Friends on the Quad

After breakfast and the kittens, they showed us around campus. We talked about life as an Oberlin freshman as we crossed Tappan Square. They walked us thru the Bike Co-op at Keep Cottage with its basement that feels as if it was just uncovered in a recent archeological dig. They talked about registering for next semester. They talked about Winter Term projects. And we finally ended up at Hazel's dorm on the north side of campus, so we took a picture of them and dropped her off and turned around to walk around a bit more with Ben.

We sat on the grass outside the Library. The sky was blue. The sun was shockingly warm. The grass was green, soft and dry. And we met some of his friends as they came wandering by.

There was Rachel, who started prancing and skipping across the quad when she saw Ben waving to him. She and he are also good friends, and talked about how many little things they discovered they have in common, including their summer work in Latin America two summers ago. There was Layla, whom Ben flagged down as she was riding by. Layla knows Ben's cousin, Colin, and Colin told them to find each other, which they have. There was Daniel, who was barefoot (which must have felt nice on that grass) and was itching to go back across the quad to get his banjo back from another guy before he could get too good at it. And there was David, who has just scrounged a unicycle and was headed to the Bike Co-op to see if he could spruce it up. David also knew Colin (if I'm getting the story right—or was it Daniel?).

After a while, Daniel went off to recover his banjo and sat down beneath an Oak tree and started playing. And David left to fix his old new unicycle. And Rachel went skipping off across the quad. And we continued our walk across campus toward Ben's dorm, where we dropped him off before we made our way to the Frank Lloyd Wright house with plans to meet meet him afterwards at the arboretum.

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