Newsprint

With classes done for the semester, the campus (and city) is slowly shrinking. I simply can't hate winters in Ann Arbor, because even though the temperatures are evil and full of snow and freezing rain and douche-tastic drivers who refuse to go above fifty on the expressway, there is a long, blissful period when the students leave for semester break.

For a lovely three weeks or so, they're gone. Gone! All of sudden, finding a parking space is no longer an exercise in futility. I don't have to listen to asinine conversations, the bus is practically my own personal purple limo, and going to lunch doesn't have to be planned out in advance, allowing time for something as annoying as waiting in line behind backpack-clad undergraduates on their cellphones.

Of course, there are a good number of people left. We're smack dab in the middle of exams, and the climate on campus is... tense. I remember that feeling. And I don't miss it at all.

I do miss the student paper though. It's published daily, but only when classes are in session. So not only do I not get my daily dose of "feeling like an old, wizened lady" by giggling at their emo-angst in the op-ed column, I miss out on the crossword puzzle.

I was never once for crossword puzzles. They were difficult! But on my first day of class as a freshman, I remember timidly climbing the steps to Angell Hall and watching as person after person paused to pick up a copy of the paper. Then in my first lecture (philosophy at nine in the morning? Yeah, great idea, jackass), as the professor leaped and jumped across the stage screaming about brains in vats, I noticed that every other person was either reading the paper or sleeping.

(I never fell asleep in lecture in all my years of higher education, but I did fight nodding off more than once. The only way I ever got around that was watching other people try to stay awake. It was infinitely entertaining.)

When I left class that morning, I picked up my own copy of the paper. I attempted the crossword. I did not do well. But I kept at it, and I eventually got better. I started to copy the guys in my hall and began taping my completed puzzles to my dorm room door. Then in my apartment, I would put them on the fridge, probably annoying the piss out of my roommate. Yeah, I was full of myself.

When I relocated to Washington, DC, I didn't know what I was going to do without a free paper. I would only be at GWU twice a week for classes, and I didn't want to pay for a copy of the WaPo every day. I know that I could print out as many crosswords as I wanted, but there was something about the smell of the newsprint and the way I folded the paper to have the crossword conveniently located that kept me from wasting my ink cartridges. For weeks, I ignored the people in the yellow vests at the entrance to the metro, because I thought that they were just handing out flyers. I gave in one day and realized that I had been a moron - it was a condensed version of the WaPo. For free!

It then became my goal to try and complete at least half of the crossword before I arrived at school or at my internship. It helped that the WaPo's crossword was significantly easier than whichever one The Michigan Daily carried. With frequent delays and getting stuck under the Potomac between stations, the paper was usually the only way to keep my mind from wandering to thoughts of murder when that one woman just wouldn't. stop. talking. and that one couple would just make out until one of them departed at Rosslyn.

(Oh, did I loathe that couple.)

Now, I use the crossword to wind down at night. I like my little routine, and it helps me to fall asleep. So until classes resume in January, I'll be stuck to my book of Sudoku puzzles. They're almost as good as crosswords.