College Friend: Bid, Part 1

I'm going to start this post with a very blunt statement: Bid was the whitest black person I ever met. I will explain that a little bit later here. Bid was a year ahead of me and came to Eastern New Mexico University from Chicago, IL. In addition to his involvement in theatre and choir, he was a jock. I know he played baseball, but I don't know if he played other sports.

I first became aware of Bid around February of 1982, when my Drama Club went to the ENMU Drama Festival. I remember seeing this tall, black man walking around the theatre from time to time. He really stood out. Unfortunately, I never got to see him perform because the ENMU production we got to see that year was "Arsenic and Old Lace," which consisted of mostly white people in the cast.

When I started getting involved in the Theatre department in college, I got to know him a little better, but in isolated fragments. I have to admit that coming from a town with very few black people, I found him rather intimidating at first. But I really became familiar with him after he was cast as Macheath in "The Threepenny Opera." He was absolutely phenomenal in that role and had complete command of the stage, despite attempts by one of the other actors to upstage him. He proved to be an extremely versatile actor and dancer and was someone I started looking up to.

The main reason I refer to Bid as the whitest black person I ever met is because his tastes in the arts are not strictly tied to his connection with his being African-American. Most other black actors, if you ask them who their favorite playwright is, will likely respond with August Wilson. I think Bid's favorite was David Mamet. Bid also listened to country music. Bid did listen to a lot of R&B, but he had very expansive tastes and also had a flair for theatrical music and opera.

Bid was one of the go-to people for the Theatre department's professors. He choreographed numbers for our musicals and the Dance department's annual stage presentations. My junior year, we did a production of "Mother Courage and her Children." Bid was called upon to write a musical score for the lyrics that Bertolt Brecht wrote. It seemed like there was almost nothing he couldn't do.

However, this appeared to have all gone to his head at one point. During his senior year, he was asked to choreograph one of the numbers for "HMS Pinafore," in which he played Deadeye Dick. It was a piece that involved the entire male chorus. The few days before he was to present the choreography, he, Chud, myself and some other Theatre students went to audtion at the Southwest Theatre Conference. The main goal of the conference was to land a summer job with any number of theatrical companies that were hiring. Bid got a lot of offers. He was really riding high because it meant he would have something to go to after he graduated.

The Saturday after the conference, we showed up for rehearsal. Bid started showing us the choreography and took us through it step by step, very slowly. However, when we attempted to do the choreography at full speed, we found that even the Bolshoi Ballet Company would have had a great deal of difficulty trying to properly execute it. During one of the breaks, a few of us cast members were talking and we came to the conclusion that Bid was making it up as he went along. Afterwards, I saw Bid sitting and talking to the director, Dr. R. I could not hear the conversation, but Dr. R did not appear to be pleased with what Bid had come up with. I don't know if Dr. R called him on the possibility that he made it up on the spot, or if he thought that the complicated choreography was going to interfere with us being able to sing the number properly. At any rate, we had new choreography the next week.

Bid became one of the very few people I knew from the Theatre department who graduated and was actually able to become a professional actor. While other students in the department envisioned a life of fame and fortune after graduating (including myself), Bid was probably the only person from our group who had a realistic view of how a life in the theatre was supposed to be after college and he accomplished a great deal.

There will be more on that in tomorrow's post.

Overextending myself

I enjoyed all the extra-curricular activities that I participated in during high school. I expected to be able to do the same thing in college and fill my free time getting involved in campus activities. That didn't work out the way I thought.

Before I started college, Mom wanted me to look into getting involved in the Baptist Student Union. However, I was sort of hoping that I could explore my own spirituality during college without being tethered to a church atmosphere. Even though I am a Christian, I felt very uneasy being around other people of faith at that time. I only ever went there a couple of times during my sophomore year. It really wasn't my scene. I just felt like everybody was very self-righteous. The funny thing is that I knew many of the students, and they never acted like that when I ran into them on campus. This was just isolated to when they were in that building. I didn't feel like putting on fake airs just for their benefit.

One thing that we did not have at Artesia High School was Speech and Debate. At other schools, this fell under the Drama club. But no one there felt it was important enough to budget for yet another group of students to go to various competitions throughout the state.

When Eastern New Mexico University's Speech and Debate team announced their first meeting of the semester, I went to check it out. It looked very interesting at first and appeared to be something I really wanted to be a part of. However, the faculty member in charge of the team made it clear that he expected more out of the participants. It wasn't going to be like the high school version that I never got to be a part of. For instance, we could not just enter one aspect of the competition, like speech, interpretation or debate. We would be expected to get involved in at least five categories per competition.

This was not even the challenging part. We were required to come with whatever we would be speaking about or interpreting or debating on our own. This one girl and I went to the library and tried to find some material that would be suitable. She had done the Speech and Debate the year before, so she knew what was and was not acceptable material. Everything I suggested, she said we couldn't do it. It was very frustrating.

If I had been in Speech and Debate in high school, this probably wouldn't have seemed insurmountable. If I were permitted to just ease my way into with maybe two separate projects, I might have been able to work my way up to five or more. But the team advisor wouldn't allow that.

So I just quit. I had better things to do with my time at college. Besides, I was starting to feel some pompous attitude from the members of the team who knew what they were doing and didn't seem to like having to talk me through things that they had learned more than four years ago. And it wasn't like I left anyone hanging. I think they already felt like they would be better off without me.

During my sophomore year, I was approached to join Phi Mu Alpha, the music fraternity. It wasn't like one of the clubhouse fraternities, so I decided to pledge. I and five other candidates went through the initiation process and I was given a pledge pin. A week later, I was asked to pledge Alpha Psi Omega, the fraternity for the theatre department. With my class overload that semester and involvement in theatrical productions and the renaissance faire that had been planned that year, something had to give. I returned the pledge pin for Phi Mu Alpha. It was getting to be too much.

But I felt really bad quitting because that supposedly had an impact on some of the other pledges. Three of them also pulled out and they said it was because of my decision not to pursue it further. I had no idea I had that type of influence. I probably didn't, and they just used it as an excuse to get out because they were probably overloaded as well.

I also had to cut back my participation in the Renaissance Faire. I was still in it with one theatrical presentation and performing with the Madrigal Singers. Looking back, I still don't know how I got through that semester with my insanity intact. Maybe I didn't.

The Baptist Student Union, the Speech and Debate team, Phi Mu Alpha and the Renaissance Fair made me wish I had been able to avoid or quit other things when I was younger, like 4H or work. This was a good step toward becoming an adult. It's too bad I never quite mastered that ability, especially when it came to relationships, but that is fodder for future posts.

Mistake's a thief

I made a lot of mistakes, especially in my childhood. The worst part was facing the consequences.



When I was younger, I looked forward to the day I would no longer make mistakes. The thing is, you never get too old for that.

College Friend: Kird, Part 2

After I graduated from college in 1986 and was living on my own, I received word that Kird was in Germany. I was told he worked in the kitchen at the Air Force base there. I was given a phone number to call him. I had never called overseas before. I was afraid my phone bill would hit $100.

I managed to get in contact with him. We talked on a couple of different occasions, but it wasn't until about the third call that he told me he actually enlisted in the Air Force. His dad pretty much forced him to do that because he was sick of him living like a bohemian and having to call home every other week asking for money. I guess he was sort of embarassed about having to admit that he was in the Air Force because he said the military was the last place he would turn for work. He didn't care much for how he grew up in a military family and didn't want to be subjected to that for the rest of his life.

A few years later, he was stationed at Alamogordo. (This is one thing that irritated a lot of military members that I knew. They grew up in a podunk town that had a base. They joined the Armed Forces and got stationed in some exotic location for a couple of years. Then, they would be re-assigned back to the podunk town they were trying to get away from in the first place.) I was living in Denver at the time and got in contact with him. He told me he had gotten married. I knew he was serious, but I actually laughed at the prospect of him settling down. I said, "The next thing, you're going to tell me you have a child." "Yes, I do, and she the most beautiful little girl in the world!" I was stunned. I never could see Kird as a parent (as much as I could never see myself as one, either).

A few weeks later, I came down to Artesia because my father was getting married. I came over to Alamogordo to visit him. By this time, he and his wife had separated and she had custody of the child. Kird was trying to find a new place to live in Alamogordo. He found this one house, but was concerned because it called for a one-year lease. He was nervous about committing that long a time as he might be re-assigned. Later that night, I met his wife and child. He held his daughter in his arms. It was apparent that he missed her very much.

The next time I saw Kird was a few months later, when I was moving from Denver to San Diego. He had managed to get back together with his wife and they were living in a house they rented. This was October 31st, 1991 and the southern part of the state got pelted with a surprise early snow storm. His wife was concerned about me driving through the mountains to get to Alamogordo, but I found it a breeze after living in Denver for three years.

Kird came out with me to San Diego for a classic road trip. We ran all over the place, but got on each other's nerves after a couple of days. While he was there, we were contemplating driving up to Burbank to see Chud, but he wasn't at home when we called. We left a message on his machine. Chud told me later he never wanted to see Kird again, so I'm glad we didn't try to drive up to see him.

