Goodbye students!

Another school year ends at IU and soon students will be streaming away from Bloomington in all directions, smiles and hopeful expressions for the future on their young faces. All the retail stores, bars, nightclubs and adult bookstores in Bloomington sigh as they brace themselves for months of drastically reduced sales. The pizza restaurants echo with soft sobs as they look hesitantly to the bleak summer ahead. Soon, the power lines will be adorned with sneakers and the sidewalks and yards in town will be decorated with abandoned furniture.\nBut, for us locals, this is the time of rebirth and joy. We will soon be able to drive through town without constantly veering to avoid students talking on their cell phones, walking blithely across busy roads without looking. We will be able to actually drive to a restaurant, find a parking place with no problems or delay and promptly be seated. We will be able to shop without battling crowds of youngsters with enthusiasm and their parent’s credit cards. Our town is OURS again!\nAye, we’ll probably miss their fresh faces and bodies, the perpetual eye candy that always makes the year interesting. We’ll miss their mistakes and joys, their worries and their confusion. But, we won’t miss Adam Herbert, the traffic, the Little 500 or the crowds. We DO need a break.\nAs the summer wanes and fall approaches, once again we’ll become anxious, anticipating the approach of the Horde once again. Their credit cards will return and pizza pies will start spinning madly again. Their idealism and energies, untainted by experience, will once more stimulate the newspapers, the radio, the streets and neighborhoods. Bloomington will yawn, stretch, and start buzzing once more. However, everything in its time. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Enjoy the summer!