Chris, the Ghost, and Mono
The other night, I told this story to my sister, who had somehow never heard it before. She demanded that I write it down. (I sincerely hope she’s not planning to use this as some kind of college life advice for my nephew.)
There are three things you need to know to understand this story, provided you are not my sister:
- I started college at 15.
- I almost immediately got mono and didn’t realize it, assuming that I was sleeping 16 hours a day because sleep was the best thing in the world and I’d suddenly gotten really good at it.
- I made most of my bad decisions – like, most of the bad decisions I would ever make, and almost all the ones I could think of – before starting college.
These were not things I had in common with my freshman cohort. Any of them, as far as I could tell. They were all older than I was, they seemed to have all the energy in the world, and they had come to college to make those bad decisions they’d been dreaming of all these years but apparently couldn’t quite commit to until they were away from parental backup and support.
