It seems like people LOVE getting in my way

Last week, I just needed to move forward on the train prior to our arrival at the station so I wouldn't have to walk too far to cross the street. However, I found I couldn't:



There are bicyclists who complain very loudly about there not being enough room because the cars always fill up. I can assure you that wasn't the problem here.

College Roommate #2: Jad

I first met Jad right before the start of the Spring 1983 semester at Eastern New Mexico University. One of the RAs brought him and his father in and introduced him as my new roommate. My first impression was that he was very much like me. He was geeky and wore glasses, but had short hair.

As I mentioned in my post about Retz, he had gone to Cibola High School in Albuquerque. After he graduated, he started attending college at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. I don't remember why he decided to transfer to ENMU instead. I know he told me, but I just don't remember. He actually had a couple of friends from his high school at Eastern. One of them came over to the room that day and they discussed what was going on with their old classmates.

Our first night as roommates, we were sleeping in our beds. All of a sudden, I felt something hit me, like a basketball. I thought Jad was joshing around and threw something at me. When I got up, it was the cover for the light fixture above my bed. It's about the size and shape of a basketball. The previous semester, the light bulb had burned out. I had to get help to replace it because the cover would not come off. It involved having to take a screw out. I guess when the RA put it together, he didn't put the screw back in and also didn't tighten it all the way. That's why it fell off. I made sure it was on as tight as possible. I did not have anymore trouble out of that fixture for the next two years.

Jad enrolled in Dr. R's Beginning Acting class. His acting partner turned out to be Chud's roommate. Jad also became friends with Bard and hung out with him most of the time.

One interesting thing is that we had both developed a crush on the same girl. Her name was Diz. However, during our freshman year, she was dating this other guy that Jad and Bard hung out with. Jad was hoping that they would break up so he would have a shot at her. I know they broke up before the next school year, because that guy was dating one of the freshman students. Diz wound up dating Bard. Then she wound up marrying him before they graduated from college. I have no idea how Jad felt about that.

I didn't see much of Jad after freshman year, only around campus from time to time. When I worked for a radio station in Clovis, he wound up in one of our TV commercials walking with a bumper sticker held to his chest and his index finger making a "#1" sign.

Jad did not graduate with me, Bard and Diz in 1986. I don't know what he did after leaving ENMU because his name is so common I cannot locate him.

However, I did locate Diz on Facebook! Her hair got darker. And I saw some recent photos of Bard on there, although he does not seem to have a Facebook account. His hair is also darker. He went into the Air Force sometime after college. It also looks like they had five boys.

It's too bad I couldn't locate Jad that easily.

Dungeonzzz and Dragonzzzzzz...

I had always heard about the game Dungeons and Dragons prior to starting college. I liked the idea of playing a role in a medieval quest. However, no one I knew in Artesia played it.

So I was aware that I would run into people who played in college. I was able to track some down and gave it a shot. These were all complete strangers and I was kind of okay with the experience. For me, the main problem was anytime we encountered some foe, we had to wait about five minutes for each person to figure out what attack they were going to use, roll the dice and wait for the Dungeonmaster to look up the number to determine the outcome. We had to do this several times for the same foe. Then we would walk a few feet, and another foe would suddenly appear and we had to go through the entire process again. I left after a couple of hours.

Knowing that I might not have had a good first experience, I was hoping to find another group to play with. I found it with some theatre students. We gathered at the apartment of one of the other students after a morning of rehearsal for "How the Other Half Loves." There were about ten of us involved.

This game was a lot more lively than the other one. We didn't come up against monsters in every room. There was treasure and individual encounters with other characters taking place. This game was certainly a lot more engaging and we spent 10 solid hours playing.