When I came home for Thanksgiving the following year, I drove through Alamogordo and saw Kird. He had completed his tour with the Air Force, but he and his wife had separated again. He was in the process of moving out of the house they were renting. He was also considering re-enlisting with the Air Force. He had a new girlfriend. She came over that night. While she was there, he bragged to me about how he had told her about every woman he had ever slept with. I threw out a few names of girls I knew about in college. He had already told her about them. I started to think if there was someone he may not have told her about. After a few minutes, I shouted out the name Carz (someone I had tried to hook up with before I found out he slept with her and whom I will go into detail in an upcoming post). His girlfriend was aghast. She hadn't heard that name before. Kird covered his face in shame. He explained that he was drunk and stoned and it was the worst sexual experience he had ever had in his life and that's why he didn't tell her about it. (He left out the part in which he did it at a party with other people watching.)

The next time I came out, Kird and his wife had gotten back together and were living with his parents. Kird had started going to grad school at New Mexico State University. He was going to become a social worker.

He eventually finished school and worked with Child Protective Services in Tucumcari, NM. In 1997, I was on vacation in New Mexico with my girlfriend Kez. We were in Clovis, which is close to Tucumcari. We called to see if he was there, but we found out he was actually in Clovis with a couple of twin kids who had been removed from their parents. They had been taken to the hospital there. We went to the hospital, but we never could find him.

In an even more surprising move, Kird went to school and became an attorney. I couldn't believe this was the same person I couldn't get out of bed to go to class in the morning. When I last caught up with him in 2009, he was working as a prosecutor for the District Attorney in Clovis. I met him and his new wife. I never asked about what happened to the old one or his daughter, who was around college age at that time. He invited me to go to the courthouse and see him at work, but since I was in my driving clothes (a t-shirt and jeans), I wouldn't have felt comfortable being in the courtroom. He said I would have looked like one of the defendants.

In the years that followed, Kird accepted my friend request on Facebook, but he never posted anything. He eventually deleted his account. About three years ago, Kird's name appeared in the news as providing an affidavit that he and the District Attorney had engaged in "judge shopping" in order to get a judge accused of bribery convicted. He had to quit his job as a prosecutor.

From what I found on the Internet, it looks like he got a job as an adjunct law professor at Wayland Baptist University (which is really surprising, considering he was an atheist in college). It looks like he then got another job as a prosecutor in Tucumcari about a year ago. Then, a few months ago, he and another attorney set up a private practice in Hobbs, NM. (It must be a really private practice because I can't even find their phone number. I was actually going to call him.)

He also has a law blog (and it's even through Blogger), but he doesn't allow comments on his posts. I've just got no way of getting in touch with him.

But I don't expect that to be a problem for long.

College Friend: Kird, Part 1

I met Kird on my first day of college classes. I don't know why he decided to be friends with me. I didn't ask him to, but we just hung out together a lot. I guess it was because we found we both had an intense interest in pop and rock music, especially the New Music that was becoming en vogue at the time.

Kird had grown up in Alamogordo, NM, which is about a two-hour drive from Artesia. His father was in the Air Force. Prior to coming to Eastern New Mexico University, Kird's father was stationed in Germany. It was at the high school there in which Kird started becoming involved in acting. He decided to major in Theatre when he went to college.

Before I really got to know him, someone said that Kird wanted to grow up to be Michael Jackson. He was trying to be a rock star and entertain people. I'll admit, he was very energetic and could be entertaining, but in college, he had no means of actually attaining this goal.

Kird was a rather hedonistic character. It seemed like he was always in pursuit of whatever would give him pleasure. More often than not, these pursuits involved other female students. In this day and age, he would likely be kicked out of school for that behavior.

Kird could also be extremely overbearing at times. I enjoyed being around him, but if there were other people around, Kird had a tendency to steal the spotlight. He could easily turn into one of those "look at me" people before I had a chance to let my presence be known. He was 100 times worse than my brother Loyd.

So I don't know how it happened, but he became College Roommate #5 during the Spring 1984 semester. My world was turned upside down that term. Kird would stay up until 3am. He would play music, talk on the phone, watch TV, go out to who knows where and bring people to the room. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we had a class together at the Theatre at 9am. I could almost never get him to wake up and go to class.

Strangely enough, this was the semester I came close to getting a 4.0 average on my classes, so he was not a deterrant to my ability to study.

Also that semester, Kird was supposed to come with me to Artesia for one of the weekends I had planned to go home. We were going to leave after my last class at 1:00pm. However, he was nowhere to be found. I looked all over the campus and a couple of other places he frequented. After a couple of hours, I figured he didn't want me to find him and went home by myself. I kept calling the dorm room that weekend, but he never picked up. When I came back and asked him about it, he said, "I never said I was going to go."

It turned out that he had met some girl that day and decided to spend the weekend hanging around with her (although he never admitted this was the reason). That summer, he and that girl got an apartment together.

The next semester, Kird was no longer attending classes. I guess his father got tired of the bad grades he was making and stopped sending him money to go to school on. He was working in the food services department at ENMU. He was hoping to earn enough money to come back to school the next semester. But I don't know how he was planning to do that, because the first thing he did was buy a $500 bass guitar. He wanted to become a musician and planned to practice with the bass every day and get as good as Sting, whom he greatly admired. He brought the guitar over to the theatre and he was in absolute awe of it. I don't know what happened, but a couple of weeks later, he didn't have that bass anymore.

Even though he wasn't attending classes, Kird got cast in the Theatre department's production of "Charley's Aunt." During that production, he met this freshman girl who was also cast. They really hit it off. The only problem was that he was still living with that other girl. I didn't realize Kird had hooked up with the new student until later.

One night, during rehearsal, the girl he was living with showed up at the theatre. She yelled at him about a lot of stuff and said he owed her money. She then left. Kird went back into the rehearsal. I asked one of the actors what was going on. All he would say is, "Kird and his girlfriend are having problems." I suddenly felt like I was forced into the shroud of secrecy that surrounded me all throughout junior high and high school. I wanted to scream out, "I CAN SEE THAT, YOU MORON! KIRD IS MY FRIEND! WE WERE ROOMMATES LAST SEMESTER! IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON, WHY CAN'T YOU JUST GIVE ME A STRAIGHT ANSWER? IT'S NOT LIKE I'M GOING TO RUIN ANYONE'S REPUTATION!"

And I guess that was the problem. I felt like Kird was leaving me out of his life. The old girlfriend left and the new girlfriend moved in. However, she never told her family that she had left the dorm to live with Kird until they came up one weekend. I don't know if meeting the parents was an explosive event, but pretty soon after that, he had moved to Albuquerque. I thought he was gone forever.

I was wrong. A few weeks later, he returned trying to get back with that girl. By this time, she had hooked up with another student, who had recently gotten out of prison. Kird stalked them to the boyfriend's apartment. He was worried that he was going to do something that would send him back to jail. However, nothing happened. While he was in town, Kird had nowhere to stay, so he wound up sleeping on the floor of my dorm room between the beds of my roommate and me.

That night, I got a phone call at 1am. It was one of the administrators. He said he had received a complaint about Kird. Apparently the girl gave him my name as a possible contact. He asked me if I knew where Kird was. I said, "He's right here. Hang on." I gave Kird the phone. Kird did a lot of denying on his end of the conversation. Apparently, the girl accused him of harassing and threatening her. A couple of days later, Kird went back to Albuquerque.

He started doing poetry readings there. He actually had a following. I did go to visit him a couple of times in Albuquerque before I graduated from college, but I never saw him do the poetry stuff.

Kird did a lot more stuff after I graduated from college. His life went in directions I never imagined. I'll get to that in tomorrow's post.

Elected Office!

Having left high school behind me, I was very interested in being a part of student government at Eastern New Mexico University. I felt like I didn't really get to do everything I wanted to do in student council in high school and college would give me a second shot at that.

In college, it was called the Student Senate. You could choose between representing your dorm or representing the department your major was in. My freshman year, it was very easy to get into because no one else from my dorm ran in the election, kind of like how I wound up on the Student Council my junior year in high school.

All we really did was approve spending bills for school funds to go to various functions. We just zipped through them really fast without getting a chance to discuss them. I think that's how real-life legislation works.

Unlike Student Council, we were not very active as a group outside of our weekly meetings. It seemed like a lot of students weren't even aware there was a student government system in place that decided how to spend a portion of student funds that got distributed to the various organizations around campus.

That's not to say that things didn't get dramatic. During one meeting in February of 1983, people were starting to get really irritated about this one particular issue and there was a lot of back and forth. While this was going on, I started feeling really fatigued. When we finally closed the meeting and did the closing prayer, I leaned over so far, I thought my head was about to hit the table.

We started leaving the meeting room. All of a sudden, people started collapsing. I assisted one woman in getting out the door. I felt like I was about to collapse, so I went to the bathroom to splash water on my face. Since I couldn't get enough water in my hands, I plugged up with sink with paper towels. I felt a little bit better and went outside the bathroom. I was really tired and decided to rest a little bit and laid down on the floor.

The next thing I knew, a bunch of people, including an administrator, was carrying me outside the Campus Union Building, where EMTs had arrived and set up a makeshift triage station. I felt better when I got outside, but I had a big headache. I took a couple of puffs of oxygen. They told me to go to the hospital to get checked out, so I went over there, but I didn't take any medication, not even aspirin. They asked me if I had taken any other form of medication.

Other people had it a lot worse and had to be hospitalized. I went home and got a good night's sleep. When I woke up the next morning, the headache was mostly gone, but I could still feel a little tingle from it. However, most of the other people caught up in the action complained of headaches for weeks on end, especially those who had to be hospitalized.

