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For Jake Wilson '13, the loss of his prized Nintendo 64, along with the loss of basically every one of his friends, has been a woeful, heart-wrenching event that he is still struggling to deal with nearly four days later. Yet, it seems that this entire incident began well before that fateful Tuesday night.
In August, Jake moved into a single in Graduate Center, sharing the suite with a few of his friends from last year, or, rather, "those guys from down the hall."
"We just slipped him on to our housing group," said suitemate Ethan Davis '13. "Figured he wouldn't mind living with us too much."
Said Wilson, "Yeah, I didn't really need that RC job in Keeney."
The semester started out quite nicely. Davis, Wilson and the rest of the boys enjoyed spending their afternoons lounging in the room of suitemate Luke Harris '13, enjoying baked goods Harris's girlfriend at Amherst College sent in her biweekly care packages.
"I remember those afternoons pretty well," said Harris. "I would get out from a four hour orgo lab, still a little dizzy from all the fumes and whatnot and find an empty box of snickerdoodles in my room. At least they didn't eat everything. There were plenty of crumbs left on my bed."
Replied Davis, "I can't believe Luke still whines about that. He's not the easiest guy to live with, you know. He puked all over the bathroom once and didn't even bother to clean it up for a week. Yeah, sure, he got appendicitis, and spent that week recovering in the hospital. It still doesn't change the fact that I lived with a puddle of vomit in my bathroom for a week."
Harris was the first to discover Wilson's N64, stumbling upon it as he searched his room for Advil during a particularly bad hangover. Harris and Davis quickly began to strengthen their relationship with Wilson.
"We started having dinner together more often," Wilson remembered. "And whenever I got back from class, they were always chilling in my room, playing Super Smash Bros."
Harris agreed, saying, "I don't know why we hadn't hung out with him as much before. He was a really fun guy, I don't know why he's become so weird lately."
Surprisingly, it was not Wilson who had become weird. The only change, it appeared, was the sudden breaking of Wilson's N64.
"I was coming back from Jo's," said Wilson. "I got back to my room, and I guess I tripped on a cable, because the next thing I know, my mozzarella sticks are all over the floor and my Nintendo's in pieces. The guys were really helpful initially. Davis said he'd chip in for a new system, and Harris said he would've gotten me more food if he didn't have to run to section. But since then, they haven't been hanging out around here too much. They're probably really busy with class and stuff."
"Yeah, I guess I have been busy," said Davis. "But Jake's been acting really weird lately, too, and he isn't as much fun to hang out with. I just wish things could go back to the way they were. You know, when he had an N64."