However, I had a number of issues that I didn't encounter the first time. The first was that the Dungeonmaster permitted the particpants to pass him notes about things they were doing that they didn't want others to know. A few times, those notes involved taking items out of my bag, so that when I reached in to use a weapon, I would find that it was missing. Another was that the other particpants had a tendency to loudly argue with me about things that were happening in the game. They kept saying they were yelling at me in character, but I actually felt like they were getting mad because I really didn't know how to play. I guess I should also mention that some of them were drinking during the game. As the game wore on, they got more beligerent.

I also felt like the Dungeonmaster was picking on me and subjecting me to all sorts of cruel outcomes. He also would not let me deal the finishing blows on the foes, which reduced my chances for earning experience points and moving up levels. Everybody else playing got those points. The strange thing is, outside the game, this guy was actually one of the better friends I had in the Theatre department (although I am not writing a post about him).

So, I never really got into the game even though it's normally played by people who are known for being nerds and geeks. Interestingly enough, Loyd got sucked into it that year. He actually found friends from Artesia High School to play with. The Dungeonmaster he knew came up with a quest that was supposed to take a year to complete. However, Loyd was going to go to the New Mexico Military Institute for the spring 1983 semester and tried to get his friend to tear through that quest in the two weeks before he was supposed to show up for classes. I don't know if they ever made it.

I got more into the Dungeons and Dragons-style games when the video game versions came out. At the very least, I feel like, when I'm playing it, everyone is following the rules.

Ring Zone #1: Retz

(What's a Ring Zone? Click here!)

I first met Retz in my Beginning Acting class the first day of college. My friends Chud and Kird were also in this class. She had long, curly brunette hair and a big, toothy smile. She was REALLY cute.

Once during class, Ms. C had us pair up for a little improvisational project. I asked her to be my partner and she agreed. The project involved us having to "mold" each other into certain body positions. Retz was wearing shorts that day, so that meant I got to put my hands on her bare legs. And then she got to put her hands on me. I enjoyed this project very much.

The day arrived that I had gathered up the courage to ask her out after class. That day, Ms. C separated us into groups of four. She and I were in the same group. (I think I positioned myself to be in her group on purpose.) Before we got into our project, the other guy in the group asked Retz, "So, how long have you been married?" "Oh, almost a year," she replied. My jaw hit the floor, but I don't think anyone noticed. I don't even remember what happened the rest of the class. There was so much going through my mind, like how I could have majorly embarrassed myself by asking her out. I was really glad to find out that way, but I was a basket case for several hours.

A thought had occurred to me soon afterward that she had somehow set that up. I thought I was making vague overtures toward her, and they may have turned out to be really obvious. I actually believed she knew what was about to happen and didn't want me to feel humiliated, so she had that other guy ask that question if I came anywhere near her. I know that's far-fetched, but I still cannot get over that timing.

I learned a hard lesson that day. I had to remind myself that I was in school with a bunch of adults, a lot of whom might be married to someone else. In high school, it was easy to figure out who the married girls were. They were all pregnant.

I steered clear of her the remainder of the year, but it would drive me nuts when we happened to run into each other elsewhere on campus. She would see me, smile and tell me hi. My heart would melt.

The next semester, I got College Roommate #2, Jad (whom I will go into more detail about in a couple of days). He went to Cibola High School in Albuquerque, from which he graduated in 1982. He brought a couple of his school yearbooks. I looked through them. I saw that he had gone to the same school as Toilethead and was in the Theatre program with him.

I looked through the photos of the seniors from his sophomore year. I saw a photo of Retz. Gasp! She graduated in 1980! That meant she was two years older than me! I thought we were the same age. And it also showed that her maiden name was Hispanic. I didn't know that might have been her ancestry. The yearbook also showed her husband was in her graduating class. It was a guy whom I had seen around campus from time to time, but I had no idea he was her husband.

You probably think I'd be able to go through the remainder of my college experience without ever having to deal with her again. That's what I thought. We're both wrong. During the Fall 1983 semester, she was in the Intermediate Acting class with me, Chud, Kird, Lorz, Pad, Scod and a lot of other students I'm never going to write about. A few weeks in, Dr. R chose our acting partners. He put Retz and me together. There was a part of me that was kind of happy about it, but I knew I wasn't going to enjoy it as much as getting to touch her legs.

