Everyone's got their Egypt

In some places of the world it's still Thursday. Thursday evening. Because the rest of the world has no idea about places like Cookeville Tennessee and could probably care less that schools like Tennessee Technological University are located there, is the "party night". A party night because Tennessee Technological University is a suitcase college. For those of you that a) go to a large university or b) are not in college and do not yet understand all the inner workings of the social systems set up, a suitcase college is one in which the majority of the pupils live off campus and commute or those who do live on campus go home on weekends. Tennessee Tech is one of those schools.

By and large, it's safe to say that there are not many people that haven’t been to the "Joe" at least once in their college days here in Cookeville, Tennessee. "Cotton Eyed Joe" is the local club scene. Cotton Eyed Joe is the local hangout Thursday night, where it's known as "lady's night" and longnecks are $4.50, but cheaper for women. It's a simple business tactic to lure men into the club to get women drunk off of cheap alcohol and parlay their desire for wild animal sex on the dance floor. But hey, it works very well from a business standpoint. Being the smart business people they are, the owners/operators of the CEJ make lady's night fall on Thursday -- the commonly accepted start of the weekend here at Tennessee Tech. The reason being that a disproportional amount of students go home on the weekends -- to see their girlfriends, to see their garage kept car, to see their hometown that only a week prior they were going home to see. Being an RA, this can make for a hectic Thursday evening, and a lonesome but peaceful weekend. Everyone goes back from whence they came, and all is quite on the western front.

Home is an interesting place for me. I don't have one. Not in the physical sense -- I'm not homeless; but in the more philosophical or psychological sense of the word, my heart belongs nowhere. Being a military brat, moving was a way of life. And now, here I am stuck in a city that's a coffee stain on the map, and my home is is one hundred miles away. It's so far away, but not far enough sometimes. My parents are wonderful, but that town has just been so awful to me. Murfreesboro -- The geographical center of Tennessee. This weekend I am one of those kids -- going home; making this place which we live to enrich our lives, learn about the sciences, that much more desolate and empty. Much apprehension lies in this venture -- I haven’t been home all semester. Ghosts of shattered dreams and skeletons of lives long past still linger. The dead and the damned lives that cannot touch me here come in contact with me when I step foot in that godforsaken city... the godforsaken island. I suppose, there I'll find things just as I left them about three months ago. Perhaps another McDonalds or another Wal Mart will have popped up in my absence, but life still goes on -- indifferent.

I suppose I will find my old flame still doing the things she's always doing... In school, working hard, living. We might go get some coffee, or we might just sit at Waffle house till the wee hours of the morning like old times. We might not see each other at all. I think, sometimes, I'm still in love with her. It's been -- nearly 5 months. Perhaps it's just that old nostalgia that stressed engineering students might feel every once in a while when they get a moment of peace. While lying in bed some random evening as the cool autumn air swirls in the window -- bringing with it the smells of memories, the smell of love. I'm not sure she thinks about me much anymore, but I suppose it doesn't matter. What's in a place anyway? (more that meets the eye).

It's times like these that the ghosts of the past lurk and snicker in the silence. Everyone deals one way or the other, I guess.