It turned out there was a carbon monoxide leak in the ceiling in the meeting room. There was not enough carbon monoxide in the air to kill us, just enough to make us woozy. They said that if we had gotten carbon monoxide poisoning, once we laid down and fell asleep, we would be dead.

A couple of weeks later, I had to talk to the college's insurance adjuster. They told me my bill came to $60. "WHAT? But all I did was take a couple of breaths of oxygen!" The adjuster assured me that I was not going to have to pay that, the college would take care of it. I still found it shocking that just breathing in a little oxygen would run that much. Thank goodness we get it for free every day.

A few weeks later, student elections for President and Vice President were taking place. A debate was held in the auditorium in the School of Business. During the debate, I started experiencing "deja vu" for the first time in my life. I started feeling like I did that day of the carbon monoxide leak. Just as I was thinking this, two of the students who were hospitalized suddenly got up and ran out of the room without saying anything. They were experiencing the exact same thing I was, but it felt more threatening for them.

The other dramatic thing my freshman year was that we tried to kick our student body president out of office. He had used student funds to get rather expensive gifts for everyone in his administration and gold pocket watch for himself. We had to hold a public hearing before putting it to a vote. The public meeting was a witch hunt that shouldn't have happened in the first place because we did not have an actual quorum. After that shameless display of political strife, we voted against forcing him out of office. But everyone still got their gifts and he got to keep the watch.

I didn't get elected to Student Senate my sophomore year. I guess the gas attack and the impeachment of the president raised the profile of the Student Senate. Two other people from the dorm ran the next year and I came in last place. The next year, I ran to represent the College of Liberal Arts, which was the department Radio/TV was located. I lost that one, too. However, the person who did win quit at the semester and they asked me to take the seat.

I was elected my senior year. I was made the Parliamentarian and the head of the Rules Committee. About 20 years after I graduated, I looked at my ENMU yearbook from 1986. It showed me posed with other members of the committee. For the life of me, I couldn't remember attending one meeting with those people. I know meetings took place because they were supposed to, but I didn't remember getting together with those particular students. I guess my senior year was more of a blur than I would have like to have imagined.

About 10 years later, I would attempt to get involved in getting elected to a real public office, but I never even got my name on the ballot. That's a post for a much later date.

College Friend: Chud, Part 2

After we had graduated from Eastern New Mexico University in 1986, Chud and I stayed in constant contact. We would send each other Christmas cards and call long distance from time to time.

After leaving ENMU, Chud got accepted into a Masters program in stage design at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. He and Elad lived together while he earned his degree. He designed the sets for a number of productions.

In 1989, I was living in Denver. He and Elad came through town on their way out to California after he had graduated. He went there to see his father. They got to meet Bez, who was my girlfriend at the time.

Shortly after arriving in the Los Angeles area, Chud was able to get a job as an Imagineer for Disney's theme parks. Chud didn't think much of marriage, after seeing what happened to his parents after they had gotten divorced. However, he was persuaded to tie the knot with Elad after she proposed to him. I got an announcement from Chud and Elad that they were officially husband and wife. On the back of the note, he drew a shackle and wrote, "Watch out, or you may be next!" However, I never did get married to Bez.

A couple of years later, I moved out to San Diego, CA. About three months later, I got to pay my first visit to Chud and Elad at their apartment in Burbank. It was nice to get to be closer to Chud. I went up every few months to visit them. Sometimes, Chud would take me to Disneyland to see some of the projects he had worked on. I probably went to Disneyland at least 10 times over the next few years.

Eventually, Chud and Elad bought their own home in Burbank. They got a good price on it because it's close to the airport. The entire house is a work in progress because Chud is always doing something creative with it. Something always changes every time I go there.

In 2000, there was a screenwriting contest called "Project Greenlight." I asked Chud if he wanted to help me write a screenplay to enter. I had an idea for a story and we made arrangements for me to come up. I pounded out the majority of the script in a week on an electric typewriter and came up to put it all into his computer. He thought what I had done was very well-written We made plans for me to come up the next week and we would finalize it.

I arrived the next weekend to find he had drastically altered the script. He added more characters and it became a lot more complex, almost too much for the million-dollar budget we were supposed to work with. Some of the changes I agreed with, but most of them were so far out in left field, I didn't feel like it was the same story. So we worked and reached a compromise on many of the issues. However, the biggest fight we got into was figuring out a title. We threw a few titles out and wrote them down. After awhile, we weren't getting any closer to coming up with a title. I sat down at the keyboard and deleted some of my suggestions. I had hoped that Chud would follow my lead and remove some of his as well. But when he sat down to type, HE ADDED MORE TITLES!

Eventually, we agreed on a title and I thought it was ready to enter. We printed it out so we could submit it to the copyright office and the Writers Guild of America. During the first contest for "Project Greenlight," there were several submissions that were already being read and graded before the deadline came. I had hoped to get our screenplay in a week before the deadline so that it would get properly read. However, Chud decided it needed more work, so he made more changes to it, without consulting me. The screenplay was entered on time, but we mostly got bad reviews, so we didn't win. We probably would have gotten bad reviews even if we went with my original draft.

(Years later, I read the actual script that was submitted, which I hadn't done at the time of the contest. It was so different from the compromised version I had initially agreed to, to the point that there were a number of real world logistical flaws with it. However, if I had any further objections, we never would have gotten the entry into the contest on time.)

The next year, we attempted to enter "Project Greenlight" again with a new screenplay. We didn't have as much drama in the writing this time and the reading period didn't start until after the deadline. However, right before we were going to enter the screenplay, Chud's computer crashed and deleted all our work. He called up and profusely apologized to me. He wasn't aware of this, but I wasn't going to have enough money to cover all the entry fees, so it actually came as a relief that I wasn't going to have to fork out all that money. He was probably shocked that I didn't yell at him. I had hard copies of the treatment and many of the key scenes. It was not going to be a problem re-creating the screenplay. We just weren't going to be able to enter that year.

The next time they had a "Project Greenlight," I was able to rewrite the screenplay, but we didn't really stand a chance because they were looking for some type of horror or thriller type of film and this was a comedy. I had a good idea for a story in the thriller vein, but hadn't fully fleshed it out. We would never write another screenplay again.

I moved to San Jose in 2003 and don't get to see Chud and Elad that frequently anymore. However, when we do get together, we always have a great time.

I hope we'll always be able to keep the spark of our friendship alive through at least the next 32 years.

I want my money back from SamTrans

As much fun as it is taking mass transit to work, I still have a few things to gripe about.



I didn't think $2 a day was a big deal, until I realized I wasn't supposed to be paying it in the first place.

College Friend: Chud, Part 1

On this blog, I make frequent mention of how I could have done things differently to avoid feeling like a total loser my entire life. I've noted how, if given the opportunity to do things over, I might have chosen a different college to go to. But the only reason I would have for not changing this course in my life is my friendship with Chud. I guess the only way I would have been able to maintain that is to start out at Eastern New Mexico University and go to another school while still keeping in contact with him. However, I don't think our relationship as adults would remain the same.

As I mentioned before, I met Chud on the first day of college classes in my Beginning Acting class. Before class started, we talked about our acting experiences and about the audition for "How the Other Half Loves" that night. We had a lot in common. The main difference was that he did not like rock music. And there was another difference I'll detail a little bit later in this post, but it wasn't anything that could keep us from being friends.

I had also seen Chud for the first time a little more than a year before at Boys State. However, he had no recollection of me.

Chud graduated from high school in Lovington, NM, about 70 miles east of Artesia. Like me, he was involved in the choir and drama club. I'm surprised that I never ran into him at the choral festivals that we went to each year. Lovington was always there. However, they never came to the Drama Festials at ENMU.

Chud was the first one of us to get cast in a major role in a mainstage production at ENMU. This set a pattern. Anytime there was a play that featured a geeky character, he was always chosen to play that part. While I do kind of feel that his presence at ENMU kept me from getting cast more often, I never blamed him for that. It would have been nice if the Theatre professors had been more equitable in their casting, but that's a subject for a different series of articles on this blog.

Chud and I were roommates for the Summer 1983 session. We didn't end up trying to kill each other before the end of the two months, but we were never roommates again after that. (Chud would be College Roommate #3. I haven't gotten to #2 yet.)

We continued our close friendship during the next two years of college. However, things changed our senior year when he got a girlfriend. Elad was a girl we had known since freshman year, but she didn't become involved in the Theatre productions until our senior year. She was a Theatre minor. I was actually a good friend of hers before she started dating Chud. We were in the Student Senate together. Their relationship started when Chud was applying her make up before a performance. She asked him out. While we would often hang out from time to time, I frequently felt like a third wheel.

As Theatre majors, we had to produce recitals as part of our requirements for our degrees. I approached him about combining our recitals into one performance. At first, he didn't want to do it. About a week later, he came back and decided it would be a good idea. We titled our recital "Monomania... and Other Things." We traded off back and forth doing scenes. Because I was working full time at a radio station with overnight shifts, I wasn't able to put much of an effort into my part of the recital. Mostly everything I had to do myself. Chud and I did a couple of scenes together, including something from "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" In the review with the professors, they felt like Chud had put a lot of effort into his part and gave him an A. However, they felt like I had slapped my recital together at the last minute and gave me a B. I had to concur. But if given the choice between having a grade A recitial or a full time job when I graduated college, I would choose the job.

