College was very different from what I expected. The first week, it was hard for me to get up for my 8:00 class. And driving around the campus was never a pleasant way to get to my classes. I quickly spent all of my 500 dollars of scholarship money on a bike to ride around campus.
My roommate was a guy from around the area, but too far away to commute to school. We almost had the same interests. He played piano a lot, and enjoyed writing music. I would be hilarious when I would walk into the room, and he would be trying to write a song, but I would interrupt him. We became really good friends, and eventually wrote songs together. Then on Friday nights, once or twice a month, we would go down to the local club and sing.
During the summers, I came home and wrote songs, and worked at the local art shop. When I first worked there, I had easily become annoyed by the colorful paintings and pictures. I would have much rather worked in the music shop, though. As weeks passed in the shop, I grew to like the paintings, and started to enjoy being in the shop. One day, I just became inspired and started an oil painting. It all came totally out of memory, and it came to be a large tree, and many other trees and such around it. I looked at it, and realized that something was missing, and I painted a small stuffed tiger leaning on the trunk of the tree. The painting was displayed in the shop window, and when I was asked what it was named, I just replied, "Lost Friend." And even when I look at it today, I know it is Hobbes.
Soon, in one year of college, I found myself abusing alcohol. Almost every night I would come to the dorm drunk and with a headache. I seriously considered dropping out of college.
One morning though, I woke up miserable, so I didn't go to class. I rummaged around the room trying to find medicine to cure the headache. I came to a box, I forgot I had, and peeked in, and I almost jumped.
Hobbes was there, staring at me, with a faint smile, and he spoke to me. I can't remember what he said, but I received a new attitude at that moment, and conquered my alcohol abuse. I was physically a new man.