Partly Cloudy, 64°
"I didn't think it counted," insisted Winston McKinney '13 of his experience frolicking on the Minnesota snow outside his grandparents' house during Christmas 1996. "I mean, I was only five-"
"You were only five?" spat Dwayne Jenkins '13, voice thick with tears, hunched miserably on the sofa in the therapist's office beside his roommate. "You thought it didn't count because you were only five? Dude. Some kids get cancer when they're five. Does that make it any less legit, dude?"
He put down his head, and the burly shoulders of Jenkins, a football recruit from Wisconsin, began to quiver with sobs he could at last not restrain. McKinney nervously pushed his glasses up his nose.
Although McKinney had previously informed his freshman roommate last summer as they bonded over Facebook that he was "particularly excited to experience the chilly Providence winter, as I, hailing from California, have never before witnessed frozen precipitation," a recent conversation between the two roommates revealed the grisly truth.
"We were talking about how frikkin' excited we were for the snow, man," Jenkins remembered with a wistful sigh. "And I was saying, 'Dude, when the snow comes cruising down from heaven for the first time, I'm gonna hold your hand, and watch your eyes light up.'"
At this point, Jenkins became too choked up with tears to continue and suddenly lashed out at the sofa, punching the arm with a mixture of bitterness and despair. "There was going to be a moment! There was going to be a moment, dammit!"
Jenkins, who had responded to his roommate's shocking declaration that he had never seen snow with, "wot?!?! dude U have nevr seen SNOE? dude that is SICK! i cant wate until i can C it with u 4 the 1st time!!! <33333" did not react well to the news that his roommate was, in fact, no stranger to the snow at all.
After agreeing with Jenkins's statement that the first time he saw snow would be "totally frikkin' awesome, dude," McKinney spontaneously felt compelled to confess, "Well, I did actually see snow once before when I was five-but I don't really remember it."
According to McKinney's testimony, his roommate froze from where he had been choosing a sweater from his closet, and slowly turned to face McKinney, repeatedly demanding "What?" with steadily increasing volume.
McKinney repeated his previous statement multiple times, but no amount of repetition seemed to placate Jenkins, who, fuming audibly, crashed out of the room and down the hallway.
After scratching his head for a few moments, McKinney wandered down the hallway after him, eventually locating him huddled in a corner of the men's room, rocking back and forth, whimpering and "not doing that ten-page paper he had due tomorrow," said McKinney.
Although he offered a hand to Jenkins and questioned, "Are you okay?" multiple times, Jenkins merely attempted to bite his hand, prompting McKinney to phone Health Services, fearing his roommate had contracted rabies.
Jenkins, however, was suffering from heartbreak.
At this time, the pair is receiving group counseling from Brown University Psychological Services, attempting to repair the shattered trust between them.
"I don't know if I can ever get over this blatant breach of trust," spoke Jenkins in an official statement last Tuesday.
"I was only five," insisted McKinney for the fifty-second time, clutching his Quantum Mechanics textbook anxiously. "I didn't know it counted!"