Chud and I were the only two Theatre majors from our freshman class to graduate in 1986. Chud went on to do some pretty amazing things once he got out into the real world. I'll go more into detail about that on Monday.

My first (and only) contact high

In case I have never made it clear up to this point, I have never done drugs. I've never smoked marijuana. However, I have been exposed to it, enough that I experienced a touch of what it is like to get high. While I would find myself among others who were smoking weed at various times in my life, this was the only time I ever actually felt something taking effect.

The second weekend of college was Labor Day weekend. While a lot of students from around the area went home, I stayed on campus. I had enjoyed the freedom of being able to be where I wanted when I wanted without having to answer to my parents. Friday night, I found myself hanging out with some people I had met in the few days before classes started. I was in their dorm room in Eddy Hall. There were a few other people in there, and they seemed to not be pleased that I was there, but no one told me to leave.

Then this one guy came in. He had brought the pot. He went over to the desk and pulled out a Ziploc bag. Inside was this solid green clump of material. This would be the first time I had laid my eyes on marijuana. I was surprised to see that it looked like what you would find when you scraped off the underside of a lawnmower.

The guy started pulling the clump apart and putting it into rolling papers. After a while, more people arrived and they started smoking the joints. They passed the joint to me and I just passed it next to the next person. This went on for the next two hours in that 10' x 10' room.

Nobody started acting strange or silly. It was like everyone in the room had been smoking pot for some time, so this was not a rare occurrance for them. I didn't feel anything while I was in the room. However, I decided I was tired and went back to my dorm. As soon as I got to my floor, I actually started feeling a little loopy. While I walked toward my room, I started swaying from side to side down the hallway. I was having a little fun doing this. I started going "woo, woo" with every sway, but not very loudly. I wondered if anyone else would see me acting this way. No one came out of their rooms to see what was going on. I think they were all out smoking pot.

But the one thing I was aware of during my experience was that, if I needed to, I could have stopped swaying and going "woo woo." Since the smokers in the room weren't acting all crazy, it led me to the conclusion that a lot of the people who "act" stoned after they've been smoking don't necessarily have to exhibit how out of it they are. It seemed like they were perfectly capable of pulling themselves together for the sake of appearances when they're outside the "weed realm." I became very intolerant of stoned individuals, especially when they showed up for work like that. However, I also have to acknowledge that I only got a contact high, so I don't really know what it's like to be truly stoned. I also don't know what I myself may or not be able to control about my outward appearance.

This occurred to me when I went to the hospital for a kidney biopsy in 2005. Prior to the procedure, I was given a valium. The nurse started asking me questions. A few moments later, I started feeling really drowsy. I told the nurse I could feel the valium kicking in. When they were wheeling me down the hallway, I started acting a little loopy. I put the sheet over my head and asked if it was okay if I went to the O.R. like that. They said no. I kind of didn't see the point of behaving properly, so that's probably how a lot of people feel when they're on drugs. But again, if it had been important for me to offer a facade of proper decorum, I would have been able to comply.

So, one of the things I learned from my contact high experience in college was to never be in that small a room with a bunch of other people smoking pot. After than, when I encountered people smoking weed, it was usually at someone's roomier house or apartment. I wasn't in a concentrated area, so I didn't inhale as much. I never got high again, and I can't say I ever wanted to.

That was enough for me.

College Roommate #1: Tood

I first became aware of my first college roommate a few weeks before I started school. I received a card from Eastern New Mexico University telling me who it was going to be. It listed his address and phone number, but I didn't feel a need to contact him.

As I mentioned before, I didn't meet him until the Monday before classes started. I came in late after an evening of running around. He was tall with a thin build. He had dark brown hair and a mustache.

We woke up the next morning and talked a little bit. I don't really remember a lot of details about him. I recall from his high school yearbook that he came from a graduating class of about 20 students. One of them was his girlfriend, who went to another college after they finished.

Tood was a "cowboy." I guess he thought that with my last name, I was also a "cowboy," so that's why he chose me as a roommate. We didn't really have a lot in common. I remember during the first week, he came an sat with me during breakfast, but I didn't really have much to talk about with him. After awhile, we hardly spoke to each other at all. He became friends with the two guys in the room next to us. They were also "cowboys." One of them remembered me from Boys State.

His girlfriend came to visit him one weekend. She seemed rather nice.

A few weeks later, his girlfriend called. Tood wasn't there at the time, so she said she would try to call back later. That afternoon, I came back to the room and all of his stuff was gone. I wondered what happened. I thought that since his girlfriend had called, he decided to up and leave school to go be with her. I went and tracked down the Head Resident Advisor at the dorm. He told me that one of the guys next door to us had moved out and Tood decided to switch roommates. I went back to my room. Eventually Tood came back and said he didn't have a problem with me, but he was friendlier with the other person and decided to make the change. However, he was planning to leave at the end of the semester and go to the school where his girlfriend was.

I spent the rest of the semester with a private room. I would get my next roommate in January after the Christmas break.

One day, I got called down to the lobby because a package had been delivered. When I got downstairs, I found that it was meant for Tood. It was a really big box, but it was slightly open, so I could tell what was inside. It was a saddle. I took it over to Tood when he got back to his room.

The next (and last) time I spent any time with Tood, I had heard him watching TV (through our very thin walls). The movie "Fiddler on the Roof" was starting. Since that was the Theatre Department's next production, I asked if I could watch it. He invited me in. He was working on his homework, but didn't seem to mind me being there.

I never saw him again. However, there was something interesting that involved him during the next semester. Early in the fall term, I and my other classmates in my English Composition class had been asked to handwrite this paragraph. We were not told what it was for. We turned in the papers and that was it. A few months later, a girl I knew from Student Senate had asked me to come into the office on campus where she was a graduate student. What she needed me to do was read that paragraph I had written as she recorded it. It was part of a study a professor was doing on how well students are able to write their own handwriting. I think they picked the students with the worst handwriting.

She showed me a list of some of the other students they were trying to get a hold of. I saw Tood's name on the list. I told her that he was no longer at ENMU. A few days later, she told me that she had actually gotten him to come in and record. I told her that wasn't possible. She had me come over and listen to the recording. I instantly recognized the voice. It was not Tood, but another student with the same name from the Theatre department. He was reading Tood's handwriting. On the recording, he was saying, "This is hard to read," which would have made for a very interesting finding in the professor's thesis. However, I told the girl that she would have to call that Tood back in and read his handwriting, which I guess she did, but I'm certain that would have resulted in a tainted subject as he had gotten to read the paragraph beforehand.

I was not able to track Tood down on the Internet. I have no idea where he is now. This would be true for a lot of my former college roommates.

First day of college classes

This was it, the day I officially became a college student. You can check into all the dorms you want, get as much financial aid as you can get your hands on, die of alcohol poisoning at an open frat party, but until you attend your first class, you simply are not a college student.

I got up at 6am on Wednesday, 08/25/82, took a shower and went to the cafeteria at 6:30am to have breakfast. The cafeteria was just a walk across the parking lot to the Campus Union Building.

My first class started at 9am. It was Speech I, one of my general education requirements. It was in the Liberal Arts building. Several of us got there early, but there was another class going on at that time, so we had to wait in the hall. After they came out, we went in. Someone I had met a few days prior was also in the class.

Then the professor came in. He was the absolute stereotype of a college professor. He was very tall, had graying hair and a Van Dyke beard. (I found an old photo of him and found out that the reason he had the beard was because he had a weak chin.) He outlined what we were going to do in the class.

My second class at 10am was English Composition I. This professor was old, tall and skinny, but only had a mustache. There were a couple of people I had met in that class. During the presentation, I saw a note on the bulletin board for used books for sale. One of the ones listed happened to be one needed for the class. I wrote down the number.

For my third class at 11am, I had to walk over to the Education building, which was next door to the Liberal Arts building. This was my Interpersonal Communications class, which was also a general education requirement. (However, I didn't realize that I wasn't supposed to take both Speech I and Interpersonal Communications. It was supposed to be one or the other. I was able to count the Speech class toward my Communications major and the Interpersonal Communications for my general education.) It was actually the workshop part of the Interpersonal Communications lecture, which was held every Monday at 12pm. All the students went to the lecture on Monday and attended the workshops the remainder of the week at various times. My teacher was a graduate student. Her husband was also teaching the workshop. This wasn't an issue until we had to write a research paper and she had him grade her students while she graded his.

I then went to the cafeteria and ate lunch. I had some time to kill before my 2pm class, so I called the number for the used book. The guy showed up at my dorm room in about a half hour and I gave him the cash. I never saw that guy again.

I walked over to the Theatre for my final class of the day: Beginning Acting. On my way toward the building, I ran into Dr. R, the chairman of the Theatre Department. I had met him on several occasions before and was looking forward to working with him. He asked me something, but I don't really remember what. I went inside the auditorium and sat down close to the stage and waited for Dr. R to come to the class. There was this person sitting in the row in front of me. His name was Chud. I didn't realize it at the time, but he would become the most important part of my college experience. We started talking, and then the class started. This woman called us all up to be on the stage and had us stand in a circle. She introduced herself as Ms. C. She was a graduate student and was going to be teaching the class. This threw me for a loop. I thought Dr. R was teaching the class. Afterward, I went back to my room and looked at the schedule of classes. Beginning Acting had two different classes. Dr. R was listed for the 9am class, but the 2pm class identified the instructor as "TBA." When I scheduled the class, I didn't realize that meant that Dr. R wasn't going to be teaching it. As I will go into detail on a later post, this misjudgment severely affected my standing in the Theatre Department for the next four years.

