Fragment .03

This was the last place Freya thought she would find it.

There was that one time. Freya sat on the bus in the drop-off circle. After a few minutes of waiting, the bus driver ignited the engine and the bus began to move. But as the bus driver circled towards the exit, he detected a couple of students who had just reached bus stop just moments after he had driven off. "Sorry, guys. I'm going to circle back around and pick up those folks." He pulled the bus back into the drop-off circle and saved the students from waiting another ten minutes for the next bus to arrive. "It's like what they say," he said. "You can't withdraw if you don't deposit. What goes around comes around."

There was that other time, when the chatter of the dining hall was silenced in an instant by the clatter of a plate and dinnerware to the floor. The culprit stood motionless for what seemed like hours, horrified and embarrassed by what had happened. Freya turned to O, about to ask her if they should help the girl out, when without word, Lennox rose from his seat and bent down to the ground before the girl, sweeping the spilled food onto the fallen plate with the strewn fork. His silent act thawed the ice; others began rising from their seats to help clear the mess from the floor. Later, as Lennox returned to his seat across the table from Freya, K remarked, "I admire that, Prince Charming. Getting up to help the damsel in distress." Lennox shrugged as he sank his fork into the bowl of pasta. "She would have just stood there if somebody hadn't move first."

It's easy to forget just how small this world is. An article in the Boston Globe shared how a couple in France found a message in a bottle that a couple in Massachusetts had thrown into the sea many years ago. When they tried contacting the woman who had written the message, they were grieved to learn that the woman had died just last year. They had never met, and yet now, a death still left an impact, still meant something to someone's life.

Education in college is less about academia than about growing as a person. That's what she's beginning to find.