Oh, the pain

How Best To Not Study For a Midterm:

The night before your midterm, around 9.30, hear a tortured-sounding phone conversation downstairs in the laundromat. Investigate.

Discover a chubby 19-year-old boy with two days' beard and a flannel jacket sobbing on the phone to someone. Hide behind the washing machines until the pain in his voice becomes too much to bear. Rush over and give him a hug.

At this point he will hang up on his mother, invite you to sit down on the bench next to him, and proceed to tell you why he's sobbing. It is a long story.

Invite him up to your couch, where his story will continue with an account of how he caught five butterflies and stored them in a cup so that he could wake his belovèd with a room full of butterflies on Valentine's Day.

Kick him out around 10.30 so that you can study for aforementioned midterm. Spend the next forty-five minutes rehashing the conversation with your roommate. Write blog post.

I'm not supposed to invite strange men up to our apartment anymore.