I’m normally not one to get super mad at stuff and write a ludicrously long article just on that, but September 30, 2010 is by far the WORST day I have ever experienced in my life. You know those days were you feel like something is working against you? It’s like that, except working against you means punching you in the face over and over and over again.

Pummeling without remorse.

The debacle begins at 4:30 in the morning when my roommate wakes me up abruptly. Mind you, I was only asleep for about three hours because of good ol’ midnight kickball (which got rained out, that jerk), so I was kinda…

hmm. maybe to make me feel better I’ll use more and more extreme synonyms for “mad”. Let’s say I start out as “irritated”.

Anyway, I’m irritated from waking up and he tells me to look at the corner of the wall. So after sleepily grunting or whatever I do when I’m not conscious, I got up and saw what he was pointing at with his flashlight:

Oh hell no

Bed bugs. Stupid pests that do nothing but suck your blood and then hide away without you ever noticing. Unless the bites itch, or cause rashes, or make you suffer an allergic reaction that’s potentially fatal.

But yeah, no - freaking bed bugs. Apparently they’re such a problem that even five star hotels can’t exterminate these mother buggers as easily as they’d like, so a university like Lehigh (despite it being the pimpingest college there is) would suffer a logistic stroke. or at least, that’s what the Residential Dean said, but I don’t trust him for reasons I’ll explain later.

So anyway, as its a time of the day where most college students would actually asleep, all we could do was move the beds away from the wall and sleep on it. Waking up to remember B.S. like that is not a good way to start the day.

Speaking of which, I wake up much later than my alarm clock was set to, so I had fifteen-ish minutes to eat and go to back-to-back lectures. I was too tired to be angry throughout the morning, so we’ll hold the anger level at around “agitated”.

Next up in the series of misfortunate…misfortunate isn’t a word? Dammit spellcheck!

…events, I leave for a symposium across the street from my dorm. At Lehigh, there are random events in the first six weeks of school that freshmen have to attend, each under one of three categories, and we had to attend one of each category. I had been planning this for a good three days, but when I went to the room it was being held a lady walked out and stuck a sign saying “Workshop Full”.

Seriously?

It got full at the exact second I arrived, and I didn’t even think there was supposed to be a limit on the audience. What the crap? I am now “resentful”.

Then came a physics recitation, which I figured would be a good place to blow of some steam. As I walked up the stairs to class, one of my friends catches up and says in a perky manner “Are you psyched for the quiz?”

Yep, bombed that. Anger Level: Distraught

Anyway, up comes my glorious return to my room, only to find the exterminator checking out the room out. The good news is we managed to catch them early, as in so early that the bugs didn’t even bite us yet. The bad news is we still had to go through the entire procedure of fumigation, which takes no less than six weeks to trudge through.

So my roommate and I go to the Residential Services, who pretty much explains the obvious fact that having bed bugs suck for everyone, especially them. And yet, despite the fact that none of our belongings had signs of infestation, we had to CLEAN &*#%ING EVERYTHING.

First thing we do when we return is launder our entire mass of clothes. Everything from the clothes I haven’t even worn before to the laundry I did yesterday had to be washed and dried. Sure, I’ll accept it’s for precaution’s sake, but it really did not help that the laundry cards they gave us for the trouble didn’t work whatsoever.

They worked in my mind. Furiously.

As the exterminators oh so graciously scheduled the fumigation the next morning, we needed those washers to get washing. It was bad enough that there weren’t enough for approximately 8 full-brim loads, so the only option we had was to storm the Residential Services for a solution. We got a small incomplete apology (as the guy in charge wasn’t there anymore) and a fresh set of cards to try. But as fate wasn’t done kicking me in the jugular, it decided to storm back.

Not you too, Nature.

Walking back in a complete downpour was just completely dandy an- no wait I lied, it was horrible. And we were in our last set of clothes, you know, the only apparel not stuffed in those washers. So naturally, we get back after pretty much having a river drop on us, and naturally the substitute cards don’t work.

Anger Level: Livid

This is the point where irony is finished cutting your optimism up and the next couple of hours puts salt in the wounds. The normal way of doing the laundry was using the college version of a debit card (henceforth called Goldplus cause imma use ta dat) to pay for each washing and drying. The idea was, in giving us actual laundry cards, was so that Residential Services wouldn’t have to reimburse us later. Ideally its more efficient, but it gets thrown out the window when said laundry cards don’t work. So we were forced to use the Goldplus as per usual, and after a while THAT stopped working too.

Eventually, the clothes were washed and dried as good as broken laundry apparati…apparatuses could do, so then came the next step: EVERYTHING ELSE! All the random little things I had barely finished putting in its optimal position had to be sealed in a container or double bagged. The spare food and toiletries? Stuffed and hard to access. The whiteboard I crucially use to remind myself of daily activities? Not allowed - had to be taken down. Nothing is not without a giant trash bag anymore. And I lost my freaking roll of duct tape in the process.

That’s the final straw.

I am now at the anger level of insane, which is a synonym more so for “crazy mad” but I don’t care anymore.

I could get made at anybody at this point: the RA’s for being absoltuely nowhere, the dorm head for bribing us with candy, the Residential Services for not helping at all, the entire hall for thinking our room (and by extension us) is now contaminated, the exterminators for not giving me enough time to get more containers from Jersey, the timing for having this happen just before the midterms, the stupid rain for existing, and oh yeah, those God forsaken prick bed bugs.

But honestly at this point, its like I’m so mad I’m not mad anymore. Life is what you make out of it, so becoming infuriated at a disturbingly well-constructed chain of events is not going to to make me feel better. Apparently bug pesticides are. So I’ll just spend the night calming down and seeing my “anger level” on some free quiz site for a side of irony in my favor for a change.

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