I also met another student in my acting class named Kird. He would also prove to be an intermittent lifelong friend. I will also be writing more about him later on.

That was all my Monday, Wednesday and Friday classes. However, I had signed up for the Broadcast Workshop. This wasn't a regular class, but it was something you could take every semester to be a part of the various media programs they had in the Radio/TV department. A general meeting was held at 5pm the first day of school. I showed up at the student studio at the TV station with more than 60 other students from every class level. We were told about how the workshop operated and what programs we could take part in. The meeting lasted almost two hours.

The Theatre department was holding auditions for its first production of the season, "How the Other Half Loves," that night. I rushed from the TV studio over to the theatre and came in the back way. The director of the production, Dr. W, was addressing the auditioning students in the auditorium. I was about 10 minutes late. I didn't realize until a few minutes later that I was supposed to check in at the lobby of the auditorium, so I had to find the people with the sign up sheet and add my name.

Dr. W selected a few people by random to go up and read this one particular scene. He called up four different sets of people. I studied the other actors doing the scene and figured out a good approach to how I would interpret the material. Then, my name was called. I went up on stage. Dr. W announced that we were going to do a different scene. DANG IT!

Chud and Kird were among those auditioning, along with the guy I knew from my Speech class. But one thing that struck me as unusual and really left a pretty serious initial impression on me was that all the black Theatre students had congregated together. I really felt a "He'd better cast one of us" vibe coming from them. At one point, Dr. W told us to find a partner to read the next scene with. I saw some of the black students walking down the aisle and recognized one of them as the student host we had at the Drama Festival from my senior year of high school. I decided to do something brave, cross the racial divide and ask her to be my partner. She did not say a word, but took me by the hand and walked me down to the front of the auditorium. I don't know if she recognized me, but it didn't really seem to matter.

Eventually, I determined that the black Theatre students were not the militant types. As I got to know them more, it appeared to be more of an anomoly that they had grouped together that evening. They were all interested in pursuing diverse friendships, and many of them even dated outside their race. But it still took me a couple of months to come to that realization. My "brave" act of reaching out to one of them proved to be nothing of the sort.

After the audition, I realized I hadn't eaten any dinner. The dinner hours at the cafeteria are from 4:30pm to 6:00pm Monday through Friday. I was three hours beyond that at this point. I went back to the dorm and bought some snacks and soda out of the vending machine. My first day of college had come to a close and I was worn out. I knew I would be able to keep up the hectic pace, but hoped that I would be able to find the time to eat in the future.

Somehow, I managed to keep from starving at college. That would not always be true after I got into the "real world."

Milking it for what it's worth

When I visited family members as a child, I was exposed to a lot of thriftiness that wasn't really needed.



A lot of my elderly relatives from my childhood all seemed to live every day like it was still the depression. A large number of them died with a lot of money.

The road to college

The day for me to leave the nest had finally arrived. I had packed up my car, filled my tank with gas and was ready to go. Eastern New Mexico University allowed checking in on the Saturday before classes began. I wanted to leave on Saturday, but Mom talked me into going up on Sunday.

We did the usual family photographs with me standing by my car. I finally got to leave. I started on my way and got about 10 miles out of town. Suddenly, I got a flat tire.

This wasn't a big deal. At this point, I had experienced several flat tires and had been able to change them all by myself. However, I had a lot of difficulty getting the lug nuts off. I was eventually able to remove most of them, but there was this one that I couldn't get to turn. The nut was on really tight. I think the last time I got tires, a very powerful air compressor was used to put them on and that's why I was having such a hard time. I was about to give up, walk to the nearest house (I was in the farming community at the time) and call my Dad. It was the last thing I wanted to do on the first day of my independence.

As I started down the road, someone pulled off in front of me. It was someone I sort of knew. In the car was a girl I went to high school with (who was also going to ENMU). She was with her parents, her brother (who was a friend of my brother) and their cousin, who I knew from choir when I was a sophomore. They were on their way to church. The father tried to give me a hand, but he also wasn't able to get the nut off, despite putting a penny in the tire iron.

After a few minutes, another car pulled up in front of us. This guy had also just gotten a flat tire, but he didn't have any of his tire changing equipment with him. However, he worked at a garage and he said that if the father could give him a ride there, he would bring the shop's truck back and they'd be able to get the nut off for me. They then left.

I don't remember how long I waited, but the guy and one of his co-workers did return with the truck and they changed the tire for me. I was very grateful to be up and running again without having to turn to my parents for help.

The rest of the drive to Portales was uneventful. I pulled into the parking lot outside Lincoln Hall, where my dorm room was. I was on the second floor in room 217. I checked in, got the key and started taking stuff upstairs. Prior to my arrival, I had received a notice of who my roommate was going to be. I guess he had chosen me when he showed up the second weekend of pre-registration. All I knew about him was that his name was Tood and he was from Texas. I wondered when he was going to show up.

I ran into Bard and the girl he picked up at pre-registration. He said they were going to McDonald's to eat and I should join them after I was done putting stuff in my room. I walked down the street and caught up with them. We hung out for awhile. I returned to my room, but there was no sign of my roommate.

That night, I met some new people at the co-ed dorm, Eddy Hall, and hung out in someone's room. There was about ten of us gathered. We were all getting to know each other and did some serious talking about various issues. I actually felt like I was experiencing what it meant to be in college.

The next couple of days were a whirlwind of complete freedom as I was able to go anywhere and do anything that I pleased with no one to tell me otherwise. I frequently hung out with some of the new people I met. The bad thing was coming to the realization that, "Oh, wait. We have to start going to classes on Wednesday."

Late Monday afternoon, they held the "Freshman Follies." It was a series of games. We were separated into groups of ten and competed against each other. The winning group would get T-shirts that said "ENMU Freshman Follies 1982." One of the contests involved us tying a rope around our team, with a girl riding on the shoulders of the largest male of our group. I was up in front. As we crossed the finish line, I saw someone taking a photograph of us. I was certain I would see that photo in the college yearbook. However, I was wrong. But it did appear in a university recruitment brochure the next year. Our team did not win the Follies.

I finally met my roommate that night. It was after 11:00 and he was already in bed. He woke up, quickly shook my hand and went back to sleep.

Tuesday was the day I had to pay for my tuition and expenses for the semester. I had to write out a check for more than a thousand dollars. I couldn't believe I had that much money in the bank and I had to turn it all over to the school.

I was all set for my first day of classes. I'll go into detail about that Monday.

Stuff I wish I knew before entering college

I went into college very blindly. Since I was the oldest in the family, I didn't have any older brothers or sisters who could tell me what to expect when I got there. The whole thing was very much a shock to my system and I don't think that I ever quite got over it. So, here are a few things I would have like to have been told before starting this step toward adulthood:

1. You will rarely spend more than four hours a day in class.

This absolutely blew my mind after I had set my schedule at pre-registration. After 10 years of being in class six hours a day (1st and 2nd grades were shorter days), I thought I had done something wrong. Mom explained that I was supposed to spend that extra time each day studying. I still felt like something was wrong. It took me a while to get used to a two-hour lunch on Monday, Wednesdays and Friday and no classes after 12pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My second semester my Freshman year, I had no classes on Thursdays. I used those days to work on my research papers at the last minute.

2. There is no such thing as a Perfect Attendance Award in college.

Very few professors took attendance while I was at Eastern New Mexico University. At least, this was true of the smaller classes. The large lecture classes always sent around an attendance sheet around because they had no way of figuring out who was or was not in class. During my second semester my Freshman year, I experienced burn-out and had a two-week period in which I skipped most of my classes. When I decided to go back, it was like I hadn't missed anything. However, I took a Fortran class the summer before my senior year. I missed one day so that I could welcome my brother back from his trip to England. That was the day they covered sub-routines, which was a major portion of the final exam. I had straight A's up to that point, but missing that one day caused me to get a B for my final grade. As it turned out, I never needed Fortran once I graduated.

3. If you were an A and B student in high school without working really hard, you will be a B and C student in college if you do not properly adjust your study habits.

I was shocked at how many C's I got my Freshman year and how few A's I received. So were my parents. This was because I didn't really learn how to study in grade school. I rarely had homework. But I did get the hang of it later on. The first semester of my sophomore year was the first in which I didn't get any C's, but I only got one A. However, the second semester that year found me with nine A's and one B. (I was very overloaded that semester.) I still made the occasional C during my final two years. I read one person's strategy that involved studying two hours for every one hour of class. Even at the college I went to, that would have been overdoing it. As mentioned above, that meant I would have had to study eight hours for the four hours of class I had on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

However, there is another side of this coin: I knew a few students who made mostly C's in high school and became 4.0 students in college. Somehow, something clicked inside their heads about how to tackle academics that simply wasn't there in high school. It reminded me of that "Happy Days" episode in which Chachi is getting an athletic scholarship to college, but has a hard time handling the entrance exam. The coach calls him a "late academic bloomer" and tells him he can take the test later. The coach then sends in a ringer to take the test for him. While that coach was being deceptive, I do believe that being a "late academic bloomer" is something real and these students that I knew would qualify as evidence.

