The Biggest Little City in the World

It's been raining in Vegas for the past four days. I love the rain but mostly because we never get it. So day four rolls in with the storm and I start having flashbacks.

Dark, gloomy, not much to do....

RENO.

For those of you who do not know, I lived in Reno, NV for an entire four months of my life. I was straight outta high school and Linzi and I decided to head north. We were looking for adventures of college stories and dorm rooms but what we got was, well, Reno.

Now, I am not going to blame it on all Reno. Linzi and I went up there TOGETHER. As BESTIES. We got a room together in the New Dorm which had our very own bathroom so we wern't even forced into the situation to have to make friends in the facilities. We had 300 square feet all. to. ourselves. What did we do in such a tiny, tiny room? Oh, let's see...we ATE (can we say Freshman 22?), ate A LOT of Domino's pizza and I love that, at the time, we weighed between 100-115 pounds and the two of us would polish off an entire order of Cheesybread, a large cheese pizza and Cinnastix. Every Thursday if not Tuesday and Friday, too. There was the Awful Awful in the little Nugget, too, which had a CRAZY delicious grilled cheese (catching a theme here? I didn't name my blog after nothing). Oh and the ice cream vending machine that would always give me the wrong order and Linzi would end up eating my rejects until I finally got that Strawberry Shortcake Popsicle I was waiting for. Ok so that covers the eating part. What else did we do? Oh, yes, take shots of Captain Morgan Parrot Bay out of Dixie cups that Linzi's mom had sent to us (not for the rum, I would imagine).

And this. We did a whole lotta this. One of us lying on our bed while the other was being SILLY.
We rearranged the room several times. One of those times including the bunk bed incident. Now, as an only child, all I ever wanted in my childhood was a brother and a bunk bed so you can imagine my JOY that I now had the opportunity to make that dream come true with Linzi as a stand-in for the brother part. "Do you want top or bottom?" "Top. Wait. No. Bottom. Wait. No. Top. But what if I fall off??" (these double stacked beds reached almost to our ceiling and I would guesstimate would be a 20 foot fall to the floor). "You're not going to fall off, Kate. That's ridiculous. People don't fall off of bunk beds." Rolls eyes.

So, there I am. First night up. N*Sync poster next to my head, cozy underneath my pink sheets with a zebra blanket to keep out that bitter Renoness. The giant alarm clock so I could actually read the numbers without putting on my glasses was glowing in the distance. I was sound asleep and then OMG OMG OMG I'm FALLING!!! You guys, I woke up with 2/3 of my body hanging off the edge as my body almost tumbled through infinity to the floor. LUCKILY, I saved myself. So, for the record, people DO fall out of bunk beds.

What did you guys do on the weekends? Pardon? You know, on the weekends, what did you guys do? Frat parties? Getting to know the city? Study groups? Oh, no, we flew home. What? Yes, we flew home to Vegas. Almost every weekend. Why? Boyfriends. How? Car accident settlement. I spent two weekends in Reno. Two weekends. And I'm pretty sure one of them was forced due to September 11th.

There were a lot of tears. You know love at age 18. I had finally nailed Stevie B. down. He was mine, all mine and I had to leave him? For COLLEGE? How AWFUL! But Linzi and I had a pact. We were going to stick it out the whole year. Give it some time to grow on us. Do it for our parents.

God DAMN it's cold. It's Ok, we'll get used to it. There is nothing to do. Wanna walk to the Circus Circus? Again? Sometimes, we would just hold each other. Now, I know how this sounds. But we had NO HUMAN CONTACT other than each other. So we would stand in our tiny room and just hug it out. HOMESICK. We were homesick, lovesick little girls. And one night, Linzi broke down and called her parents "I want to come home."

Oh. HELL. NO. Girl, you CANNOT leave me. There is no way I am staying without you! Within 5 minutes I was on the phone, BALLING to Pep, "Ma, I just can't. I can't. I'll DIE up here. Alone. All alone. I want to come home. Please. Please. Just let me come home." "You know you're going to have to get a job if you come back." "Yes, yes, of course." "Ok, call your father." And that day is the day that I broke my father's heart.

If I could go back and do it all differently, I would.

100%. I would have given it the whole year. I didn't really get a "college experience". Don't get me wrong, living out my early 20's in Vegas certainly got me a lot of experiences and everything happens for a reason but I would have stayed. I would have given that biggest littlest city in the world more of a chance. Given my college life more of a chance. I left one of the best journalism schools in the country, free rent (well parents paid), no job, an hour from Tahoe, four to San Fran to come back to....

Oh, right, my LIFE. Life that may have been a completely different life with that one decision. But, you know, this life...it's a pretty good one.