The next day, some of us Acting students were in the Theatre lobby talking about our partners. Pad asked me who I was teamed up with. I said, "Retz." "Who's that?" "You know, that girl with the long brown hair." Pad's eyes widened and he said, "Hey! She's sexy!" Toilethead, who was in the lobby at the time said, "Hey! She's married! Her husband's in my fraternity." Pad's jaw dropped just like mine.

However, it appeared that Pad was not as easily dissuaded as I was. At some point, I thought I heard him say something to the effect that he was going to attempt to score with Retz. He actually took some steps toward that. Retz, Pad and I were involved in the Theatre fraternity's Evening of One Acts that semester. One of the directors videotaped the dress rehearsal and a few of us went over to his house to watch it. Pad didn't have a car, so he asked Retz to drive him over. After the play with them was over (which was first on the tape), she drove him home. I never heard what happened after that, but it's fun to imagine her kicking him out of the car (which she could totally do, as she had a black belt in martial arts and Pad was rather scrawny for a guy).

Retz and I rehearsed and did our scene for Acting class. It was an excerpt from "The Tempest." I played Prospero and she played the daughter Miranda. We decided to kind of do costumes for our presentation. She had a gold-colored gown that she wore at her high school graduation. I wore that onstage.

Because of some problems with Dr. R communicating the parameters of what we were supposed to do with our scenes, everyone in the class had to work on just the one scene the entire semester. Intermediate Acting classes in previous years did at least two scenes. One of the other students expressed great displeasure with this arrangement because he said there were other students he would have liked to have worked with. I got the idea he was talking about Retz.

The next semester, Retz and I were in the cast for "The King and I." I played a priest and she was the lead dancer in the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" sequence. We didn't really get to interact much because she was only in that one sequence.

After that, I don't remember ever seeing her again. She and her husband may have graduated in 1984.

I do have the current information on her. She is now a teacher at the same high school she graduated from. Her husband is the head football coach at West Mesa High School. I wonder what things are like around that house when those two schools have to play each other.

They have been married 33 years. I guess I really didn't have a chance with her, but on the bright side, neither did Pad.

How did some people get into college?

As I mentioned before, I didn't really have to worry much about being accepted at Eastern New Mexico University. I knew that my grades in high school were good enough to get into just about any state-funded college. I expected all the other students to be close to the same academic level I was. I mean, I was aware there were a lot of B and C students, but I figured that since they all graduated, they had the same basic education, learned basic English, Math and History and got through it okay.

And I was wrong. In the post linked above, someone told me that ENMU's admission standards were so low that the school would accept anyone who took the SAT or ACT. It didn't matter what the score was. ENMU was really good at recruiting out-of-state students. They actually targeted the B and C average students. I kept hearing stories of students from other states who didn't know what they were going to do after high school and they got a brochure for ENMU through the mail. Some of them didn't like the idea of having to go out of the country to go to college because they didn't want to drink the water. After it was pointed out that New Mexico is a state, they thought better of it.

During my Stage Crafts class my freshman year, Mr. H, the professor, was telling us about the various jobs that people did behind the scenes. He started talking about the Scene Designer. We were all taking notes. I was sitting next to Tood (who was not my roommate). I looked at his notes and saw that he had written "sean dezzigner." I thought, "Wait! You don't know how to spell the words 'scene designer?' How the heck did you get into college? How did you graduate from high school with atrocious spelling like that?" I knew teachers who would gladly flunk students who didn't know how to spell relatively simple words even to the point that they could not graduate, so I wondered about the quality of public education was in Albuquerque. I mean, I was blown away by the level of acting in his school's Theatre department. I'm surprised that quality didn't carry over to the basic educational needs.