4. Do not expect to meet your future spouse at college.

This probably messed up my college social experience more than anything else. My parents had met in college, married and had me before they graduated. They expected me to do the same thing. I found it very difficult to consider whether or not I wanted to pursue certain girls as I felt compelled to view them as potential wives. And I don't think I was the only one who had this problem. There was a large number of upperclassmen who were married and started their families. I know now that I was not mature enough to become someone's husband in college. I actually didn't reach that level of maturity until I was around 35 years old. I may have mentioned before that I had consciously made a decision to remain celibate until I was married. I would have enjoyed more opportunities to make out with girls without some long-term form of commitment. However, I recently read a comment by this one woman who said she regretted getting a boyfriend fairly soon after going to college. She said that all she did all four years was hang around with her boyfriend and didn't spend any time developing actual friendships. She and the boyfriend broke up and she had no friends after college. I'm glad that didn't happen to me.

5. Even though "Animal House" came out four years before you went to college, all the fraternities are still trying to be like Delta House. (Please note this reference is dated for 1982.)

This is the main reason I avoided pledging a fraternity. I resolved at an early age to avoid alcohol. When I visited the fraternities during pre-registration, it seemed like all everyone wanted to do was drink beer and have sex with drunk girls and the fraternity members would look down on any pledge who did not wish to pursue these two activities. In the movie, the Omegas are made out to be the bad guys, but they had a level of sophistication that actually appealed to me, even though I abhorred the corruption that existed under their civilized facade. I had hoped that at least one of the fraternities would offer a more academic approach to the Greek system, but none of them did. Another issue was that even though all the fraternities said that none of them participated in hazing rituals, there was plenty of public humiliation going on among the pledges that I saw. The situation was so bad, that a group of students from my Freshman class tried to start their own fraternity. They really didn't want to go through the pledging process to join a club helmed by a bunch of alcoholics. They just wanted to be able to put the fraternity on their resumes.

6. College is large filter of every type of student you can imagine.

If you were the smartest student at your school, you're going to come across at least 20 people who were the smartest students in their school. If you were your school's top athlete, you're going to meet at least 20 people who were the best athletes at their schools. If you were the best actor or singer at your school, there will be at least 20 others just as talented, if not more so. If you were the class clown at your school, there will be at least 20 other students trying to cut up in class (and they will all somehow wind up in the same class at the same time). If it was a struggle to get yourself into those positions in high school, it's going to be even more of a challenge trying to crawl your way to the top. Everyone will be nipping at your heels, and you're probably going to lose.

7. Students who started college before you will not necessarily be gone when you become a senior.

This would prove to be a huge problem in the Theatre Department, which I will detail in a later post. When I went to college, it was about the time that a trend started in which students would start taking five or six years to complete their degree plans, as opposed to four, which had been normal for several generations. Thus, some students who should have moved on to the "real world" continued taking classes and were kind of taking up space. That would be space that I was expecting to slide into, but was constantly kept out of it by students who didn't know when they have overstayed their welcome and faculty who didn't do anything about it.

8. Do not look at college as the key to making a lot of money when you graduate.

I have to reflect on my college experience as a bridge to adulthood, not a path to riches. I majored in Radio/TV Communications and later added Theatre as a second major. Neither one of these were strong prospects for earning potential. My senior year, I took a job interviewing class. One of the professor's former students, who was about to graduate, came to the class to talk about her landing a job with a major accounting firm after a rigorous interview process. She said she was going to make $50,000 a year (and this was in 1985). After class, a few of us Radio/TV majors were talking about this. One girl wondered if she had chosen the right major. I wanted an interesting job. That's why I chose the majors I did. I just figured the higher paying slots would come later in life. I was very wrong, but I still have no reqrets about not being a Business major.

9. You are not obligated to spend all four years at the college you choose.

While I was aware that it is not uncommon for students to switch schools when attending college, I really didn't see how making that change would benefit me. I would have had to go out of state to find a better school than the one I was at for Radio/TV and out of state tuition would have been a lot more. I didn't realize at the time that my parents actually could have afforded to send me out of state. (Among other things, Mom had made it seem like it was going to be a hardship on them for me to attend Ball State University in Muncie, IN.) Out of all the things on this list, this is the main thing I needed to know about college. I will go more into detail about that when discussing the issues I had with the Radio/TV department.

10. If you were a geek in high school, any attempts to change the type of person you are when you start college will likely fail.

I came to college with a full head of steam. I was determined to drop my old personality and become the type of person people would look up to. In my mind, this would be possible because there were only about four other students from my senior class in Artesia who would be attending ENMU and fortunately, they were all people I was able to tolerate. I wanted to be considered important. And this actually worked for the first few days when I was getting to know everyone. However, without even realizing it, I regressed into my old habits and the person I really was became very apparent to everyone I met. Because of my Asperger Syndrome, I could not just completely change myself overnight. The only way I could have fixed this is by talking a lot less. That would have been the best course of action. It's too late now.

I would like to point out that these tidbits of information are not necessarily applicable to every student about to enter college. I just wish I had known them when I was 17 years old.

College Pre-registration

I got my first taste of what college was going to be like when I was invited to pre-register for my classes for the Fall 1982 semester at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, NM. My Dad and I drove up to the campus one of the two weekends they held the event and spent the night in the dorm where I would be living the first three years I went to college.

First, we showed up at the Campus Union Building and checked in. I had my photo taken for my student ID. I remember this one guy ahead of me who was talking kind of loudly toward someone else in the line. Dad and I ate lunch in the cafeteria. My cousin Rud was also at the pre-registration. He sat and ate lunch with us.

After all the orientations, we met with our faculty counselors. Mine was Dr. B. He was the head of the Radio/TV department. There were a few of us in his group. He gave us the class schedules and we were supposed to go through and select the classes we wanted to take. I looked at my degree plan and saw which general education credits I needed to get out of the way and which classes in Radio/TV and Theatre I could take.

I thought I was taking forever to figure out my schedule. It was a lot tougher than coming up with the one for high school. I finally determined the classes that seemed to work and went over to the Administration building to register. I went in and went straight to an open window where someone on the staff manually entered in my schedule. This actually took about 10 minutes. After she gave me my print-out of my classes, I looked behind me. There were HUNDREDS of students waiting in line inside the building. I had just missed getting caught up in that. I have no idea how long they had to wait because I wasn't sticking around.

At some point during the pre-registration, dinner was served in the cafeteria. I met up with three guys, including the loud guy in the ID line and we all started talking. The loud guy was named Ged and he claimed that he had gone to Park Junior High School in Artesia for a brief period of time, about the same time I did. But I didn't remember him. Another was Bard, who had already done a year of college at a Christian school. He said he was a bit of a screwup, but the Christian school was the wrong place for him to go because everybody partied really hearty there. It was actually too much for even him. The third guy was Dred. He was from Ohio. He had considered going to Ohio State University, but took a tour of the classes and noted that some of the classes involved students in this large room watching the professor give a lecture on videotape. He also mentioned that OSU tried to stress that everyone there was a person, not a number. However, the first thing they would ask you is "What's your Social Security Number?"

That night, they had a "Let's Meet" dance in the Snack Room at the Campus Union Building. Ged, Bard, Dred and I sat at a table. The place started filling up. These girls came in and sat at the table with us. We started talking amongst ourselves. There was a live band performing. They played for about ten minutes, but no one was dancing. The lead singer, a female, tried to get people to get on the floor. She actually came up and tapped me on the shoulder, but I tried to ignore her. After a few more minutes, it was apparent that we needed to dance so I asked this one girl at our table if she wanted to dance and she agreed. Ged, Bard and Dred asked the other girls to dance, so we were all on the floor and other people joined us. Throughout the night, I danced with a number of different girls, including one I had already met before.

Dred danced with the girl I first asked and sort of fell in love with her. He spent the rest of the evening hanging out with her. Ged, Bard and I decided to go to the fraternaties and see what they were all about as they all had planned open parties for the new students during pre-registration. Even though we were all underage, we were all able to get beer served to us at the houses. I didn't drink the beer. The three of us walked back to the campus. We went to the fountain outside the library. There were a couple of women there. We started talking to them. Apparently, they had their tops off when we got to the fountain and rushed to put them back on, but we didn't see anything.

It was after midnight when we went back to our dorm rooms. Dad was already asleep. I crawled into bed.

There were still some orientations to go to on Sunday. I met up with Ged, Dred and Bard at breakfast. We were joined by a couple of girls, including this one from Albuquerque named Lorz. (I will go into more detail about Lorz in a later post.) After the orientation, Ged, Lorz and I went to the dorm. Ged wanted to check out the room where he would be living.

And the whole pre-registration was pretty much over after that. Dad and I went home and I prepared to return to college in August.

I'm just going to update what happened to the three guys I hung out with in college as we did not become very best friends.

Ged never showed up for classes. He was still registered and had his dorm room reserved, but he never arrived. I never heard from him again and there are too many people on Facebook with his name for me to figure out which one he is. I found someone with his name about my same age who died about five years ago. He went to the University of Arkansas. I don't know for certain that it was the same guy. I saw that his remains were being interred in Texas, which is where I think he was from at the point I met him at ENMU. I will likely never have closure on him.

Dred was able to catch up with that girl when we returned to ENMU in the fall. However, she decided to pledge one of the sororities and that pretty much kept him out of the running as a potential boyfriend. I hung out with Dred here and there over the next couple of years, but we weren't really good friends. I recently located him on LinkedIn. He now lives in Phoenix, AZ and is a Senior Manager for DHL Express. He has a wife and daughters. His photo is included on his profile. If I were to see him today, I wouldn't recognize him.

