College is Making Me Stupid.

Last week, I filled an elevator with red balloons. Roughly ninety-three red balloons, if you want to get specific.

The goal of this endeavor was to send the balloons down to the lobby of my dorm building, where they would spill out everywhere causing chaos and general hilarity. Think the elevator of blood from The Shining, only with balloons.

Like this, but REALLY HAPPY.

So we loaded the disturbing quantity of red balloons we had chilling in our suite into the shopping cart that was living in our bathroom at the time (where it had been hanging out for a month or so since we'd rescued it from the Common), and shoved the rest of the balloons into a weird hammock we fashioned out of a blanket. With a little difficulty and a lot of static electricity, we managed to get the balloons down the hallway to the elevators. We summoned an elevator, made sure that there was no one in it, and promptly dumped the balloons inside.

Now, this is where the plot fell apart a little bit. Half of the fun of the plan was imagining the looks on people's faces when almost a hundred balloons drifted out of the elevator. However, we still had to return the shopping cart and the blanket to the room, which meant that, in order to make it down the stairs in time to observe the effects of our prank, we would have to run like hell to the room, put everything back, haul ass down the hallway to the stairs and run down to the second floor, all before the elevator made the trip from the fourth floor to the second floor.

I'll admit that I'm not particularly athletic, but I think that's a bit of a stretch for anyone.

So we all resigned ourselves to the fact that we wouldn't get to reap the benefits of our brilliance. But the point was the same. Someone would enjoy it. So we still would sort of win. Still somewhat satisfied, we stepped back and let the elevator close, taking our balloons on a journey through time and space (but mostly space).

Which is when we realized the second flaw with our brilliant plan. In our excitement, we had totally forgotten to hit the button for the second floor. So, instead of bombarding the lobby, our balloons would simply float purposelessly around the building for a bit before someone discovered them.

Eventually, they apparently moseyed up to the fifth floor, where a bunch of seriously pissed-off RAs had to pop them with pins.

The point of this story?

College is making me dumb.

Seriously. I mean, I don't go to a school known for its academic nature, but still. In high school, I wrote twenty page long papers about fairy tales or Oscar Wilde or stuff like that. I was an All-State flutist. I took tons of AP classes, could speak damn good German, and vaguely understood physics.

Now I can't even figure out how to properly operate an elevator. The other day I fumbled through a page long paper about The Simpsons. Most of my deep conversations center around zombies.

I would like to know what adulthood has done with my brain, why there is a smallish model of an A-Wing from Star Wars hanging from my ceiling, and why I dressed up like a superhero to go trick-or-treating this year.

I'm pretty sure I'm nine again. Must be something in the water.