EMMA PATTERSON
Assistant Scallion Editor
A hollow wind whipped through Fredonia last Monday morning when students across campus all came to the same realization: Thanksgiving break is really, really short.
The Scallion decided to talk to Dan Druff, a junior, who felt a similar cold chill setting in his bones. He greeted us at the door of his apartment wearing nothing more than a black hooded snuggie and an empty gaze.
“Hi, guys,” he said in monotonous voice. He motioned us over to the couch, leading the way in the room that was lit only by a single Jesus candle on the coffee table. He handed us a huge tub of hand sanitizer, saying, “Here, use this. I don’t want you to catch my mediocrity.”
Druff then launched into his sad, pathetic account of what happened over Thanksgiving break.
“I don’t know what happened,” he said, staring out the window at the leafless skeleton trees. He watched a lone squirrel hurry across the lawn, his eyes blank.
Druff’s eyes, not the squirrel’s.
“One minute I was walking through my front door, greeted by my parents, hot food, old friends, a working washing machine, running water, my dog, a welcome home banner . . . ” he trailed off, shaking his head. “The next thing I knew, I was on a bus with a bunch of dirty laundry and Thanksgiving leftovers stuffed into my suitcase.” We gave him a tissue from our endless Scallion supply. “It all went so fast,” he said simply.
Druff is most haunted by the moment he opened his textbook and saw how much reading he forgot to do.
“I felt like the mean kid in ‘Toy Story,’” he said. “The textbook was yelling at me, stuff like, ‘Why did you do this?’ and ‘How could you ignore me like that?’” The memory brought fresh tears to Druff’s eyes. “The reaction from my planner was even worse,” he choked out. “I still have nightmares about the filth it said to me.”
Most of all, Druff says, he’s disappointed with his own immaturity.
“I’m just so shocked and ashamed of my actions,” he said. He walked over to the fridge and pulled out a tupperware of yams, presumably from his Thanksgiving dinner. He stared longingly at the food, saying, “If I could just go back there . . . just for a minute . . .” We reached into our own tissue supply, dabbing at our eyes solemnly.
“Things are gonna be different from now on,” Druff said. “I mean it this time.”
The last we saw of Druff, he was sitting in the library with a blanket around his head, watching “Shameless” with the volume turned up, a stack of unopened textbooks beside him.