I have information on what happened to Bard because he is listed in my Alumni Directory. He married this girl from college that I had a crush on (but will not go into further detail about). Like Dred, we saw each other from time to time, but weren't really friends.

However, the strangest thing happened at graduation with Bard. We saw each other before we were to march out. We shook hands and started exchanging pleasantries. Suddenly, we both went silent. THE EXACT SAME THOUGHT OCCURRED TO BOTH OF US AS THE EXACT SAME TIME! I had thought about how we had met at pre-registration a little less than four years ago and how that seemed like yesterday. "Did four years just go by?" was the question we were asking ourselves. I realized that as slow as high school appeared to go, college just seemed to whoosh by. We knew that time would continue to pick up speed as the years went on.

Aaaaaand, that was college. Let's get to my adult life in the next post.























Wait, I have a lot to tell about college. Tune in tomorrow for that.

Job #3: Kmart Era: 1982 - 1983

My Mom was not going to be content to allow me to goof off during my final summer before college. She more or less coerced me to get a job at Kmart. Since several of her DECA students worked there, she was very familiar with the woman in charge of hiring and was able to talk her into giving me a position. I saw this as nothing but a waste of time and money because I was probably just going to use my earnings to play video games anyway.

This was one of the strangest jobs I ever had because I didn't really just work one area. At first, I was supposed to work in the stockroom, which would have meant that I didn't need to wear a dress shirt or a tie. My first day, I showed up wearing my only dress shirt, but no tie. A manager told me I needed to wear a tie. He said he normally would have sent me home, but since it was my first day, he wasn't going to do that. I had to go buy a tie and some more dress shirts. Unfortunately, I had to go to Mr. E's to do that.

So I basically floated around the various departments doing just about whatever they asked me to do. If I finished a project, I had to go ask what I was supposed to do next. If there wasn't anything to do, I had to clean. However, I found that I could go back into the stockroom and just sit there unnoticed for several minutes at a time. Since it was very quiet back there, if I heard anyone walking around, I could quickly make it look like I was doind something I was supposed to do.

Since I was only going to be working there for six weeks before going to college, I never got trained as a cashier. That was a position you had to work up to. (Many years later, I would work at Walmart. I started as a cashier. However, checkout scanners were not common store equipment back in 1982.)

I got asked to do some odd stuff, like assemble lawn mowers. I guess we had some customers who were too lazy to put the mowers together themselves, so they had us do it. I was never quite certain that I had put the mowers together properly. I can only imagine a few people got their toes chopped off and it was all my fault. (And this was before the United States went lawsuit crazy.)

One thing I had to do was do the new layout for the lightbulb aisle. The manager showed me a piece of paper with where all the different types of bulbs and to go and he told me it needed to look just like the picture on the paper. Very soon, I discovered that our shelf was several inches shorter than the shelf on the paper. I had to improvise and make the sections slightly shorter. The manager still got mad at me because it didn't look like it did on the instructions.

One of the strangest things I was asked to do was demolish a lamp. The manager told me it was obsolete. My first thought was, "How can a lamp be obsolete?" I mean, it's a lamp. You just turn it on and turn it off. To this day, we still have lamps and they're pretty much the same as they were in 1982. Now, I would have understood if they were recalled due to loose wiring and people getting shocked to death, but that wasn't what I was told. I put the lamp in a cardboard box and struck it several times with a sledgehammer. I didn't see anything wrong with it.

One of the things I wound up getting stuck with doing on a regular basis was watering all the plants. I had to do this the last three weeks before I went to college. I got this bug sprayer, filled it with water and squirted it on all the plants. There was no actual garden center at the store. All the plants were just on one of the regular aisles. This meant there was no drainage for the excess water, so I also had to mop the floor afterward. This whole process took up half my work day.

One of the nice things about working at Kmart at the time is that you got paid every week in cash. That was so nice that I didn't have to worry about having to take a check to the bank. I just showed up at the accounting office window, picked up my pay and left. I would never have another job that paid this way ever again.

I actually came back to work at Kmart during the Christmas break. I remember walking in to see the hiring lady, whose office was inside the breakroom. When I left, I could hear one of the other employees saying, "Oh, no! He's not coming back here to work, is he?" Yes, that made me feel wanted. They actually needed me because all the students were about to go back to school and classes at ENMU wouldn't start for another week and a half. I got to work for two weeks. That just wound up being more money for pizza and video games.

Many years later in 2001, I got laid off from a really good job in San Diego prior to the holiday shopping season. When I tried calling unemployment to make a claim, the recording suggested that I wait until January 1st to file since benefits were going to go up then. I decided to get a seasonal job. There was a Kmart just down the street from where I lived. I figured that since I had worked for Kmart before, they would automatically hire me. However, they never called me back for an interview. I also applied at Walmart. They called me back, interviewed me and hired me. I did not have to go on unemployment at that time.

I didn't love the job, nor did I hate it. It was just someplace I went to and did what I was told eight hours a day. I never had to be there any earlier than 9:00am and I never had to be there past 9:30pm. I was never asked to come in and cover for someone. It would have been nice to have more jobs like that.

Slow down for safety?

I walk down Holly Street in San Carlos every day when leaving work. These signs went up just this past week and are on every lawn.



As I mention in the comments, I don't think it's a matter of safety for kids in the neighborhood. I think the residents of this street are fed up with not being able to back up out of their driveways when traffic is coming through. My solution is to have them back up into their driveways when they come home. I'm surprised that no one does that.

Mistop #3: Dawz

I had mentioned meeting Dawz before on a couple of occasions in relation with my DECA activities. She appeared to be impressed with me and we were able to have good conversations when we saw each other. When I saw her at the state conference, I was able to get her address so I could write her.

I sent her a letter explaining about myself. At the time, I thought I had put myself in a good light. However, I waited several weeks for her to reply. When she wrote, she mentioned something about some issues going on with her family and that's why it took so long to write back. I found the letter she sent me recently, and I realized that I had to have come across as a real dork when I originally wrote to her. I don't remember everything I wrote, but she responded to a lot of the stuff that I mentioned, such as how I liked to play video games. I probably also wrote something about what music I listened to and what TV shows I liked to watch. I look back at that and think how the person who sent her that letter came across as a real loser. That's stuff I would never write about now.

I also told her I was going to go to Eastern New Mexico University when I graduated. She mentioned that she hadn't figured out which college she would go to, but would probably attend New Mexico State University. I actually did consider doing the "Felicity" thing (16 years before that show came on the air), going to NMSU instead so I could get to know her better.

I'm pretty certain I sent her another letter, but she never wrote back. However, I knew I would run into her again at the DECA National Conference in Chicago. My first day there, I did indeed find her and hung out with her the early part of the first evening. We walked around the conference showroom and talked. I asked her if she was still going to go to NMSU. She said she had decided to go into the Air Force instead. At that instant, I knew that any chance for her to be my girlfriend was dead.

My knowledge of life in the military was very limited. But the one thing I happened to know was that women in uniform almost never dated civilians. (This, even though military men were often known for chasing women off base.) I may have been willing to change my college plans, but there was no way I was going to join the Air Force for this girl. It was really too bad, because I thought we were a perfect match intellectually.

I didn't get to hang around her for the rest of the conference. She happened to be on the same bus I was riding on the way to Marriott's Little America (the day I was sick). I saw her get on the bus, pass right by me and sit in the back. She did not appear to be in a good mood. I don't even know that she was aware I was on the bus. After my bowel issues, I knew it wouldn't be a good idea to try to hang around her at the park (even though I didn't have any more problems after leaving the nurse's station).

The bus ride to Little America would be the last time I would ever see her or hear from her. A few years ago, I looked her up on the Internet. I found that she had indeed married someone from the Air Force and had children. At the point that I discovered her, she had been stationed in Hawaii, retired from the military and had started her own software consulting business. I found photos of her from her retirement ceremony. There was this one slacker-looking guy standing next to her wearing a Hawaiian shirt. THIS WAS THE GUY SHE MARRIED! I guess he had retired sometime earlier and went straight to looking like a civilian. This was a guy with my level of attractiveness.

A couple of years later, I found that she had divorced that guy and was still living in Hawaii. I found her profile on LinkedIn and sent her an invitation to connect, but I have a feeling she just set up the account and forgot all about it. This means she probably never saw the note I wrote her reminding her who I was. At least, I hope that's what happened. I noticed that her account is no longer active.

But she does have a current Facebook account. The only things I'm able to see are a couple of photos. It appears that she hooked up with some Hawaiian guy and that's all the information I can get.

I look back at Dawz as the "one who got away." I absolutely think we would have been just right for each other. If she hadn't told me she was going into the Air Force, I probably would have made more of an effort to spend more time with her at the DECA Conference. I have a feeling that her mystery family issues came into play when she decided to join the Air Force.

However, even though I think we would have made a great match doesn't mean that she would have ever seen me the same way, especially after that letter I wrote. I'd like to think that if she really felt anything for me, she would have followed me to ENMU, or at least, written me more before she went into boot camp.

If I had wound up with her, I'd like to think I'd be living in Hawaii right now, hanging out with Rad.

Breathing in the Windy City

So, here I was in Chicago in June of 1982. I was at the National DECA Conference with some other students and my Mom chaperoning. However, she didn't helicopter over me. I was pretty much free to do as I pleased.

