Spring and summer 1990…
…starting right after my eighteenth birthday, when I had to give up on the school I wanted and go with the school that wanted me. At least it seemed that way at the time. I’d had an official overnight visit, two or three Senior Days, a pair of scholarship interviews (one of which forced me to split early from the traditional victory luncheon at Dexter’s after winning County again (that one ran our streak to 6 and retired a second trophy), and they even gave me Homecoming tickets where I saw a last-second jumper win the game, 100-56. (They took a three at the buzzer trying to get the century. This was in the era of Run-TMC at Golden State, of Gaithers and Kimble at Loyola Marymount, of flat-out run-and-gun basketball, and I fell in love on the spot.) And that doesn’t count the flood of mail – it seemed like I got some sort of flyer or booklet or letter or packet every other day.
So I was quickly reconciled to the idea, and after that, I basically phoned it in the rest of the way. My senior year had been a drag anyway, since most all my friends had graduated the year before, and I was reduced to pining for one girl 1200 miles away who I’d only ever seen once. Meanwhile, locally, well… “We’ve had the donkey’s intended girlfriend kidnapped by aliens and replaced with Junior Miss Blount County Agriculture – let’s see if he notices!”
I noticed, jackass.
But this was going to be it. The big dream. College. The day I was preparing for literally since I started kindergarten.
I bought the cap, of course. And the T-shirt. And started loading up on black and gold. And started imagining how life would be now that I was going off to college at last. No more getting up at half-past-hell-no to catch the bus to take me to the other bus to take me to school. No more driving a half-hour only to start with Calculus at 8 AM. Hell, no more 8 AM starts EVER. No more long dull nights with only the phone for company because all my friends lived on the other end of the county. My own phone number! My own mailing address. My own identity. At last, a chance to start fresh and be the me I’d always wanted to become.
To this day, I hear the opening bars of Alphaville’s “Summer Rain” and there I am – new car stereo fitted in the Monte Carlo with my graduation money, windows down, T-tops out, sunlight through the green leaves on Montevallo Road or Shoreline Drive, sipping on some ridiculous iced-coffee concoction from Barnie’s. Waiting for reruns of “Twin Peaks” to start. Splashing out for my first pair of Nike cross-trainers. Wondering if I might actually have a girlfriend by this time next year.
And then there was summer rush.
It’s my mother’s fault, in a way – she called around and asked various people in the college, and found out that something like four-fifths of the students were in the Greek system. So I put my name in, sheesh, guess I’d better. And then, for six weekends out of seven in the middle of the summer, I had my weekends planned for me. Friday night, come onto campus, meet a few people, shake some hands, maybe there’s a guy with a box guitar or a comedian or some such as we hang around in casual conversation, sort of. Sleep on a sleeping bag in one of the dorms, then up in the morning and off to some body of water for the day, where I could float down the Cahaba in an inner tube or fall off the catamaran on Lake Martin or splash around in somebody’s pool and whoa, did that girl lose her top when she hit the water? Back to the frat house in the evening, a little better cleaned up, they’ve brought some of their sorority friends, there’s a band, maybe there’s volleyball if there’s a pit out back.
I think I was the only guy who made all six. I know there were only five of us at the first one – the laid-back drunken stoner frat – and I don’t think any of them posted for all six. However, one of those guys (who never pledged) would hire me three years later to run the sports section of the campus paper, which wasn’t bad. And by the last one, I’d met about two-thirds of the guys who would be on my floor in the dorm that first year – a restricted-visitation-hours floor. (Within four months, guys were moving to 24-hour unlimited-visit floors to try to get some peace and quiet. People thought letting girls in would cause trouble? Girls are a civilizing influence. A bunch of guys left to their own devices, that’s where all the trouble in the world starts.)
I remember a big trip to Wal-Mart to get things like a laundry hamper, a wipe-off whiteboard for the door, a phone with an answering machine built in – I was the first person in my family’s history to own an answering machine. I remember getting on the phone with the assigned roommate to sort out who would bring the TV, who would bring the fridge, who smoked (neither of us, yet). I called South Central Bell for a work order two weeks in advance, because there weren’t permanent phone hookups in the dorms, and for the first month of school, I had the only phone on the floor other than one pay phone.
I was thrilled. I was chomping at the bit, raring to go. I was going to answer that pay phone, the one that would undoubtedly have the numbers of all the pay phones in the girls’ dorms penciled on the wall next to it. I was going to hang out on the deck in front of the late-night dining spot with people from all over. I was going to slouch into class at 10 AM and knock down A’s. I was going to bust a lung shouting at basketball games. I was going to get to drink actual booze, and maybe even get to second base with a girl – maybe more than one! – and I might even join a fraternity and pull the craziest stunts and hacks and pranks and leave people wondering how they were going to get that Volkswagen down off the roof without spooking the cow inside it. I was going to live like I’d never lived before.
I was wrong.