The Dorm Room Matrix

College freshmen have it rough. 

The other day, my roommate left our cozy little double on the third floor to print out her Spanish paper. She reaches the top of the stairs (which is about 15 feet away, not a terrible distance) and realizes she forgot her sunglasses. She comes back to get said sunglasses and goes down two flights before realizing she forgot paper. She runs back up the stairs for paper. This time she gets downstairs to the computer room, loads the printer, and clicks print. End of story, yes? 

No. Some dum-dum left a job running and that uses up two sheets before she figures out what's going on. Back up she goes for more paper. So far I've been giggling and waving and making semi-snarky remarks each time she comes in, but on the last trip up she looks like an angry mermaid. Remember the second task from the movie Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? I stop giggling.

So she finally prints the paper...and guess what? No really, guess. 

She forgets to staple it. But at this point it doesn't matter anyway, since we had already planned to brave the world outside our room (gasp!) to stock up on desperately needed provisions at a deli near our dorm. Thus our intrepid shield maiden treks back up the stairs to fetch the silly roommate, and then finally, we leave the room. For good.

It's usually not as bad as I made it out to be. That day was an extreme case. It was rainy outside. It was misting. (Did you know that according to certain weather apps, 'misting' is a word?) It was humid. Everyone was sweating through their clothes even though it was only 65 degrees. It was also late September, which when compounded with all the other things I just listed was enough to make everyone into sea cucumbers, their mental capacities reduced to sitting in their rooms and staring out the window with their heads cocked to the side.

But this was not the first time something like that has happened. It all started with little things. Going to class and running back because you forgot your books. Leaving for dinner and shuffling sheepishly back in after realizing you didn't have your keys. Going out on a sunny day - oh, woe! - and leaving your nice, reasonably-priced, rich amber-tinted, subtly pointed cat-eye sunglasses from H&M on your desk. The latter scenario is especially heart-wrenching because I love H&M. H&M is magical.

It took a week or two, but at some point it occurred to me and Purl (my roommate's name in this blog is Purl. That's a knitting term, by the way. Did you know that? I didn't know that. I still don't know what exactly it means. I may Wikipedia it someday when I'm feeling less sluggish) that there was clearly some higher natural law at work here. The basic premise is that when a college student attempts to leave the dorm room, he/she will always be forced to return at least once out of some unforeseen necessity, thus rendering the act of exiting the room successfully on the first take something like trying to determine the exact location of an electron around the nucleus of an atom. It simply doesn't happen. We decided we needed a name for this phenomenon, but all we could think of at first was Murphy's Law. Not quite the same thing, but the feeling's pretty accurate. "F#@%, I forgot my keys...and my wallet...and my books...for the third time today...why does this keep happening to me?"

We floundered around for a few weeks trying to figure out a name. Then we took a six-mile hike at 8:20 AM this morning, and click, everything fell into place.

Remember that scene in the first Matrix movie where Neo sees the black cat run by twice in front of the door? Remember how he says "Deja vu" and then how Morpheus and Trinity completely flip? And how deja vu in the Matrix means that the programmers have made some kind of change? (Poor Mouse. It was the Woman in the Red Dress who did him in. I know it.) It's like that for our dorm room.

Review time, class.

The Dorm Room Matrix, also known as the Dorm Room Matrix Law:

Leaving one's dorm room on the first try will never work. Something will always be forgotten, or some other necessity will be contrived in order to force the occupant to return.

Purl and I are now that much better off now that we can precisely pinpoint the cause of our misery. Of course it doesn't actually change the dorm law, but it's a small consolation. Besides, we got classes off today so we could go climb that mountain. And by extension think of that name. Although as soon as we got on the bus, Purl realized that she forgot her apple in the minifridge. Dorm Room Matrix.