And it was especially surprising to have that from Tood. Tood was actually one of the smartest people I've ever met and he worked really hard on backstage projects in the department. I wondered why he didn't try to do better in English. I guess it doesn't matter because, as far as I know, he never finished college.

I didn't realize it at the time, but this would be the forerunner of all the bad spelling, grammar and punctuation that would plague the Internet in the future. He wasn't the only one who failed to make an effort at doing things correctly in school. As you've probably noticed, I try to make everything perfect on this blog. Even when I text, I try to make it as close to the way I speak as possible. I do not even use the standard abbreviations, like LOL and WTF. Many years ago, when I used to chat on AOL, I did this as well. There was this one woman I started a conversation with. I didn't notice, but she gradually started using punctuation and capitalization in her messages. She pointed this out to me. She started doing it because I was doing. She was actually trying to impress me.

At the very least, this taught me not to expect so much from people in general. This meant that I was going to enter a world in which people didn't try very hard in their writing. I had to accept that there would be a lot of misunderstandings because somebody didn't put a comma in the right place. Nothing was really ever going to be up to my standard. I know there are people who have little tolerance for that, and they are in positions to actually do something about it. I'm not. That's another thing that makes me a loser.

An aversion to temptation

Every day, I get off work and find myself being lured by the most wonderful aroma. However, there is an obstacle that I cannot overcome.


It's a good thing, too. Otherwise, I'd lose $100 a month just eating there.

Lostop #1: Lorz, Part 2

(What's a Lostop? Click here!)

When I last left off with Lorz in yesterday's post, I had just found out her baby was stillborn. This was before the Fall 1984 semester, which would be my junior year at Eastern New Mexico University. When I came over to the Theatre, she had left a thank you note on the bulletin board. She showed appreciation for the love and support everyone gave her during that time. She also mentioned where she had buried the body of the child. I felt really bad that I was not able to be there for her.

The day after I came back to start school, I ran into Lorz outside the Campus Union Building. I had actually seen her from a distance, but her hair was all frizzed out, so I didn't recognize her until we were closer together. I knew that I had to be careful about what to say. I asked her how she was doing. I then told her I was sorry to hear what had happened. She said, "Thanks," and we never discussed it again after that.

About a week later, I was walking past the CUB at night. On the stairs were three of the geekier guys on campus (and yes, I mean geekier than me) engaged in conversation. One of them was mentioning how everything was fine leading up to the delivery. I immediately realized that they were talking about Lorz. I just continued walking past them. I heard one of them say, "Well, one thing that I know is that she smokes. That probably had something to do with it."

Lorz and I started becoming friends again. I finally got the nerve to ask her out on a date to go see the Theatre department's production of "Charley's Aunt" the next week. She actually said yes. I told her we would go out before the performance to get dinner. I was really excited that she accepted. However, there was one thing that could spoil it: She may be scheduled to work that night. I kept my fingers crossed.

I've mentioned before that I had made a choice to remain celibate. However, I was aware that if Lorz wanted to make love, I wouldn't have told her no. I actually wondered if something like that was going to happen once we started going out.

A few days before the big date, another Theatre and Radio/TV student was directing a video for a band from Albuquerque. The goal was to make it on MTV's "Basement Tapes" program. He had reserved the ballroom at the Campus Union Building to shoot a stage sequence. He put out a notice for everyone to come be extras. I went to it and about 100 people were there. However, the director felt like there wasn't enough people, so he asked everyone to leave, get their friends and come back. (He did this even though he was afraid that no one would come back.)

I decided to try to get Lorz in on this. I ran over to her dorm room and knocked on the door. She said I could come in. I opened the door and I saw her sitting there talking to this guy I knew named Bred.

Bred was a sophomore at Artesia High School when I was a senior. I didn't really know him then, but he remembered me. His older sister was in my DECA class. I met him at the beginning of the semester when he wound up being the roommate of a freshman Theatre student I was hanging out with. In my encounters with him, there were two things that characterized him. One was that he had a thing for Hispanic women. Two was that his ability to converse was limited to three topics: getting drunk, getting high and getting laid. With that in mind, it shouldn't have come as a surprise to me that he would wind up meeting her.

