I laughed, I cried, I discovered myself. 

          –  Jordan Merrill

Almost every semester, some poor fool who writes for Bwog volunteers to spend 12 hours in a campus establishment. I decided that being quarantined in my childhood home in Florida could not stop me from being this fool. Here is my story.

5:00 PM: This is normal. 5:00 is a normal time to be in your living room

5:30 PM: I’m starting to get nervous. Is 5:30 as normal a time as 5:00? Have the thirty minutes changed me?

5:32 PM: I get a stern call from the Hartley hospitality desk because I never cleaned out my dorm room. Woohoo!

6:20 PM: Another person (code name “mom”) comes downstairs to make dinner. It’s either chicken or not chicken. She asks me if I’m doing homework in the living room and I lie to her and say yes.

6:45 PM: I’ve been watching Degrassi: The Next Generation for over an hour. In this episode, a girl went on a televised singing competition show but found out she was pregnant. Am I pregnant?

6:56 PM: Our nightly meal commences. We talk about Donald Trump and the Cuomos the whole time.

7:35 PM: My family wants to watch a show about firefighters on the living room TV. It’s so bad. We watch 3 episodes, and it felt like I was listening to “Fight Song” for 2 hours straight.

9:50 PM: My friend (code name Oregon) tells me her brother is baking bread in the shape of a frog.

10:30 PM: The bread is done. I start crying. I begin my descent into madness.

11:12 PM: I want to make banana bread.

11:15 PM: I realize I don’t have all of the necessary ingredients to make banana bread.

11:16 PM: I start to make banana bread anyways.

11:35 PM: I put the bread in the oven for 50 minutes and wait. I fill this time by singing Dance Monkey out loud to no one.

12:25 AM: I take the banana bread out of the oven and realize, due to my years of taking chemistry, that it is still in liquid form. I don’t even know how this is possible. I put it in for another 30 minutes.

12:55 AM: The banana bread has a solid crust and liquid middle. I almost cry again. Back in the oven.

1:20 AM: Liquid. Still. At this point the banana bread has been baking for two full hours. I give up and sit on the kitchen floor, head completely empty.

1:35 AM: Banana bread is in the garbage. I decide to make myself a bowl of raisin bran because it’s the closest thing I can find to banana bread.

1:40 AM: I see an ant in my bowl after eating half of it. I investigate and see multiple ants in my bowl. I realize I have probably eaten ants.

1:41 AM: I see God.

1:50 AM: Ants take over my brain. All I can think about is crumbs.

2:12 AM: I see that it’s 2:12 so I listen to 212 by Azealia Banks. I miss New York.

2:34 AM: I watch Degrassi again. They are throwing a Las Vegas themed dance.

3:10 AM: There’s a lizard on my ceiling. He becomes my best friend in the whole world.

3:15 AM: I realize the lizard is brown, which means he’s an invasive species and is disrupting the lizard ecosystem. Our friendship is over.

3:52 AM: I take a Buzzfeed quiz that promises to tell me which Sex and the City character I am. There is no way I’m a Miranda.

4:01 AM: I start water bottle flipping and get really good at it.

4:30 AM: The lizard is back, but on the wall this time! I think about how this is a very subtle reference to 3:10 AM.

4:54 AM: I will myself not to fall asleep by reading descriptions of books online and not reading any of them.

5:00 AM: I did it! I never thought I would make it this far, but here I am. I hope my story inspires everyone to never give up. Maybe you can spend 12 hours in your living room one day too. Godspeed.

Living room image via me googling “minimalist Scandinavian living room”

Frog pics via my dear friend Grace