An Unexpected Guest

Laughter is one of those contagious things like yawning. Once I see someone else, or hear someone, laughing, I can’t help myself but to crack a smile and emit some ridiculous high-pitched gurgling sounds from deep within.

After going out for a nice dinner with a couple of our friends at Sweet Tomatoes, my roommate Kelsey and I went back to our dorm on the second floor of Carter. We were already giddy that evening on account of it was Saturday night, our stomachs were full of good food and we were about to go out dancing with some people later.

Kelsey and I burst through the door of the staircase and almost ran into a guy who was walking just in our paths in the hallway. Naturally, he was in our paths, we weren’t in his path. That’s how it always works.

Kelsey and I chatted away and each gave imperceptible nods to the guy to acknowledge his existence and he did the same to us. We rounded the corner to go into our quad, and the guy followed a little ways behind us. I assumed he was going to the study lounge that was right next to our room. Maybe the trash room or to the vending machine – both of which are within view of our dorm room.

After much struggling and searching, Kelsey finally located her key to the room, as I couldn’t find mine quickly enough for her. She finally opened the door and stepped through as I followed. Suddenly, the heavy door I had propped open with my hand for the both us, was holding itself open without any effort on my part. Startled, I looked behind me to see the guy we had just previously acknowledged was standing in our doorway right behind me.

He had one hand on the door and my first instinct was to awkwardly attempt to hold the door open behind me so he could walk through. This was done out of habit of opening doors for people on campus, not out of habit of inviting random strangers into my room.

The guy said “Thanks” to me I guess for holding the door open for him. He started to walk into our room. Let me clarify again that I had no idea who this person was, and neither did Kelsey. But in that 10 second stretch of time, for some reason, my instinct was to let this guy come into our room.

It took us both 10 seconds to register what was happening. The guy finally realized he was walking into a random girl’s room. His face turned from shock to embarrassment within five seconds. He quickly murmured, “I’m so sorry! Wrong door.”

I guess he saw the smile creeping on my lips because then he said, “I’m just going to walk away and pretend this didn’t happen.”

I immediately turned to Kelsey who had witnessed the whole thing, and when our eyes met, we both exploded with an uncontrollable laughter. I think it was because of the awkwardness in the situation. Because I held the door for him to continue walking into our room. And because a random stranger just followed us into our room. But for a few minutes, we could not stop laughing.