Rose Petals on the Bathroom Floor

I woke up this morning, got dressed, and walked out my dorm door. I looked down at the floor briefly and saw a few small red objects. My mind immediately sprang to “Somebody dropped their trash and didn’t bother picking it up”. I walked down the hall to the bathroom where I noticed something strange. Here too, were more of those red shapes on the floor. Now I could see that they were rose petals.

Despite being groggy at seven something in the morning, this sight would have confused me anyway. I mean, how many times do you find rose petals on the floor of a public bathroom? For that matter, when do you find rose petals anyway.

The trail of petals led to the second stall, and I purposely avoided that stall. I mentally noted my actions, wondering why I would be suspicious. Well it was a strange situation, that’s all.

I walked to the bathroom again later in the day, seeing that the rose petals had not been picked up. They still formed a trail to the second bathroom stall. Curious, I entered the stall and immediately looked up. There was nothing up there but blank ceiling.

This is where I get to the point of this blog entry. At first when I saw the trail of petals on the floor, I was reminded of movies where boyfriend do cutesy things like--well--leave a trail of rose petals to the location of some hidden gift or whatever. But I question how a bathroom would fit into such a scenario. Was it maybe some creepy stalker, trying to lure a girl away and do God-knows-what?

It makes me question how I came to such an oddball conclusion. It seems that hours of TV and movies and novels have made me expect such a scary thing to happen in the real world. I wonder, however, if my response was really towards how our society is at this moment, when women can be kidnapped off public streets and raped, or how random acts of violence follow innocents to the grave. The perversion of American culture makes me so worried that I actually looked up at the ceiling, expecting to see a hidden camera!

When I picked up a rose petal and found that it was fake, all the mysteriousness and illusion surrounding it evaporated. Perhaps it was simply some joke left behind from a girl down the hall. Perhaps I worry too much.

It is peculiar to note how my behavior changed after seeing the rose petals, like avoiding the bathroom stall they led to and being extra aware of who else was in the bathroom. In certain situations, this could be a good reaction. But in the girls bathroom on the third floor, it just makes me feel a little foolish for being so caught up in negative news reports and scary movies.

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