Tonight it rained. It poured buckets and buckets to make the dry grass happy. Lightning danced through the clouds as the thunder it produced rolled across the hills below it. This was quite unfortunate for anyone who was outside, as they would get soaked immediately without an umbrella or other covering. Luckily for me, this was not the case.

I was wrapping up a nice evening chatting with my friends. They live about four doors down the hall, just far enough not to be considered neighbors. Three nice guys, all from the Midwest, one that shared both my state and birthday. I would be waking up at my roommate’s 6am alarm the next morning so I really had to be going to bed at a decent time.

Goodbyes were always long. It started with noting how late it was getting and that sleep would useful for my multiple classes tomorrow spread out between 9 and 4. Something else was bound to come up; a short story, a memorable quote, a simple question. And so we’d talk for another ten minutes before the whole situation repeated again. That was alright though. It just meant we liked each other’s company.

Before that I had wandered down to their room as it was after dinner and I had already spent all day doing homework so there wasn’t much left to do tonight. I was overstimulated for whatever reason and my head felt like it was full of sand, no where near my normal peppy self. So I pulled out the grey chair that sat folded between the closet and the sink and sat down, the Nebraska kid already playing Minecraft and the other Iowan in the room lamenting over his loss in whatever game he was playing. And so the Nebraskan did most of the talking, the Iowan eventually swapped over to calculus (which did not stop his lamenting), and I sat there soaking in the chatter, the constant hum of the AC, and the music playing in the background.

Before that I had quickly prepared an origami dinosaur out of notebook paper. I had promised the lady who was working the card scanner down at the cafeteria that I would make one to go with the crane that already adorned whatever device she was using to manage students’ IDs. I had nearly forgotten until after I had seen her at dinner, so I made one as soon as I reached my dorm to make sure I wouldn’t forget. It didn’t take but five minutes between having to cut the paper into the square and the numerous folds it took to make it resemble a creature. As soon as it was done I popped downstairs to the cafeteria and presented to her. She was delighted and we exchanged names. She shared a piece of dinosaur information in return: a lake in Texas had dried up and they had found dinosaur prints under it. Her love of dinosaurs made me smile.

And so tonight it rained. Tonight I hung out with my friends. Tonight I made an origami dinosaur. And tomorrow that dinosaur will be waiting for me when I come down for breakfast.