Satire: Purple Banners Gone. I Don’t Know Which Dorm is Mine.

My roommate and I woke up on the Appleton staircase this morning. Yes, you read that right. I was lying on the eighth stair, and she was lying on the ninth stair. To be clear, we’re James third-floor residents. We don’t belong here. But somehow, someway, we wandered into that nasty old place last night — completely sober, mind you — and made ourselves at home.

It didn’t hit me until the walk of shame back home why I had mistaken Appleton for James. As I looked around the First Year Quad in the glorious morning sunlight, I noticed one not-so-glorious change: The big purple banners were gone. What used to be a flamboyant all-caps label telling me which red brick building was my home — “JAMES” — was now an empty gap, an open space, a void of nothingness on the wall.

Immediately I panicked. What was I going to do without those banners? My best friend and I have a routine before we walk down to the Science Center to meet in front of Pratt (her dorm), but where am I supposed to meet her now? How do I tell her that I can’t meet her at Pratt anymore because I don’t know where the hell Pratt is? Will she even know where Pratt is? And what about getting to the dining hall? I only know the way to Val because I know to exit James and turn right, but what about now when I leave somebody else’s dorm for dinner? Do I turn left? Turn right? Up? Down? Do I jump or something?

Suddenly, I realized that I had no idea where I was even going. I was trying to make it back to James, yes, but which one is James? Is it that long red rectangular building? Or is it the identical one next to it? Or is James that really big chapel thing in between them with the clock tower? Wait, am I on the right side of the quad? Am I even on the First Year Quad? Did I accidentally end up on the Second Year Quad or something? Is this even Amherst College? Does James Hall even exist?

Do I even exist?