I told Lorz and Bred about the video shoot and how they should come. Lorz politely declined. When I closed the door, I knew what was about to happen. However, I didn't really let it get to me because I was aware of his reputation. He was going to sleep with Lorz, get it out of his system and move on to the next Hispanic woman. I didn't think much of it. After all, Lorz and I weren't really dating yet.

The day of the big date arrived. I called Lorz' workplace to see if she was on the schedule. They told me she wasn't. I ran to the cafeteria to get something to eat since I was going to have a special dinner that night. (This year, to save on the upfront money, I opted for the two-meal plan instead of the three. I typically ate breakfast and dinner at the cafeteria and had something else for lunch.) At the cafeteria, I ran into Lorz. She was just getting up from the table after finishing her lunch. She had been eating with Bred. She came up to me and said, "I'm sorry, but I have to work tonight." I told her I just called and they said she wasn't working. "No, they're wrong. I'm working." But I knew what was going on.

I was really upset and didn't enjoy my lunch. I knew that she had just flat out lied to me and I knew why. I would have understood if she had said, "Hey, I really think this thing with me and Bred is really going somewhere. I can't just go out with another guy right now." But she didn't say that. I don't know why she couldn't tell me the truth, seeing as how she had always been able to be open and honest with me before. This really tore me up. The fact that she agreed to a date with me is what makes her a Lostop.

She continued to see Bred. I can't believe that at the age of 18, he met this one girl and decided this was it, he didn't need to sleep with any other women.

I had a very strange encounter with Lorz a few weeks later. We were rehearsing for the Theatre fraternity's Evening of One Acts. We were in this play written by a fellow student. During a rehearsal, we were sitting on a bench onstage while a couple of other actors were working through their scene. Lorz laid on her belly on the bench to read a book and put her legs in my lap. (She was wearing pants at the time.) I started running my fingers along her calves. She never told me to stop. It just felt so intimate to me, but at the same time, I was aware that I was probably never going to get to do that again.

The next semester, I was walking through the dorm and ran into Lorz. She told me she had gotten married. I told her congratulations and went on. I don't think I ever talked to her again after that. But not by choice. We just didn't see each other for the rest of the school year.

Lorz and Bred did not return to school the next year. I graduated. I had heard that they came back the next year. In 1986, I went to a concert at Greyhound Arena. I saw Lorz and Bred walking around, but I didn't approach them. I just knew that wasn't going to do anything but cause a lot of pain for me. I never saw them again.

About a year later, Bred's sister came and applied for a sales position at the radio station where I worked. I asked how Bred and Lorz were doing. She said they had just had a baby. I was actually happy about that, given what had happened a couple of years eariler.

So, where are they now? Doing an Internet search has found that they have lived in at least five different locations since I last saw them. These places are Albuquerque, Bernalillo, Los Lunas and Alamogordo, all in New Mexico, and Bridgeport, TX. I had initially found a couple of certifications that they had, but when I went back to Google them, I couldn't find them again. They don't appear to have set up any Facebook or LinkedIn accounts. They practically live off the grid, so to speak.

I have to look back and be thankful that we didn't get involved with each other. I would have wanted an eternity with her and she probably would have just been looking for her next brief fling (even though she married her next "brief fling"). If I had sex with her, the breakup would have been absolutely devastating. I was not mentally prepared for a relationship like that at that time.

But I really don't know what I would say if I ran into her today. Probably just, "Hey! How are you doing? I'm fine. See you later." I would then hope that would be the end of it. I do feel like the end has already happened. Now that I've written about it, I can quit dwelling on it.

Lostop #1: Lorz, Part 1

(What's a Lostop? Click here!)

