A few weeks ago, I realized my toenails were starting to get a little gnarly. Not wishing to earn a spot in Guinness World Records, I decided I should probably trim the poor guys a bit. Normally I would just raid the closet for toenail clippers, but all of the home essentials I normally have at my disposal are about 200 miles away in the Garden State. My self-inflicted pedicure was about to get very interesting.

Many times I have needed some dumb little knick knack that I’ve taken for granted back home, only to realize that I’m completely out of luck. You don’t realize you need a lot of things until you actually need them.

So why do we forget all those things that are fairly common at home? I think it has a lot to do with growing up. You know you’ve reached adulthood when you have to go out and buy toenail clippers. Before that, everything is just kind of there. Light bulbs, tweezers, WD-40, sunscreen: nobody actually buys these things. When you buy a home or rent an apartment, you just expect to open the cabinets and find them.

When thinking about all the stuff you’re going to lug up to school in the neighbor’s station wagon, it’s easy to forget things. Of course you’ll remember the bean bag chair and the funky Christmas lights from Target, but tissues, dish soap and multiple trash cans? Forget it.

It’s not hard to forget about the whole living aspect — and even easier to forget about the education aspect ­of going to college. Case in point, I forgot to bring pencils to school, which was a new low in academic preparedness.

At this point of the year I’m starting to realize that a lot of the crap that I brought up here is pretty useless, and all of the useful stuff is at home. I don’t think we have any Band-Aids, but we have a waffle iron. You can guess how many times I’ve made waffles. Well, it turns out you need oil. So none.

I can see it now: I slice my big toe open with my Swiss Army Knife when trying to cut my toenails, so I have to cook a bunch of waffles to put on my wounds and stop the bleeding. Talk about being inventive.

We have a record player, but no sewing kit. Will Chuck Berry come to the rescue when all of my buttons have fallen off and I have huge holes in my pants? Although it’d be pretty mind-blowing, I doubt it.

Living more or less on your own for the first time can make you pretty thankful for the family junk drawer back home. Not having that trusty drawer full of stuff can be a real bummer, like the time my roommate and I realized we didn’t bring a printer cable minutes before a paper was due. But at least it’s always an adventure.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go shower. Clearasil doesn’t work as well as shampoo as you might think.

Zach Schweikert is a sophomore advertising major. He is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition and he lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. His column appears every Thursday in Pulp. He can be reached at zdschwei@syr.edu.

Published on October 9, 2014 at 12:19 am