Everyone has something to confess. Whether it is as small as stealing your roommate’s food or as big as the time you accidentally broke into someone’s house, it feels good to free your conscience.

I realized this when my friend and I shared our various weekend mishaps over dinner one night. While explaining how my roommate and I ended up sleeping in each other’s beds, my friend broke in to confess that she stole a coat from a party.

A doctor’s note found in the coat’s pocket revealed its owner. ‘If you’re out there, Justin,’ my friend exclaimed to the empty ears of Ernie Davis dining hall, ‘I’m sorry I stole your coat, and I’m sorry you have ADD.’

Taking a cue from my friend, I decided to come clean about a few deeds of my own. So here goes. These are my confessions. Just when I thought I had said all I could say, my chick on the side says she got one on the way … oh, wait, wrong set of confessions.

First, I want to own up to my Internet vices. In step with Dear Girls Above Me, a popular Twitter account, I have chronicled many of my next-door neighbors’ loud outbursts on my blog. I can hear everything through the paper-thin walls, but instead of politely asking them to turn the music down, I choose to rant online.

Next, I confess to owning a motley crew of purse-sized stolen items. If you’re missing exactly one spoon, I probably took it. After my roommate and I amalgamated a wrench, two plastic lemons and a cup shaped like Frankenstein, we decided narrow our search. We aspired to compile a respectable and interesting collection: spoons. Hide yo forks, hide yo knives and hide yo spoons ‘cause we be stealing all the silverware.

Lastly, every Thursday everyone thinks I’m studying, but really, I’m hooking up with Shane Oman in the projection room above the auditorium … oops, wrong list again.

After my friends initial confession, I passed along her coat-stealing incident to another friend, and we miraculously tracked down the owner. I can only hope my confessions will lead to similar change. Maybe now my neighbors will finally lower the noise level. Or at least more than 10 people will read my blog. And perhaps frats will stop hiding their silverware during parties. (Come on, just leave it out and let us finish our collection.)

As these confessions go on to make this campus a better place, at least for spoon stealers and passive-aggressive bloggers, I think there are few things others should own up to.

Here’s to looking at you, kid who pees in the sink. Where you pee is where I fill up my Brita. Why don’t you come clean about this and find other places to relieve yourself that don’t involve the source of my drinking water. I hear the bathroom is a great place to start.

Shout out to you, girl with the purposely vague but obviously specific Facebook statuses. Your rants about your backstabbing friends and jerk boyfriends are poignant, but I simply don’t care. If you’re going to gossip about people we went to high school with, at least state their names.

While we’re at it, spastic caps lock users should also concede their own bad habits and sToP tYpInG lYkE tHiS.

Let’s take this moment to wipe our slates clean for the rest of the semester. Even if confessing doesn’t bring about any change, someone is bound to get a kick out of whatever you’re admitting. Stealing a few spoons, and a plastic lemon or two, hasn’t hurt anyone yet.

Emmie Martin is a sophomore magazine journalism major. Her column appears every other Thursday. She would like to thank her friends for their confessions and apologize to the residents of 863 Ackerman Ave. for taking their plastic fruit. Email her at esmart01@syr.eduand follow her on Twitter at @emmiemartin. If you’d like to read her blog, good luck finding it.

Published on February 8, 2012 at 12:00 pm