an enexpected party

I’ve recently decided to revisit J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit.” I read it almost eight years ago when I was a seventh-grader. I couldn’t remember many details. But I remember enjoying the battles like most pre-teen boys. I remember skipping the brilliant and rhythmic poems and songs. I remember thinking of Bilbo as a small, prickly creature who lived in a dirt tunnel. I remember imagining each of the dwarves and their strangely colored beards tucked into their belts and their hunger for adventure and wealth. That was before Hollywood corrected me.

Bilbo, our burglar and protagonist, is satisfied with a quiet, boring life and a vast inheritance in a comfortable home. He meets a mysterious wizard one morning, who graciously proposes an adventure. Bilbo rudely declines for the sake of his after-second-breakfast-smoke. Half an hour later, thirteen dwarves knock on his door and barge in without invitation. They propose the adventure. Bilbo leaves behind his lifestyle of five meals a day and they all set out to get their treasure from the evil dragon Smaug. As soon as they leave the placid Shire and venture into the outside world, madness ensues: they meet trolls, goblins, evil wolves; they fly on eagles, get kidnapped by elves and fight a colossal battle. I’ve taken a journey of sorts in the eight or so years since I last read this lauded classic. I was probably a foot shorter in those days, with no hope of ever getting a girlfriend or being good at anything but digging those big boogers out of my nose. Well…I still pick my nose, but I do have a fiancé now, so there is hope after all.

At the end of high school, the adventure known as ‘college’ was knocking on my door, but four years seemed like an inconvenience, like too long of a break between first and second breakfast. I didn’t want to go on that adventure with strangers. I didn’t want to leave the comfort and solace of everything and everyone I had ever known.

But I did. And like Bilbo, I’ve looked back fondly on the simpler times. But in my adventures at Northwestern I have mooned people from the windows of the children’s library, totaled my roommate’s car, dropped TVs from the bleachers just to hear them explode, and it’s been a pretty good time. I’ve travelled to the beach, the desert, the mountains and to lakes. I’ve ministered, learned, written, cried, puked, laughed and slept my way through college. I’m no Bilbo, but adventures are fun every once in a while.