Solely You Caused the Drought in California

By Shannon Kelly

You are an upperclassman and you should have known better. It was O-week. You went out with your roommates on Saturday night. They heard about a party on Dawson, and even though you live in North Oakland, you decide it’s a go. When you arrive, the porch is about to give out. Someone hands you a green solo cup. You’re colorblind. Your roommate next to you sniffs the jungle juice like a wine connoisseur. It’s a red. Fruit Punch Kool-Aid..  

An hour later, you walk past a Freshman boy on the way out.  He asks, “What does it cost to get in?” You think, “Your dignity.” You respond, “$5.” You keep going. You arrive back to the apartment, where you realize you never picked up a pizza you ordered. You remember a quote on wastefulness: “A man by his sin may waste himself, which is to waste that which on earth is most like God. This is man’s greatest tragedy and God’s heaviest grief.” Little Nippers will never forgive you.

You decide to make your own drunken food. You open your cabinets. Toothpaste. Wrong cabinets. You open your kitchen cabinets. Mac and Cheese. A food with false dignity like a stripper making a weighty deposit at the bank. You read the instructions: Boil 6-8 quarts of water. “In What?” you scream to God. You read on. In a medium-sized pot. You turn on the sink. But you are drunk and the sink knows better than to take advantage of you. You sit down. You fall asleep.

You wake up the next morning covered in hard pasta. You push your friend “pasta” off of the futon. You go into the kitchen to get water only to realize the tap has been on all night. So much water. It was you, solely you; an individual caused the drought in California that has left millions in broken despair. What’s worse? Your Brita is empty.