Kim Wetter

A Goodbye so Nice, I Named it Twice

This past weekend, I went to Walla Walla. Something new and different for me, right? Whatever, haters gonna hate, and besides, I love that city.

One of my best friends has lived there for the past several years since graduation and she’s moving to Portland. Obviously, we had to have one last hurrah in the town we’ve both grown to love.

Unfortunately, it was graduation weekend on campus and I was hoping to avoid a few people. Whitman is extremely small so we all decided that we would stay away from campus whenever we could. If anyone was concerned about my trip, I’d simply respond, “Don’t worry, I am staying off campus.”

90% of the time I did. We did all the Walla Walla classics (in my book but really these are all things I discovered in college, in WW. Less specific to the city and more specific to my experiences there):

• Grabbing taco truck and taking it out to the wheat fields. This was much more enchanting as a freshmen in college. Being 26, the steep hill, broken glass and shotgun shells in the area were a bit disconcerting.
• Power hour. Although not limited to the city, Walla Walla is where I first discovered the beauty of a power hour. Friday, we did Boy Band power hour. It was glorious.
• Beirut. Again, not limited to Walla Walla but my love originated there. Whitman also taught me that it was called Beirut, not beer pong.
• The Twilight drinking game. This one time, I switched jobs and gave myself a week off in between. During that week, I went to visit my friend in Walla Walla and we discovered the wonders of the Twilight drinking game on a quiet night.
• Urban Golf. I’ve tried to urban golf in Seattle and it’s just not the same. The course at Whitman (yes, I was on campus for this) is familiar and awesome. How many other times would I be stopped with an open bottle of champagne and given time to finish it before I throw it out?
• The Cutting Edge. We watched this during our bbq on Saturday night. It was one of the first movies my friend and I watched together while Freshmen. It was the start of a beautiful friendship.
• Karaoke. I can’t sing. Therefore, I go to the place in town that takes their singing most seriously: The Golden Horse. Someone put in Creed’s, “My sacrifice” for me to sing because we all figured my low, raspy, monotone voice might do better with male songs. Unfortunately, I didn’t sing it but I will remember the idea for the next time I karaoke.

So it’s 2am on Saturday and I’m not ready to go to bed. I get a text from my friend Todd and decide to go meet him.

Campus was dead. It was the night before graduation and there were only a handful of people awake. So, three of us did what any person would and grabbed leftover beer from one house and went to go play Beirut in Todd’s frat’s basement. I commandeered the speakers and we played a game with water cups. Then watched as the sun started to come up from the porch of my old college house.

When I returned to Seattle, one of the first things that was said to me was, “I heard you were in a frat basement playing beirut. I thought you were going to stay off campus.”

The exchanged bothered me a lot. It took me a while to figure out why. It seems there was an implication that there was no way I could keep myself away from campus, away from frat basements and away from meeting randos.

After I tried being defensive and explaining that it was 3am, no one but my friends were around, and it was totally along the lines of the weekend I had sought out, I stopped. Why am I defending myself? I love frat basements! That first step inside where you are momentarily overcome with nausea but then you get used to the stale beer smell is so familiar to me.

So of course I ended up in a frat basement. It’s what I do. Or what I used to do. The weekend was set up as a goodbye to the city. I doubt I will be spending nearly as much time there now that people are moving away. And what a fabulously wonderful goodbye it was…