The only exception was that Mom forced me to go with her and some of the other DECA teachers to Jimmy Wong's Chinese Restaurant. I was the only student there. I had never really eaten Chinese food before (too many onions), and even though Jimmy Wong's was acknowledged as the best Chinese restaurant in Chicago, it just didn't taste very good. I did like the egg rolls, some of the meat dishes that I was able to scrape the vegetables off of and the fortune cookies. (I have since refined my palate, but I don't think I have really eaten Chinese food since then.)

Since I didn't have to worry about taking tests or being judge in role-playing like I was at the state level, I had all day to do touristy things. I went to the Sears Tower. I walked all over the section of the city where the hotel was. I hit up the record stores and made a few purchases of albums I couldn't get in New Mexico. I ate pizza by the slice for lunch every day.

One day, I noticed something strange. I sensed that I could actually taste the air. If I breathed in, it felt like I had inhaled a cloud. It was almost like I had to put some effort into breathing. I still ran around during the day. Once I got back to the hotel, it was easier to breath.

The next morning, all of the delegates were going to spend the day at Marriott's Little America. While our group was getting ready, we were listening to the radio. The announcer said that according to the pollution levels the day before, the air was deemed "unfit" to breathe and even more unhealthy not to breathe. I didn't think it was going to have much of an impact on me, but it did. We got on the bus to take us to the theme park. I was seated next to this girl from Alaska. The bus ride was supposed to be about 90 minutes. About a half-hour in, I started feeling bad in my gut. I really needed to go to the bathroom. I didn't know how far it was to the park. I was afraid I was going to have to ask the bus driver to stop the bus and let me out. I then wondered if there was a bathroom on the bus. I looked at the back. THERE WAS! I immediately ran back there. I saw the look on the faces of a couple of students who watched me go in. I didn't care what they thought.

After I relieved myself, I went back to my seat. Prior to my leaving, the girl from Alaska had fallen asleep. She woke up and wondered where I was because the bus was completely full and there were no empty seats. Everything was fine until we got to the park. I started feeling uneasy again. Once inside, I found a directory and located the nearest bathroom. However, it was very difficult for me to walk without feeling like I was going to lose control of my bowels. I started walking on my tippy-toes and made it to the bathroom. One of the other students from my school saw me having difficulties and came into the bathroom to check on me. I told him I would be okay.

I checked into the nurse's station so I could get some Pepto-Bismol, which I thought would make me feel better. However, the nurse said that since I was 17, they were not authorized to give me any kind of medicine, including Pepto-Bismol. I told her she could page out for my mother, who was at the park. They tried, but Mom never responded. I laid there for about 15 minutes before I decided it was futile to get anything done. I left without telling anyone.

This marked a major turning point in my life. I decided there and then that if I couldn't have medication at that point in my life, I would never seek medication again, not even aspirin. I wouldn't even take Pepto-Bismol. I actually went about 17 years without seeing a doctor. (I didn't even go to the doctor when I thought I had cracked a rib. I was in pain for three weeks, but I still didn't go see a doctor.)

So the rest of the day, I didn't go on any rides. I just walked around the park, played video games, ate pizza and did all the stuff that didn't require me to be strapped in. I should add that the air quality was extremely good that day compared to the day before, so I didn't run the risk of getting sick again. Since the other students had spent all day at the hotel, they didn't experience the poor air quality like I did, so they didn't get sick. Mom got mad at me for wasting a lot of money on video games. I regret not going on the rides because that would be my only visit to Little America for the rest of my life. (But I had just been to Six Flags Over Mid-America for the third time in five years a week and a half earlier on the way to Muncie, IN, so it wasn't like I felt like I was missing out on anything.)

Leaving Chicago, we got on the flight to take us to Dallas, from which we would depart to go to Amarillo before driving home to Artesia. This was the first time I had been on a major airline in 11 years. I was in the middle of the section. I was so worn out from the previous two weeks that I absolutely crashed. When I woke up, all the people around me were finishing their breakfasts and the flight attendants were taking away their plates. I asked the attendant if I could have my breakfast. She said they weren't serving breakfast any more. I asked why someone didn't wake me up for breakfast. She said it was the airline policy not to wake sleeping passengers. We were still more than two hours from landing in Dallas. I asked if they were going to serve lunch. No, the flight was not going to be that long. There was not going to be any food. I'm certain they had a plate of food they could have just handed to me, but they wouldn't do it.

The bad thing is that I don't remember the name of the airline, but I'm pretty certain I've never flown with them again. That's easy to do when you mostly fly Southwest all the time.

When we left Chicago, I had no money left. When we got to Dallas, I had to beg Mom for money so I could get something to eat. I think I got a hamburger from Burger King. I didn't want to think about it.

Dad and Loyd met us at the airport in Amarillo with the camper. Everybody just slept the whole way home. I ran into just about everyone who went on that trip a few times when I came home from college the next few years. After I graduated, I kept seeing less of them until they almost didn't exist. They were people I didn't really have a problem with. I was just very indifferent about them.

Despite all the issues, this was still a great time in my life. I'll have a little more about this girl I tried to hook up with at the conference in tomorrow's post. She deserves her own article.

Back to Muncie, IN and new to Chicago, IL!

I'm glad to be back to blogging after taking a little time off. I have just a few posts to get through before I reach my college experiences. Seriously, when I first started this blog almost a year ago, I thought it was going to take me about three months to reach adulthood. Boy, was I wrong. I never knew I had so much to write about from that period in my life.

So, I had a fairly active summer before I went to college. I spent more than two weeks on the road. I went back to the International Theatre Arts Conference at Ball State University and immediately after that, I went to Chicago for the DECA Conference.

There was nothing eventful about my second trip to Muncie in two years. The only difference was that I was able to get a date for the final night's production of "Grease," which featured a cast comprised of students from across the country, including someone from Albuquerque that I knew. I didn't get to go anywhere else with that date, which was kind of a blind set up by someone I was trying to date (but she already was going with someone else to the performance). I remember her name was Maz, that she was a cheerleader and a year younger than me. She had short blonde hair. I don't remember where she was from. We didn't talk very much. It was just awkward the whole time, BUT IT WAS AN ACTUAL DATE! YAHOO! I could honestly say that I had scored at least one real date four years in a row. In 1979, I took my first real girlfriend to Homecoming. In 1980, I dated someone who had me in the Friend Zone. In 1981, I had a prom date and this was the one for 1982. I would continue this one date a year streak until 1987, when I got my second real girlfriend and got to go out on more than one date with her.

The only other thing worth mentioning about Muncie is that I saw student productions of "The King and I" and "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," among other student productions. "King" was really good, but "Joseph" stunk. This was mostly because the cast just sang along with the album from 1974 (which I had a copy of) with NO ATTEMPT to phase out the lead vocals.

I left straight from Muncie to go to Chicago. I went to the local airport. There were two flights to Chicago, one in the morning and the other about 3 hours later. I was supposed to be on the later flight, but had arrived at the airport in time for the early one and they said I could go ahead and get on board. However, once we were in the air, I realized that I had left some personal possessions in the airport lobby. I had to wait to land in Chicago, contact the Muncie airport, have them put the possessions on the next flight and wait the three hours for the plane to arrive. It was like I shouldn't have even bothered getting on the early flight in the first place.

(A note about my flight: This was the first and last time I got to fly on a small aircraft, the kind that only has two columns of seats with one on each side of the plane. The advantage of this is that you get both a window and and aisle seat at the same time. However, I was not very secure in the airworthiness of the craft and we were flying at an altitude so low, I thought we were going to crash into the Sears Tower. Fortunately, the flight only lasted about an hour and 15 minutes.)

My Mom and the rest of the students from DECA had arrived in Chicago the day before. Mom had arranged for someone from the conference to meet me at the airport. Of course, she had told them to meet me at the later time, so I REALLY should have been on that second flight. But I don't know which would have been worse, waiting in Muncie or waiting in Chicago. The problem with waiting in Chicago was that I couldn't wait to just go outside and experience the Big City. In Muncie, I just would have had to wait for the next flight.

But that wait was still for naught, because the person who was supposed to meet me at the airport never arrived. I asked around and found out about a bus that would take me to the hotel where I was supposed to stay, the Conrad Hilton. I had to pay $5 to board the bus. I asked the bus driver if the bus went to the Conrad Hilton. He said it did. It was the last stop. It would take an hour and a half to get there. I had no idea that Chicago was so large, it would take a bus 90 minutes to drive to all the major Downtown hotels and drop people off. We were on the road for about an hour before the first stop. I was truly amazed at how spread out the city was.

While I was on the bus, I read a tourist guide of events that were taking place that month in Chicago. On the cover was a photo of Yul Brynnner in "The King and I." He was actually performing in Chicago at that time. I also saw that there was a tour of the current Broadway version of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." What a coincidence! (I would wind up seeing both of those productions while in Chicago, but this is all the detail I'm going into on this blog. I had a lot of other stuff happen to me there. I just have to mention this now because, as mentioned above, I had seen a decent high school production of "King" and a cruddy one of "Joseph" in Muncie. It was nice to see professionals doing these shows.)

We finally got to the hotel. I walked in the front door without any idea on how I was going to find my Mom. But that became less of a concern because she just happened to be in the lobby at the same time that I came in. I wasn't expecting that, but I was glad it turned out that way.

So, that's my path to Chicago in a nutshell. In the next post, I'll go more into detail about things that happened in Chicago while I was there.