Published in The Siskiyou, October 3, 2005

When I first arrived at SOU, everyone was a stranger. I could walk across campus as an anonymous entity. Not so anymore.

It's amazing how a campus can shrink. With each new day a new face becomes an old face. It's as if the thousands of students are all one big, crazy family. For example... when I first arrived in the dorms two years ago, I had Spanish with a girl named Chelsea. Chelsea had an off-campus roommate named Monique. Monique was dating Chris who lived on the third floor of my hall. First-floor Jessica had a crush on Chris. Jessica also had a crush on a guy named Matt who dated Chelsea the summer before. Matt had a brief relationship with Jessica’s best friend Amy before dating Chelsea. Chelsea had a brief relationship with Josh before Josh dated me. Confused?

Now, two years later, my social circle has expanded beyond the perimeters of campus life. But Ashland shrinks daily just as SOU once did, and I have yet to escape the intertwining of individuals in such a close community. I walk into the uncomplicated blissfulness of Tabu on a Saturday night, then I learn that each salsa dancer has an complicated story… Dancer A likes Dancer B but Dancer B was once married to Dancer C who still desires the return of Dancer B who secretly wishes he could get up the courage to ask out Dancer D. I withdraw money at the bank from a teller I go to school with. My groceries are bagged by my doctor’s high school son. Pizza is delivered by my old Spanish partner who is friends with my co-worker in the library. I meet one guy, then I meet another, then I learn that the two individuals have known each other since the first grade, had fought over the same high school valedictorian, then worked together at the co-op until they both had had enough. I close up the library only to run into every wanderer I just kicked out as we all make our way to Safeway.

Over a beer at Black Sheep where every other person seems to know who he is, a new friend tells me the benefits of living in a small town. He has watched everyone leave… for work, for school, to be with someone they love… yet he finds there is something humbling in staying in one place, in not being able to escape the fishbowl life of friends and lovers and enemies. And I find I agree. I cannot deny that there is something almost freeing in walking through downtown Seattle on a busy summer day, knowing that everyone you pass by on the crowded street is someone you will never see again. Yet there is also something freeing in being known – in being aware that every time you step out of your house you could run into just about anyone. It gives you the feeling that you are never really alone, that you are a part of a cohesive whole that could not exist without you. So be careful the next time you speak ill of so-and-so to the girl sitting next to you… so-and-so could be her brother’s roommate’s boss in Cascade who then decides to poison you with meat left out just a bit too long.

Copyright © 2005 Shannon Luders-Manuel