Pointy green horns and blood shot red eyes

Over the past few years that I have answered the question "What do you do?" with "I'm in college", I have begun to realize a few things: sleep is a luxury, adrenaline really does exist, and college students are recognizable from MILES. Bloomington is essentially a college town. But when your living on campus, the town recedes from your mind, and your existence becomes campus-centric. And by campus I don't mean the physical building and lawns, but its psychological definition. People you hang out with, things you do, places you go - they are all very different from, say, a townie.

Which is why every time I ride the 3 bus to the mall, I feel like I've stepped out of bloomington. The same trip on the E bus, which is a campus bus, or the 9, which is a city bus that serves mostly students, is so not the same thing. It's the reason I love bloomington during the summer, the hustle bustle of the college dies down and the town starts to shine. I remember my first winter break here, when my mom and little brother came to bloomington to visit. They reached here the day after finals got over, and we went for a walk the next morning. The campus was deserted, the millions and millions of squeaky sneakers and snow coated uggs that usually pound the pavement were absent, and the campus was beautiful. (I have to write a poem for my class, I get wordier and more descriptive as it gets closer to wednesday.) So, instead of the haggard student, we saw the nice bearded man with the dog. And the snowflake lights they put all over Kirkwood. And the quiet beauty of downtown.

This particular memory came to me recently, while I was waiting for a bus back from Krogers. For some weird reason, I had decided to go grocery shopping at 2 pm on a friday, and there were no students in sight. Kroger is a common grocery haunt for students who live off campus, but not at 2 pm on a friday! But here I was, my over-descriptive brain spewing out nine hundred different ways of saying "I want to go home", and I was waiting on a bus. The bus guys usually need to see the student id to let you on the bus for free, and I had mine tucked into my pocket for easy retrieval. After I got on the bus and hobbled onto a seat, I noticed this other guy getting onto the bus. He didn't have his id out for display when he got on the bus, but the driver let him on anyways. He was a student alright.

How do I know? All he had bought from Kroger: Bread, Ramen and the biggest jar of peanut butter I have EVER seen.

Might as well have had pointy green horns :)