I first met Lorz during Pre-registration at Eastern New Mexico University the summer before I started college. She was from Albuquerque, where she went to West Mesa High School. She was a Theatre major. Her surname was Hispanic, but she didn't look at all like the Hispanic girls I had gone to school with in Artesia. Her complexion was rather light. I never saw her parents, so I have no way of knowing for certain if she is mixed, but she probably is.

The best way to describe Lorz is to compare her to Cameron Diaz' character in "There's Something about Mary." Lorz was the kind of girl I felt like I had a shot at, even though she was out of my league. Come to find out, there were a lot of other guys on campus who felt that way about her, and they were all geeks like me.

One example is this incident I witnessed in the Theatre lobby one time. She was sitting in one of the chairs. There was this guy (not a student) who appeared to be waiting for an appointment with the head of the Theatre Department. Lorz started up a conversation with him. She started reading him some of her poetry. The guy appeared to be growing interested in her. After one poem, she said, "As you can tell, I'm really in love." The expression on his face slowly evolved into a s***-eating grin when he realized that she wasn't really trying to get him to like her.

After Pre-registration, I spent the rest of the summer looking forward to seeing Lorz again. I imagined the two of us being a couple on campus and meeting other couples in the same circles. That was one aspect of college I was looking forward to that I never got to experience.

I saw Lorz again on campus in the few days before classes started. She came with her boyfriend. He looked to be about 30 years old. He had long, blond, unkempt hair and a beard and moustache to match. He also ran around everywhere without his shirt on. While Lorz would hang out with everybody, he just stood there and kind of stared all the guys down. I wondered why she would get involved with someone like this, but accepted that my fantasies of us being romantically involved were not going to become realized any time soon.

After classes started, I never saw that boyfriend again, but I never heard her say anything about him. It didn't matter, because she had appeared to have already moved on to her next boyfriend. This was a pattern and it always appeared like the guys she got involved with didn't go to school at ENMU.

My sophomore year, we were both in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." During warm-ups before rehearsal started, the "coach" told everyone to choose a partner and hold hands. Before I even had a chance to even think about who I was going to try to pair up with, Lorz grabbed my hand. Everyone in the cast then engaged in a game of "tag." We ran all over the stage and managed to keep from being "it." When we were done, my hand was ALL sweaty. I hadn't felt that since I held hands with Roz. Lorz noted how wet my hand was and said so very loudly. It was a big thrill for me, but ultimately embarassing.

The remainder of the semester, we would frequently run into each other at the cafeteria and eat breakfast together. She typically would talk about problems with her boyfriend. I never had any solutions. Mostly the problems centered around the boyfriend not always being available when she wanted to see him. There were only certain times that they could get together. I would just sit there and hope she would say something like, "...so I broke up with him." That just never happened.

Also, during this time, she was working backstage on the Theatre department's production of "The Elephant Man" and was at rehearsals. I designed the lighting and would be at rehearsals from time to time. When we were there together, I would give her a ride to her boyfriend's house. For some reason, he was never able to come get her. But I really didn't mind. It just meant I got to spend more time with her.

One morning at breakfast, she said, "I have something to tell you. I'm a little pregnant." I was shocked. I couldn't believe she said "a little pregnant." THERE'S NO SUCH THING! You're either pregnant or you're not. You can't be a "little" pregnant. That's like being a "little" dead.

She decided to give the baby up for adoption, because it seemed like the father didn't want anything to do with it. We didn't hang out much after she told me about the pregnancy. There was one time during the spring semester that I gave her a ride to her boyfriend's house. She was just quiet during the entire drive. I watched her slowly walk up the steps to the trailer, knock on the door and be let in. I never saw who the boyfriend was.

I did not attend the summer 1984 session at ENMU. I was at home in Artesia almost the whole summer, so I was really out of the loop on everything that was going on with everyone. When I came back to school, someone told me that Lorz went into labor and the baby was stillborn. That was devastating news. I didn't know what I would say to Lorz when I saw her next.

But that day did arrive. And a lot more happened after that. I'll go into more detail tomorrow, including what qualifies her for "Lostop" status.

