An Encounter with Rotten Bananas: A Morality Tale

See moral below

It was August 29 and I had just moved into Mertz.

Taking a break from unpacking, I congratulated myself on getting a room on campus. While I loved living in ML (Mary Lyons 4), I couldn't help but resent the 15-minute walk anytime I wanted to go anywhere.

But now, things were different. A short jaunt up the hill, and I was in McCabe or Parrish. A few steps towards the ville, and I was buying groceries or shopping for birthday cards. The campus/town was my oyster, and I was ready to love it all.

But then-- disaster. My roommate had not yet arrived, so I was alone. I wasn't very familiar with Mertz, so I went exploring. I opened the door to an unlabeled room, only to find myself in a graveyard of uneaten bananas.

It was disgusting. At first I tried to tell myself the school was doing something good, that this was a room devoted to producing compost that would become fine soil. Then I asked my all-knowing RA, and she told me the sad truth.

She said, "Julie, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but there's a very good reason why you got a room in Mertz. A few years ago, everyone on campus wanted to live in this dorm. The housing lottery used to be a madhouse. People sobbed disconsolately when Mertz filled up.

"So what happened?" I asked. I hadn't had much troubled getting a room.

She continued with her tale. "That's when Myrt came up with the rotten banana idea. Only those able to tolerate the stench of rotting bananas are willing to live here. Didn't you know about the bananas?" she asked me incredulously.

No one had told me.

But I had no choice, I loved this dorm, the location, the convenience, the stunning "natural" beauty of the recent renovations-- and besides, where else could I go? This was my home, I decided, so I strolled into town to buy a noseplug.

"Ask not what your dorm can do for you, but what you can do for your dorm."