Something I wrote ...

Published in my school's newspaper...

How Oregon Trail Got Me Ready For College

Back in the day of fourth grade computer class, when a floppy disk actually flopped, a five inch disk was our key to future knowledge. We would fire up our Apple IIs and, quivering in anticipation, click on that little Oregon Trail icon. Little did I know then but that game taught me more about freshman year in college than any high school counselor could have dreamed.

Getting Started

You buy food, supplies, pick an occupation and pick your travel partners for this journey right up front. And, except for that one game out of ten when you put your least favorite people’s names down and let them all get sick and die, you pick your best friends to be with you on this journey. You know from the beginning it is going to be a long trip but it will be fun and worth it in the end.

Heading out

Your journey starts off nice enough. Steady pace, filling meals, some actual spending money. How quickly things can go wrong. Before you know it you are moving at grueling pace, eating very meager dining hall meals, and you are knocking people over for that quarter under a table at the atrium that you saw first.

Meanwhile, your travel partners are getting snake bites, broken legs, and strange diseases that you have to look up in a medical dictionary. One of them may even become dead to you and stop coming by or calling. No worries, a nice little gravestone can be viewed for a moment, but this journey will not stop for the “deceased.”

Hunting

The best part of the game taught me all about the different dating styles of people at college. You have the people that try to shoot everything that moves and ends up with fifty squirrels and hardly anything to show for it. Then you have those people that only shoot bear, but shoot like twenty of them at once and cannot carry all the meat back to their wagons. You also have the people who wait and wait for something, anything and never even get a shot off.

You also had the picky hunter. They just waited and let squirrels, rabbits, and deer walk right on by. Then they find the perfect bear, get it in the crosshairs, and BAM they were a happy camper. Lastly, you have those who hunt just for fun. In fact, they probably have their 2,000 pounds of food back at the wagon and could not take anything back anyway, but they still go hunting all the time.

Fording the river

These little tests pop up all the time and can be kind of annoying, but they must be passed to continue the journey. Sometimes you just have to buck up and go across. Other times you can prepare and float to the other shore. If you are really lucky you can hire a guide to give you advice on the best way to make it to shore. Some of these are passed with no problem, others give minor bumps to slow you down, and still others are remembered until the end.

Forts

Just when you think you and your friends are not going to make it any farther, along comes a fort where you can stop and rest. These usually take three days or so and allow you to recuperate and, in some cases, choose what path you want to take unto the end. These are a good time to get away from the journey and just be with friends.

A lot of times there is a carnival like atmosphere and you wish you did not have to leave these most definite good times, but you do. The grueling pace is never changing; though it gives you breaks when you need it at times.

You made it!

Or at least you thought you did. You made it to the end of the journey but you have one more difficult task to overcome. You have come to another river, but this is not like the other rivers. Oh no. And even though you knew this was coming and it would be difficult and it would be different, you always overlook it for the joyous future of a summer in the Oregon Valley.

The next thing you know you are hurtling down a rock and rapid infested demon of a river on a raft. You wreck on this bad boy and you may figuratively die and your whole year of work will be for not. Or you make it to the end unscathed and happy, free to bask in glowing rays for awhile.

End of class

The game ended and so did your class. You went on to the same people and things you were doing before you sat down in your plastic chair to play the game. Before too long though you were back in that chair playing again. Some of the names were the same as before, some were new. You made some of the same mistakes and you made some new ones. But you never really cared about messing up too much.

You were there for the ride and the ride was rough at times, but fun. So as I head down that final river to my Oregon Valley trying to avoid the rocks all I can think about now if heading back to Independence and starting all over again.