When you enter your dorm room on the first day of freshman year, you find very little. A desk with a chair, a dresser, and a bed. I was lucky and had the added benefit of a bathtub, but that's beside the point.
My roommate and I, about halfway through the year, adopted a table from our friends. Now, this wasn't any old table. Oh no, this table had been privy to things no one else had. This table had seen so much that it has become "The Table" and what a good table it was.
We found The Table in the basement of my building. It had been there a few weeks and at that point my friends were like, "Let's take it." The Table was a monstrous thing, made of solid wood maybe five feet in diameter with a metal base we had to screw on, but hey, it was free. We had to roll it into the elevator to get it upstairs.
For a long time, The Table was just a table. Plain. Boring. It was another piece of furniture, a surface to play illicit beer-pong, something to sit around with friends and learn how to box.
Over time it gathered it's knicks and dings, mysterious stains and dents, and it wasn't until my friends were leaving that we started to draw on it.
It started with our names, for we had all found The Table, and The Table was ours. Then we started drawing on it, passing the Sharpie along to whoever wanted to add something more: a drunk stick figure, a flower, a silly quote, a penis. Classic college things.
We made rules for The Table.
1. Who ever sits at The Table has to sign it.
2. When The Table is passed on it has to go to good hands.
3. The Table is family and should be treated as such.
The thought of The Table going back to the basement was saddening. It had become part of the group: if we were hanging out, it almost always started or ended with us sitting around The Table being stupid college kids. So the idea of it being left in the underbelly of our old building was just not right. My roommate and I decided to keep it around, pass it along if you will. We rearranged our room so it would fit in the middle, and though it took up a majority of the space, it was worth it.
Thank you, Table, for being a place of gathering, of laughter, and adventure. Its surface has been inked with the names and doodles of all who have sat at it. It brought people together and now holds bits and pieces of all our stories. Nights of drinking and fun, nights of watching Netflix and studying for exams. The Table has been there for so much and as it's passed on it will be part of many more stories.
