It’s that time of year again…when home stores try to sell college kids unnecessary crap for their tiny dorm rooms. I know first hand what it’s like to walk into a big store and feel a strange urge to buy a desk lamp with a pencil holder and sharpener built-in, how about an extra closet (sure there’s room), maybe an illegal lava lamp to start a fire, a futon (for where? The ceiling?), maybe an iron with a steamer built in, how about a fancy vacuum (because the room is that big), maybe a massaging desk chair, a robot, maybe they’ve started to sell assistants, and dorm room maids..etc…etc…
And to top it all off, they show you sample dorm rooms with all of their stuff in it-extra large, oversized, unrealistic dorm rooms. Now, I understand they are trying to sell enough stuff to fill an entire dorm, let alone a room…fine—try to sell it all….but…..no need to show photos on the site and in the store of unrealistic sized dorms with cathedral windows and shiny, happy, singing people with guitars.
Maybe I’m angry at materialism…or maybe it’s my disappointment when people set up false expectations. Or maybe it’s my fear of seeing the annual Staples back to school commercial with the dad dancing around the store with a shopping cart (dagger to my heart when I was a kid eating a popsicle stick in front of the TV).
Breathe in…I’m done with my rant….
But in order to add something positive to this post…how about a helpful link to know what you really need: http://collegeuniversity.suite101.com/article.cfm/college_dorm_room_necessities
In fact, my dormroom was so small and hot that once I left my guitar on my bed after a morning of songwriting (I wrote all my best songs at age 19 — I’m washed up, my genius has faded) and when I came back at the end of the day, the wood that made up the front of my guitar (poor little Honeywood — I named her when I was nine) had actually been warped so badly that it became unglued from the rest of the instrument… and it was curled out, split in two pieces, with all the strings popped off….
I thought at first that someone had broken in and sabotaged it (maybe my next door neighbor, who hated my singing?) but then I realized that it was just the heat building up in my tiny shoebox of a room. My friend glued it back to together for me with Superglue and it worked ok for the next three years.
The moral of the story: Bring Superglue to College. Make a friend who’s awesome enough to figure out how to glue a guitar back together.