Junior Year

Sick of what I perceived to be a distinct lack of Long Island, I decided that for my junior year I would leave Binghamton for the greener pastures of Stony Brook. I figured a long commute to the ugliest part of the island, where I didn’t know anyone and the campus was way too big and confusing, was a better choice than toughing out two more years of scenic, familiar Binghamton. Believe it or not, I was wrong!

That’s right, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. I had thought my freshman dorm room was cramped, but it paled in comparison to the stifling cattle cars we were herded into at Stony Brook. I and five other losers were smashed together, forced to sleep standing up while going to the bathroom on ourselves. Two of them died of disease the first night: one a kid with a blowout from Staten Island (not a huge loss), the other, a frightened Asian boy whose last words were, “Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.”

When the RA unlocked the door the next morning and allowed us five minutes outside, I made a break for it. I left my roommates, my pants and my dignity behind. Leaping into my car with the sounds of armor-piercing bullets whizzing by my head, I tested the limits of my ’87 Buick Skylark as I peeled out of campus going a buck-fifty. I was free.

Actually, what really happened was that Stony Brook wouldn’t take all of the credits I had already earned. That, in addition to the fact my suitemates drank all my beer without permission (a serious no-no), was enough to convince me to get the fudge out of there.

Luckily, I had never told Binghamton I was leaving in the first place, so they were none-the-wiser when I sauntered back into my room two days after I was supposed check in. Andy was there, slaughtering a live goat. The smell of a fresh kill in my nostrils put my mind at ease: I was back where I belonged.

So it was that I learned an important lesson. In the words of the immortal ’80s hair-band Cinderella, “[You] don’t know what you got/ ’til it’s gone.” How could I ever leave a place like Binghamton before my time was up? There’s so much to love! Bars without a concern for age or criminal record, a general level of student apathy that matches mine, Taco Bell in the Union; the list goes on and on. Stony Brook made me realize how lucky I was to be in such a blessed Utopia.

Well, that’s not true either. Binghamton still sucks in many ways, but not enough in any one category to make me hate the place. I mean, there are many things that are far worse than spending four years in Binghamton. In fact, if there was one thing I learned in my junior year, it was that these three specific things are much worse than spending four years in Binghamton:

3 – Developing a varicocele. What’s a varicocele? Quite simply, it’s an abnormally enlarged vein in your scrotum! Yes, it can be quite painful, and it can lead to infertility. Many males suffer from this, and know the pain of a swollen blood vessel in their sack. Ladies, try and empathize with us. Imagine a tiny leprechaun who lives in the left cup of your bra, whose sole purpose is to slap your nipple with a wooden paddle 300 times a minute, every minute. Seriously, that’s what it’s like — umm, not that I would know. My balls are fine. Intuition just tells me that having an engorged testicle would somehow be worse than spending your college years in Binghamton. Call it a hunch.

2 – Losing your hair. Who doesn’t love hair? Long, thick, flowing locks of gorgeous hair, blowing in the wind: it’s a luxury some of us may take for granted. Someday, you might wake up and notice the density of the hair on your pillow is greater than the density of hair on your scalp. When that happens, you may ask yourself, “Where have all my good years gone?” It doesn’t matter that you’re 19. The minute you start losing your hair, you’re a wrinkly old person, having far outlived your usefulness to society. Men and women alike can lose their hair, and no amount of Rogaine will help. Have fun with your colostomy bags, ladies and gentlemen. You see? Binghamton isn’t so bad after all.

1 – Twenty-five to life. If there’s one thing that is most definitely worse than Binghamton, it’s this. Say you’ve done something to land yourself in jail, like, oh I don’t know — murdering the King of Bulgaria. You just see this old European monarch walking down the street, and you have the urge to smash him in the face with a tire iron, so you do it. You didn’t MEAN to kill him, he was just way too old to survive blunt force trauma to the head. So you’re put on trial for regicide and sent away to a maximum-security facility for the rest of your life. Every night you’re repeatedly violated by several different inmates all nicknamed Bubba. Yeah, I’d have to say that’s worse than going to Binghamton.