Categories of Women on this Blog

Okay, I've written about many of the friends and enemies in college. Now, it's time to start writing about the various women I had encounters with during that time and into my adulthood. I've come up with a few special categories in past posts, but things are going to start getting a little more complicated and I don't want to waste space on each one to explain what they mean. So, I'm going to list all the old and upcoming categories here. Anytime I place a woman into one of these categories, I will include a link back to this page so you'll know what I'm talking about.

Here are the categories I've already covered:

1. Girlfriend

This is the most straightforward and one that I don't have to link back to this page. As I've mentioned before, for me to consider someone my girlfriend, I have to have gone out on a date with her, held her hand and kissed her, but not necessarily in that order. Up to this point on the blog, I've only had one actual girlfriend.

2. Crush

This means a crush in a classic sense. I like a girl, but I'm not certain if she likes me and I'm usually too chicken to try to make something more happen. I wind up pining for the girl for the rest of my life. I had a lot of these and most of them I have not bothered to mention in these articles.

3. Friend Zone

I think we've all been there. For me, to be considered stuck in the Friend Zone, I have to have gone out on at least one date solo with the woman. No hand holding, no kissing.

4. Mistop

This is a Missed Opportunity. It's a situation in which I was aware that a woman possibly liked me, but I didn't take any action (or didn't act soon enough) to try to get her to be my girlfriend.

And now for the upcoming categories:

5. Lostop

This is a Lost Opportunity, the first of which will be detailed in tomorrow's post. Like the Mistop, I was aware that the woman definitely liked me. But unlike the Mistop, I did take timely action, but a set of unusual circumstances kept us from getting to go on a date or pursuing anything further.

6. The Ring Zone

This is where I developed intense crushes on married women. They were so intense that I sorted halted my activity geared toward finding an actual girlfriend. I never would have tried to have sex with them and I never wanted them to leave their husbands for me, but I wouldn't have minded if they had given me more of their attention. The main difference between the Friend Zone and the Ring Zone is that, in the Friend Zone, you are placed there by the object of your desire; in the Ring Zone, you put yourself there.

7. Radio Tease

This is in reference to the women who would call me up when I was a DJ at a radio station. They liked the sound of my voice and thought I would be a total stud. However, when they met me in person, they were very dismayed by my appearance and avoided any attempts to get them to go out on a date with me. However, THEY STILL KEPT CALLING ME! Please note this category will not be limited to only the ones I met.

8. Personal Ad Tease

In order to find me a girlfriend, I had to write and respond to a lot of personal ads. Out of the hundred or so women I contacted, only two of them became girlfriends. Everybody else was a tease and I certainly have a number of interesting stories about them.

9. Internet Tease

I got to the phone stage with a few women on the Internet, but I only ever got to meet one of them. Again, the others were all teases.

10. Near Miss

This is an odd category in which I dated a woman and actually got to the hand-holding stage. However, there was no kissing involved, which means I got that close to making her an official girlfriend.

11. Pretend Marriage

This is where I lived with a girlfriend, and she had a child that was not mine. Notice how I don't have a "Living Together" category. That's because every girlfriend I only lived with had a child that was not mine.

12. Bed Mate

This is where I actually shared a bed with a girl I kind of liked, but we were fully clothed and never touched each other while we were sleeping. This is probably the strangest category because of how things played out. This happened twice to me, but it's going to be a long time before I get to this situation in this blog.

13. Wife

I only have one of these. You know when I get to this designation, I'm not going to be writing about any other women in my life. This will take even longer to get to.

It's nice that the women I've know in my life fit into 13 categories. It just shows how unlucky I've been in love. Tomorrow is my first Lostop.

A White Thanksgiving, Part 2

My family spent Thanksgiving Day 1982 in Artesia because Johad had football practice that day. This meant he wasn't able to join us for the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. He got to eat when he got home about 3pm. (Really, we should have just waited for him, but we had a lot of family members there that year and had planned the dinner at a specific time before the coaches came up with the practice schedule.)

