Thirteen years ago
Happy birthday, Eileen! I was remembering back to Eileen’s birthday freshman year, when it suddenly hit me: That’s when she set our dorm room on fire! I pulled out my box of photos and started digging, and at last I found it…

I’d been at an audition for a play that night, and when I got back to PW (our dorm) I immediately noticed a funky smell in the air. “That’s from your roommate,” some girl in the common room said. “She set your room on fire.” “Yeah, right,” I joked. “No, seriously. She did.” I took off running. This photo is pretty much what I found. She’d been burning some (contraband) candles that a friend had sent her as a gift, when Erin Fair burst in and threw a handful of birthday cake at her. Eileen had, of course, given chase… knocking over the candle onto a pile of her own laundry. Little did I expect I’d be embarrassing her with the story thirteen years later on the Internet!

I found two more fun photos of us if you want to see.

Here’s Eileen, Liz, and me hanging out in our room. I’m pretty sure this was taken on the day of our first Notre Dame home football game, given that we’re all sunburnt and Eileen and I are both wearing “The Shirt.” (I can’t find confirmation on the Internet, but I’m pretty sure we lost that game.)

This one’s pretty weird. Yes, we’re all holding cigarettes and standing with a giant underpants-wearing rat. Eileen and Kel had come to visit a bunch of us in the London Program during Spring Break 1998. I ditched class and took the two of them on a tour of the city. We were walking around Leicester Square when we were approached by a woman with a clipboard. She worked for one of the evening talk shows (sort of a David Letterman type thing) and she invited us to be in a skit. The concept was that an interviewer would go up to seemingly random smokers and ask them about a new law that had been passed. “Do you know all the dangers of smoking?” he asked. “Of course!” we scoffed. “I don’t think you do,” he said. “I don’t think you know ALL the dangers of smoking.” And then a giant rat in a no-smoking T-shirt, white underpants, and a Union Jack cape came out and started beating us with a rubber cricket bat.

I really, really wish I had that one on tape.