Charlotte MacQuattie ‘28
Come home, the kids miss you
Tragedy struck this Sunday after I made my daily pilgrimage to Cool Beans. As I hovered around and waited for an open table, something felt…off. Was it darker outside than usual? Was my roommate ominously watching from several paces behind me like the creature from “It Follows”? No, something worse. Looking around, I realized something was missing: my campus celebrity. We all have that one person we see everywhere yet never acknowledge, but mine was nowhere to be found. They weren’t at their regular table, not drinking their regular coffee, not somehow appearing every time I do something embarrassing like pushing a door that says ‘pull’ or calling President Rougeau ‘mom’. Surely my campus celebrity was just sleeping in late or something and I’d see them later. Surely…
As the day continued, my campus celebrity’s absence became more noticeable. I went through the Kimball line without walking into them and doing that weird shuffle where you both go the same direction trying to get out of each other’s way, I studied in Dinand without making awkward eye contact from across the stacks, and I sent off my nightly carrier pigeons without bumping into them on their run. Sure, I wasn’t worried about being caught by them as I fell down the Kimball stairs or accidentally put my phone in the washing machine again, but I was starting to miss their odd, permanent presence. Days went by with no sign of my campus celebrity. Were they sick? Were they at home? Or worse, were they avoiding me?
I decided to take matters into my own hands. If they weren’t going to find me, I was going to find them. I started at the chapel and waited in a confession booth for hours. My campus celebrity didn’t show up, but I got some good gossip. You didn’t hear it from me, but Bob Cousy is headlining the spring concert and Bill Belichick really did deflate those footballs. My next stop was the Jo. I don’t remember much because I was hit in the head with a basketball pretty soon after I went in, but I don’t think I saw my campus celebrity in the blurry faces around me as I woke up on the floor. There was no sign of them in health services either, nor in the PAC after the nurses decided I didn’t have that bad of a concussion. Sitting on the Hoval with my overpriced lemonade, I was ready to give up hope. Maybe my campus celebrity had moved on. Maybe they found someone else to witness the embarrassing moments of. But just as I was about to call it quits, I saw a familiar figure across the Hoval. There stood my knight in purple armor! No, not Iggy T. Crusader (may he rest in peace), it was my campus celebrity! They looked straight out of the campus life brochure as they played frisbee on that sunny day with a multicultural friend group. I was so distracted by their grand return that I didn’t notice the sudden breeze sending the purple discus rogue. As the frisbee hurtled toward me, my mildly-concussed self forgot to duck, and I soon woke up on the ground yet again. Health services wasn’t pleased to see me back so soon, but I didn’t care. My campus celebrity was back! Plus, all my head injuries meant I was one step closer to making the football team. Go Cross go!
Featured image courtesy of PictureCorrect
Copy Edited by Sophia Mariani ’26
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