Relationships.
They can piss you off, make you laugh or give you an insight into an entirely different world.
However, the one constant running thorough all the different relationships we encounter is the forging stage.
Like it or not, when you're pooled with 42,000 wide-eyed, hormonally overcharged, frothing-at-the-mouth 18-to 23-year-olds, in a town that -- without the surrounding college campus -- would most likely be nothing more than a truck stop for eggs and scrapple off Route 80, you quite nearly meet people accidentally.
Relationships aren't exactly hard to come by in this drinking town with a football problem. But the depth and fulfillment that we all, as human beings, ultimately seek in relationships? Well, that's not such an easy prospect.
From the little to the long-term, it's these relationships -- the building, maintenance and, sometimes, severance of such -- that each and every one of us Nittany Lions experiences here on a daily basis.
I discovered the relationship gamut that all college students endure is as follows: There's the easy, the convenient and the maddening. Let's take a look at the tale-of-the-tape.
Easy: Being a freshman in the dorms can be likened to being one of 7,000 pigs tossed in a giant vat of slop. Freshmen are dirty, smelly and just itching to roll around with as many fellow pigs as possible.
But, to some degree, the freshman environment is the best starting point for all young college bucks. Face it, all freshmen are a little scared of the new experience and the easiest way to calm the fears is to join with others who share the same anxieties.
Developing bonds with your floormates in that wicked water balloon battle with the fifth floor can last you a lifetime.
And in all honesty, where else can you share opposite-sex battle stories with a group of people who are just as confused, just as overexcited and just as eager to find their way in the world as you?
I will never forget the most vile and hilarious revelation from a freshman-year friend after his wild night with a fellow freshman. "Yeah, and then I woke up, and she was [peeing] on my floor. On my floor, man."
Convenient: Several casual relationships can fall under this category, but there is one that stands out for its simplicity and track record of success. Of course, I'm talking about the fraternity sign-in guy.
There he is, slouched in his folding chair behind the sticky card table, sipping on a good beer that you have no chance in hell of tasting once you step into his oversized, oversexed and over-sweaty house.
That fellow is your best friend for that minute-and-a-half that it takes to spit out your sometimes real/sometimes fake name (back in the day, I would run with a "Cliff Yablonski" or "Joe Tanto" if the guy was extra lax with his methods) and your always-false Social Security number.
You chat him up about football, the crappy weather, anything that can guarantee passage. This process becomes extra crucial when you roll deep with six to seven guys and zero -- I repeat, zero -- women, a near-fatal no-no that fraternity-fun seekers know to avoid at all costs.
And just who are you kidding? Sign-in sheet guy knows all you're really looking for is free entry to a gluttonous world of Beast Ice, epileptic-seizure-inducing strobe lights and Shaggy belting out, "It wasn't me." The fact that both sides willingly participate makes it all the more amazing, but also speaks of the powers of convenience.
Maddening: The ridiculous dance that goes on between the sexes here at Penn State is something to behold. I believe it was Motley Crue lead singer Vince Neil who said, "Romance is dead." Or maybe that was Plutarch.
In any case, nowhere but in the college realm do you find a larger, more confusing and easily avoidable line dance than the one that consumes young men and women.
It's a sadistic Electric Slide, in reality. Two people meet and music is made. The beginning of the dance sees this lateral hopping/skipping movement between the two, as neither wants to make a risky move forward. In fact, you eventually find yourself walking backwards a few steps (simply because it's too hard and hurtful to put yourself out there). But then, some comfort sets in and you take a step forward and lean in.
Suddenly, you feel like things might be getting too "serious" and you take a step backward and lean back. And then, just as you're about to move forward again after realizing you're being an absolute idiot, you take a hop and a skip to the side, completely throwing your dance in another direction.
After a while, you grow tired of the dance and when the next track comes on, your Electric Slide is over.
Both sides are to blame for this odd and sickening phenomena, but for the sake of my sanity -- and because I have the power of the pen at the moment -- it's all your damn fault, women. Besides, I was never good at the Electric Slide. But the Robot? Now we're talking.
It's strange, this game of Life. I suggest all students use this four-to-five year window we are provided with to build relationships and experience relationships -- whether they're good, bad or just plain ugly -- that can last you well beyond anything you find here in State College. And remember: You don't have to go it alone.
