Morning of Dec. 7, I woke up at 8:30 A.M., and proceeded to will my body out of bed. After 15 minutes of mental preparation, I jumped out of the top bunk. To my surprise, I landed not on scratchy carpet, but instead in a puddle. My immediate thought, in my sleep deprived brain, was “oh, my roommates water bottle must have tipped over.” As I stepped over to my cabinet, where the water was still lapping at my feet, I thought “Wow, he must have had a lot of water in his water bottle.” My brain came to the realization that I should probably turn on a light and assess the damage. I flipped the switch and became aware that I was standing in about an inch of water covering our entire floor. S***. I yelled at my roommates to wake up, and when they finally lumbered out of bed they realized that we were in a bit of a pickle. With the water level rising at an unbelievably slow rate, we would drown in about 47 hours if we didn’t do anything. Fortunately for my roommate (we’ll call him George) and I, our third roommate (let’s name him Jeremy), had already gotten out of bed and set up his laptop to play a round of Magic the Gathering. (Magic the Gathering is a video game/card game that can apparently get very competitive. George and I will often be interrupted by screams from Jeremy as he loses his matches.) Thank god. As George and I frantically scurried about to remove clothing and electronics from the floor, Jeremy was successfully dominating the leaderboards.
As I stepped outside in my flip flops and plaid patterned boxers I thought about waking our neighbors. I asked George, who suddenly grew fearful, shaking his head no. They were older and intimidating sophomore girls. As I stood in front of their door, contemplating whether or not to knock on their door, one of them casually walked down the stairs, looked down at the water and my half naked body with a look of surprise before rushing over to her dorm. She burst through the room, waking her roommate. At first confused, the roommate quickly realized the peril she was in. “My Uggs!” she screamed. Jumping out of bed with the speed of a rabid cheetah, she grabbed her fur lined boots and tossed them on top of her bed. As the five of us stopped to look at the damage, it dawned on us. Hurricane Copeland had come.
As maintenance came in (thank you!) and began rebuilding I have been cooped up in a friends room (shoutout to B-44, I love you guys) for the past couple days, and I have been thinking about things that I could do now that my hall had been converted into a small aquarium.
This is what I came up with.
1. Hall Boating
While your hall is filled with water why not build a couple boats and sail them down the wonderful forty foot lazy river created by poor dorm construction techniques? The river created by the torrential downpour that is Hurricane Copeland will soothe your mind, and create a fun study break for you and several of your friends as you ride the current on your mattress topper.
2. Using the Dehumidifier for Personal Hygiene
While cleaning out our dorm, the maintenance crews left Dehumidifiers in our room to de-humidify it (duh). Just in case, your towel was lost to the raging floods, you can use it dry yourself off after a shower. They also left incredibly powerful fans that you can use to blow dry your hair (especially useful when you have to get ready for that special Tinder date).
3. Fishing
After losing several therapy fish to the floods, the escaped goldfish have created a small ecosystem living in our hall. It’s literally thriving. There’s coral. Anyway, I have made several fish dinners from these all natural, wild, organic fish. It was delicious. This is especially useful after running out of Bon swipes.
4. Water Balloon Fight
Use all that extra water that’s just lying about in your room and fill up some water balloons and water guns. Then have a water fight in your hall! Who cares if anything gets wet? It’s already soaked through.
Flooding is a reality that we will all have to deal with sooner than we think. With the polar icecaps melting, all of us basement dorm roomers will have to bunk with a friend. So when you’re bored, you can simply refer to this list for fun things to do.
