Anywhere Is by Enya

Zoom in on a dorm room in September, 1995.  I was having a storybook dorm experience.  I had purposely requested Freeborn Hall, in its inaugural year as the substance free dorm.  My theory was that it would be cleaner and quieter there because the drinking and partying would be done elsewhere.  It had also been recently renovated and it was actually on the clean, quiet side, as dorms go.  I requested a triple, which after now looking at the floor and if I am doing the math right, it was 170 sq ft.  I must've been insane.  I was obviously much more open minded and tolerant back then and I also wanted to save my dad some money.  Luckily, it turned out to be a wonderful experience, one of my best roommate experiences by far.  I was living with 2 girls from So-Cal and even though I was the last to arrive, they selected the bunkbed, giving me the loft bed to myself.  We had a corner room on the 7th floor with a view of the Bay and San Francisco.  I was the only blonde on the entire floor and I wasn't even highlighting my hair back then.  It was light brown and still the blondest on the floor.  It was an all-girls floor which I hadn't requested, but was thrilled about after seeing the co-ed bathrooms about a week into the semester.  (Boys are yucky). 

The dorms were all about making new friends.  There were conversations going on all the time in the hallways, in rooms, in the lounge.  Doors were often propped open, music was usually playing.  There were all night study sessions with a lot of jumping on sofas and talking mixed in.  Group excursions to the dining commons (DC) the second dinner was served.  Plentiful discussions and advice on hair, clothing, makeup, and the latest party.  It was the perfect introduction to college and everything I had been conditioned to expect from books, TV, and movies.  One of my roommates, Kat D, had a great music collection, but my favorite CD was a compilation of stuff I'd heard of and others I had not.  One of the songs was by Enya. This particular song is so upbeat and positively joyful.  It sounds very plinky, like raindrops or drops of joy.  Plink Plink Plink!  Ashwin A, who lived on the 8th floor, overheard it one day and he got this goofy grin on his face and said that he just loved the song.  He started this goofy, joyful little dance to go along with the Plinky Plinky and we were immediately all smiling and choreographing little moves to it.  It was such a funny thing, to hear a boy say that some song by Enya is something he loves.  Enya.  Ashwin was in the US by way of London (if I recall correctly) and maybe even somewhere in Asia before that, so maybe it was from being so wordly that he had an appreciation for all kinds of music.  Even Enya.