The Best Part of Any Good Studying

Good distractions.

Today, I holed up in the back corner of Eastern's pathetic little media library to study with a friend, who made the pathetic room a lot less pathetic by unveiling to me a crazy jazz and classical record collection I didn't know Eastern was cool enough to have. The patheticness lessened even more when we threw a Tchaikovsky vinyl onto a retro wooden turntable and sat in the sun that streamed through a west-ish facing window made for receiving afternoon sunlight unlike all the rest of the windows in the building. Great studying conditions.

But my favorite part was being summoned to another window by my friend, who was watching a man and two little boys playing on a grassy hill. The little boys kept chasing around the man I can only assume was their father, and he kept egging them on, dramatically and animatedly responding to their every move. They loved it. Running around on a hill proved quite challenging for these small people; we watched them teeter around and fall with anything but grace, and laughed as they took it in stride, taking advantage of already being down and rolling the rest of the way down the hill, often with their already-rolling-father close behind. At one point, the two little crazies took down the big crazy and proceeded to bellyflop onto their downed victim's own belly over and over again. Still animated, and quite capable of snatching up the two little hooligans in one arm if he wanted to, the victim played his role well.

I love catching people, who don't know they're being watched, in the act of vivacious, authentic interactions. It certainly gives me more hope for the world than my sociology textbook, even if today's reading was accompanied by Tchaikovsky and infrared bliss soaking into my skin.