Lexi Salazar

I love Domino’s cheesy bread as much as the next person (it is, after all, my secret obsession), but sometimes after a late night out I want something a little less…generic. Luckily in the great city of Boston there are a ton of great late-night delivery places, but for me on the nights where I don’t feel like hitting up Tamer via the online Domino’s delivery tracking site, I hit up my old friend Mohamed for some Middle Eastern cuisine from Falafel Corner. 
 
My love affair with Falafel Corner started about half a year ago.  I was stuck on the opposite side of town from Warren Towers and in need of a ride home.  It was late and I didn’t want to pay for a cab or take the T, so I called my old friend Mohamed to come pick me up.  When he picked me up I noticed a new feature on his car: a Falafel Corner car top sign.  As it turns out, he had taken a break from delivering falafel to pick me up.  Since I had never eaten falafel, much less delivered it before, I decided to stick around with him.  I decided to be co-deliveryman for the night.
 
Since that fateful night, I have been a regular customer at Falafel Corner, and have managed to befriend most of the inviting employees.  The menu features a variety of food from Falafel wraps to Chicken Shawarma.
 

This semester is flying by, and Spring Break is SO CLOSE to being here.  I know that I am super excited to have a week off, and I expect everyone else is too.  All fun aside, Spring Break can also quite easily become a breeding ground for danger.  Not to state the obvious, but be safe.  No, I’m serious.
 
If you are going to the beach, or another place where you will be exposed to the sun, wear sunscreen.  I know it’s oily and can be a hassle to remember, but it will be worth it.  You don’t want to have leathery skin when you get older.  You don’t want premature wrinkles.  You definitely don’t want to risk getting skin cancer when you’re older when you should be doing everything you can to prevent it now.
 
Be conscious of how much you drink, what you are drinking, and who you are drinking with.  Every year there are multiple accounts of college students dying during Spring Break because they were drunk and fell off of a balcony.  It happens.  Be in control, because no one is invincible.  This can be easier to do if you are keeping track of how much you are drinking.  Of course you should never leave a drink unattended either.  We would all like to believe the best about people, but we live in a scary world.  Just watch your drink.  You won’t regret it.
 

I still remember my first time.  It was late in the evening, I was sitting on one extra-long twin bed in a Warren single, staring out the window into the starless sky.  It was pretty late; it must have been past midnight, but not yet past 3 a.m. 
 
“You have to try this,” my friend said, handing me the open box of Domino’s Cheesy Bread she had just ordered. 
 
I held the warm, greasy box in my hands and stared down into it.  Inside, the loaf of cheesy bread shined up at me.  The scent of cheese, bread, gooey goodness, and instant regret wafted up into my nostrils.  How could I resist? 
 
I was hooked by the first bite.  It is safe to say I had never had any one food that filled me simultaneously with so much joy and so much shame.  And that’s all it took for me, a Domino’s Cheesy Bread virgin, to become enamored with this product. 
 
As the weeks passed, my addiction just grew.  If I had absolutely no shame or health-awareness, and an endless amount of Dining Points, I may have let this become a daily treat.  Luckily it never got to that point.  I kept it to a weekend-only tradition.  That was bad enough.
 
Every Friday night, I would go out to a party or a friend’s apartment.  But the whole night I would have one thing on my mind: going home and ordering cheesy bread.  I would call in the order with a friend or two, and together we would track it online.  Tamer was always the person who made our order (this helped me develop an unhealthy obsession with Tamer – but that’s a story for another time) and we would wait patiently until the driver would call and announce his arrival.
 

Winter is always consistently my favorite time of year.  I love the cold, I love the presents, and I love the lights.  The holiday movies always warmed my heart just as much as the fire in the fireplace.  I could sing along to holiday songs all year, and going to see the Nutcracker ballet was a reason to dress up and spend time with my family.  But, of course, my favorite part of Christmas was Santa Claus.
 
Whether you called him Santa, Kris Kringle, or Saint Nicholas, he meant the same thing to all.  The thought that any person would have a career based on making the whole world happy on one day a year was simply inspiring.  To believe such goodness could exist in this world was one part of the magic.  The anticipation of presents was another.
 
Every Christmas Eve I remember waiting up late at night in hopes of catching a glimpse of the mystical and jolly man.  Part of me wanted to see him in the flesh.  Another part of me wanted to keep him mysterious.  As I grew older, and admittedly more cynical, the part of me that wanted him to remain mysterious grew.  I remember trying to get to bed as soon as possible so I wouldn’t accidentally catch my parents make a clumsy mistake, and reveal themselves as the true Santa Claus.  Finally in middle school, my dad brought the topic of Santa up in conversation, very casually.
 
“I mean, you’ve known Santa isn’t real for a while, haven’t you?” my dad laughed.
 
No dad.  But I do know now.
I mean, subconsciously I knew.  I just had never said those words aloud to myself.  And hearing my dad say those words out loud made it even more final, even more permanent.  There was no way I could try to deny or hide from the truth anymore.  I had to accept it.