Deceitful Nostalgia

The semester was going to start itself up again, and so I spent a summer day on campus, handling the minutia of academia. I stopped off at the new Writing Center space that would be my home, navigating my way through the labyrinth of shiny glass walls and the smells of new furniture.

And then I took a walk four buildings down to my old home, the former space of our campus Writing Center. The space is housed in Bear Down Gymnasium, a building with a rich historical tradition. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Bear Down is one of the oldest buildings on campus and bears (haha, no pun intended) the name of the university's athletic slogan. As the story goes, in 1926 John "Button" Salmon, starting quarterback and student body president, was in a fatal car accident. Before he gave up the ghost, he had one last message for his team mates: "Tell them . . . tell the team to bear down." Thus a quarterback died and a legend was born.

Then, in the 80s, the gym was used in Revenge of the Nerds. That gym the nerd guys are sleeping in when they have nowhere to live? Bear Down.

So as I stepped up to the door and slid my key into the hole, I felt a bit sad to be letting this place go. It wasn't just that it was a legendary space; it was a home, the place where I had to kick tutors out of my desk so that I could have somewhere to sit, the place where I watched tutors catch mice with plastic cups.

I fought with the knob, and the door finally opened. I was greeted by a burning stench of mouse urine and rotting mouse carcass, a smell so insipid that it burned my nose, burned my throat. I went over to my desk to round up a few items that hadn't made the move to the new location yet, and I saw that the filing cabinet next to my desk was littered with mouse feces. I set about gathering my things--quickly--and felt the sweat beginning to roll off of my skin in the hotly humid room, air conditioned by an archaic system installed probably half a century ago.

Then I left. Quickly.

I wonder how many things in life are like that old, mouse-infested Writing Center. They are the things we've known, and so floods of nostalgia make us feel sad about leaving them. How many relationships and jobs do we hold on to because they are what we've known and thus fear to give up? How many of those things would we find to be mouse dens if we only took the time to step away from them for a bit?

I haven't been back since that day. I'm content to leave familiarity behind . . . and make a new home.