semper Fidelis? Sexy Forever.