Butter Balls

By: Daniel Patrick Moriarity '14

Memories are the fruit that hang off of life’s branches. If, in a moment, all the memories, all the inside jokes, all the heart-to-heart conversations that I will never forget were somehow stripped from my mind I would be a heavily-shadowed, cracked mirror of my true self.

This was the main source of the fear and apprehension that gripped me as I rode up to Elmira College with my mom for Summer Registration II. I was forced to confront the realization that in a few short months I was actually going to move out of my home of eighteen years, and be thrown into a town unfamiliar, with strangers innumerable. How could I possibly get by without my friends, the ones who knew how to make me laugh when I was stressing about a big project that I yet again procrastinated on (ehem 20 page paper)? How was I to survive this new place without any body that I felt comfortable enough to be my crazy, quirky self around so that I could de-stress on a daily basis? Honestly, I still don’t know, because I never had to find an answer.

It took me less than two hours to make my first Elmira College memory, and thereby, my first Elmira College friends. I sat down at my assigned table, Group K, between Chris Tomas ’14, and Jessica Marchand ’11, who I would later find out was my Orientation Leader. I talked with Chris and Jess a little bit, but eventually the conversation died and I resorted to pretending I was texting people, while I was actually just looking at the blank screen below the table hoping that lunch would start soon. After about ten minutes of my pitiful charade I looked around the dining hall, and eventually looked down at the table. My heart soared when I saw what appeared to be a pair of white-chocolate truffles on a small plate in front of me. The food hadn’t been brought to the tables yet, and nobody else had eaten their truffles so I leaned over to Jessica and asked her if it was ok if I ate these white chocolate truffles. She laughed hysterically, announced my question to the other OL, Hannah Weldon ’11, who then joined in on the laughter. After being filled in on what was so funny, I laughed too. It turns out they weren’t chocolate…they were butter balls.

While this could have been a potentially humiliating first experience, it immediately soothed my nerves. It felt just like the lunch table my senior year, the site of many of my cherished high school memories, where I had repeatedly, and unashamedly, made a fool of myself to the enjoyment of everyone in earshot. In a matter of minutes I knew that those friends and memories from Greene would never fade, but that I would have volumes more by the time I finished my four years at Elmira. J.M. Barrie once said, “God gave us memories that we might have roses in December”, and I plan to have a couple dozen by the time Christmas rolls around.