Valentine's Day, Part II- Memories: Absent Makes A Mess

Last week, when I decided that I was going to blog about my Valentine's Day memories, I went looking for some photo's, and apparently, I have lost one photo album containing several years of college photos. Very sad. Especially since I do not have a photo of this significant Valentine's Day. Because even a thousand words do not paint as good of a picture as the photos of one fairly smallish shared off-campus housing apartment bedroom filled to the brim with newspapers.

Somewhere in the middle years of college, I was living off campus, and working for the apartment complex that I lived in. I was working as a cleaning check supervisor and... well, I probably shouldn't try to make my job sound better than it was, I cleaned up dirty apartments. The key element to why I am explaining this part of my employment history is... I had a master key to all my neighbor's apartments. Heh, heh, heh.

I, once again, had five roommates, and we six girls were very close friends with an apartment of four boys. We ten, who were all annoyingly single for Valentine's Day, decided to do nice things for each other: boys for the girls and girls for the boys. My room roommate and I drew the names of room roommate boys. The coolest thing that we could think to do was fill their bedroom with crumpled up newspaper. So we did.

I had a master key, so we let ourselves into their apartment. (This may sound like it was a major abuse of power, but the other two roommates were aware of our intentions.) Every year the Brigham Young University newspaper puts out a "Special Valentine's Day Edition" of the newspaper filled with lots of love facts and other fluff. Room Roommate and I went around to all the recycle bins on campus and filled the back end of my Subaru wagon with copies of this Romantic Special Edition. We carried all these newspapers up to the boys' apartment and crumpled them up into balls to fill up their bedroom with newspaper.

Well, first we took all the linens off their beds, and put away all the clothes in their closet so they wouldn't get smudged. By the time we were done, the room was filled to the ceiling with newspaper. Really. Completely filled. Room Roommate's and my hands were black with newsprint by the time we were done, and the filling took several hours. I think that we skipped classes. Yep, I think that I at least skipped classes. I don't think that Room Roommate would have. She was a very good girl. I wasn't a very good girl.

Anyway, we cleaned ourselves up a bit before the boys got home. The two boys whose room it wasn't got home first, and they started cooking dinner... after they played a bit in the newspaper swimming pool.

Then the first boy came home from his job... in his white shirt and tie. He opened his bedroom door, and we heard a "Woo Hoo!" and then the sound of a body diving into newspapers.

It took us more hours to bag up all the newspapers than it did to crumple up all the papers, and I think it must have been because we were having too much fun playing in them. And it took several trips to the City recycle dumpsters, because crumpled up newspapers take up a lot more room in a Subaru than folded flat newspapers. And it took a long time to get all the newsprint off the walls... it was a good thing they knew the cleaning check supervisor.

Looking back, this seems like it was mean-ish "present", and I would never do it again. It's just the crazy type of thing that can only be done during college, but at least all four boys said that they liked the room o'newpaper best out of all the Valentine's Day presents.

And apparently, filling the bedrooms of friends who have recently become engaged with newspapers is an old college tradition. Soccer Dad just let me know that his mother was involved in such antics during her college year.

Meah, it was college.