Room 119

The following is a short story I wrote about my second home on campus, Room 119 of the Smith building. I spend more time in that room than anywhere else on campus and some of the most wonderful things take place in that room...some of the most thought provoking conversations. 

Room 119

            In a red-bricked building there are many rooms, but room 119 is one of the smallest. With walls as pale as week old snow and a ceiling with a thousand holes, it looks like nothing special. There’s no shine to it. No lustrous sparkle that makes it stand apart from the other rooms.

            119’s Once blue carpet is stained with the mud of many shoes. There’s no carpet cleaner brave enough to take on the armies of filth camping in the carpet’s hard fibers. Each day new armies are carried through the groaning old man of a door and are deposited upon the carpet. Vacuums attack it nightly, yet the original blue is still dusty.

            The chairs that sit in orderly lines are not the most uncomfortable in the building but they aren’t anything you’d want to sit in for more than a class period. Their desks are heavy, but bend under the weight of books. Their legs sturdy, but scars mark their silver surfaces. The fabric that covers the cushions is a purple too close to red to be violet, but too close to purple to be maroon. Blue and tan threads are visible within the fabric. Words are etched into the slate grey tops of the small desks. Some of the words have lines drawn through them, the dark ink from the pen used to carve them is still present in the depths of the lines.

            

            White boards cover the walls. Their surfaces cleaner than the ones they reest on, their silver edges appearing dull despite having recently been installed. The smart board is the newest item in 119, yet even it is not perfect. It’s an untrustworthy piece of technology, second only to the room’s computer, that often rebels against it’s controllers.

            The windows still function properly. They open without so much as a peep and let fresh air circulate through the menopausal room. The shades, however, were just as unreliable as the technology. It wasn’t that they rebelled, they just could no longer do their job properly. They weren’t as flexible as they once were; their bodies could only cover the windows so much. Even then, they would often give out and bounce back into their original fetal position after only a few minutes of covering the windows.

            

             Yes, 119 isn’t the prettiest of rooms, yet English students flock to it like eager grandchildren to their favorite grandparent. Backpacks are thrown at the feet of the chairs, books –heavy with knowledge –are piled upon the desks. The students don’t think twice about entrusting the weight of their books to the desks. Unlike the technology, the desks have never failed them. And, when the students take their seats, the room smiles.

            

             Those who know its worth, those who know each and every character in the room, those who have read beneath the flickering lights, have peered out its windows at lawnmowers and butterflies, have argued with the smart board, out smarted the computer, and cleansed the boards, have returned home.

            The room glows with beauty as its frequenters speak. Their colorful thoughts giving 119 the breath of purpose. 123 may be bigger, 200 over twice its size, 201 may have better chairs, and the room next to it may be the prettiest, but 119 has a special place in the hearts of its students. It’s beauty is as bright as a new penny to them. It’s beauty is immortal.