Gordon

Gordon was a bearded dragon and technically he belonged to my roommate, but like everything in that dorm, we all kind of shared him by default. He sat under his heat lamp like a grumpy old man watching sports. Never blinked. Never cared. You could hold up a Dorito and he’d just give you the stink eye. But man, when you gave him a cricket? Guy turned into a velociraptor. Pure chaos. He didn’t cuddle. He didn’t play. He didn’t even move unless you bribed him. But still, he was part of the vibe. We’d be up late gaming or cramming for finals, and there’d be Gordon, sitting on his log, judging us. Then one day he just stopped moving. We thought he was in “brumation” (reptile hibernation or whatever), but nah. He had checked out permanently. We buried him in an old pizza box behind the dorm. Someone wrote “RIP Lizard King” on it with a Sharpie. Weirdly, we still refer to that part of the room as “Gordon’s corner.” He was cold-blooded in more ways than one. But we loved him.