Serendipity Found – on the college campus

Not that the folks who run Kenyon College need any more reasons for students to consider spending a lot of money and four glorious years in Gambier OH,  but I recently discovered something there that I thought had become extinct:  the ability to have an unplanned discussion. 

While I love mobile phones and app phones for my personal use, I also recognize that they really take the randomness out of life.  In fact, take any scary movie, give the protagonist a working phone and the plot almost always fizzles out. 

Things get a little more difficult to predict when your college is in the middle of a corn field.

You see, Kenyon’s campus is an hour Northeast of Columbus.  It is in the middle of a very gorgeous nowhere.  ATT and Verizon get signals up there, but not consistently.  At my recent (*&^) reunion, my friends and I carried our iPhones and Blackberries just like we were back in our real world lives – but they barely worked.  I wanted to “Bump” info to some iPhone friends – they couldn’t even download the app!!  Texts came in late, voice mails showed up late, and you know what?  It was wonderful.

Instead of knowing exactly what we were going to do, and worrying about finding friends in one spot or another, we just went about our business like we did a few decades ago.  As it turns out, it was great.  I had conversations with people I hadn’t even thought about in years.  I ran into the people I wanted to, almost as much as I wanted to (actually, I can never really get enough of my college friends).  Sometimes we did not connect and that was a bummer, but it opened up other opportunities for discussion that were just great.

I’m not suggesting we put away our phones for good, or that we start some sort of movement – although maybe we should…I just thought that a weekend of really crappy cell service was…fun.

…On the other hand, I could really have done without all those tornado warnings!!

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