Aside from that, Thanksgiving wasn't very special, but I was glad I got to spend it with family. Much of our energy went into gearing up for the day after Thanksgiving, and we did NOT go shopping. Johad and the football team were going to be going against St. Michael's Academy in Santa Fe for the playoffs. The football team from my senior year didn't make the playoffs, despite having a "Gipper."

(This is something I left off that original post about the dead friend: When the ninth grade football team was told about his passing, they swore that three years later, they would win the State Football Championship in 1981 and dedicate it to him. The team didn't even make the playoffs and they had apparently forgotten about their promise. At this period in time, for some weird reason, the team only won the championship every other year. I guess they didn't take that into account when pledging to honor him with it.)

Johad traveled with the team. Loyd went up with the school marching band. My family drove up to Santa Fe and hung out at the parents of our neighbors before the game started. We drove over to the Academy and went to the football field. While it had an incredible view from the bleachers, the supporters of both teams had to sit on the same side of the field. It was awkward.

It started getting really cold and I started shivering. Mom asked me if I wanted to go ahead and leave with someone else who was going home about the same time. Yes, I did. I went back to that house, hung out and listened to the rest of the game on the radio. One of the things that struck me by the play-by-play announcers was that a loss by the St. Michael's team (which was happening) was going to be really hard on the seniors because they had worked hard the last three years to get to this level, and if the team next year improved on the season, they wouldn't be a part of it. It was their last shot at Championship glory. I kind of felt bad for them, like I felt bad for those seniors in my high school class who couldn't bring the trophy home.

Johad and Larry came back with Mom and Dad. We then went out to a relative's house in Espanola, NM, on the outskirts of Santa Fe. The relative had been at Dad's 40th birthday party and met Johad there. He remarked that Johad's English had improved in the last three months. We didn't even notice.

We ate dinner and watched the boxing match between "Tex" Cobb and Larry Holmes. I was never really into boxing, but that was the strangest sports viewing experience in my entire life.

We spent the night and went home the next day. We found out later that there was a major snowstorm between Santa Fe and Roswell that closed the road. Everybody else who had gone to that game, including the football players, the marching band, the coaches, teachers and their families had to spend the night in Vaughn. A makeshift shelter was set up in the school's gymnasium. The person who gave me a ride to Artesia from ENMU got caught up in that. He made it sound like everybody actually had a good time. I guess that was because the team won, so they had reason to celebrate.

On Sunday, I was driven to the house of the person who drove me down and we left for Portales, stopping in Lake Arthur to pick up the other two students along the way. Nothing eventful happened on the way back, which we were probably all glad about. We were eager to get back to our "normal" lives at school.

So that was the White Thanksgiving. One of these days, I'm going to have to tell you about the White Halloween.

What's it time for?

I enjoy sharing experiences from my childhhod with my son. This is one of them.

I wonder if he'll be like me and never completely grow up.

A White Thanksgiving, Part 1

I didn't go home on weekends very much while I was in college. This very much irritated my Mom, who thought I was going to come home every single weekend because she thought I was going to miss it so much. But I knew I was going to have to go home for Thanksgiving in 1982.

Wednesday morning, the day I was supposed to leave, it started snowing. REALLY snowing. However, I never recalled seeing it snow in November before. We were lucky if we got any snow on Christmas. Prior to my first class at 9am, I was walking through the Music building. There were a few students in the lobby. One of them, whom I knew from the Theatre, said out loud, "This is ridiculous! Whoever heard of a White Thanksgiving?"

I was hoping it would stop snowing by 3pm, when I would be finished with my acting class. I had planned to start the 2 1/2 hour drive home around 4pm. However, Mom called up all in a panic about me driving in the snow. She had taken measures to make sure I wouldn't drive home, so she got a hold of one of my Artesia classmates at ENMU to drive me. She said he was going to leave about 1pm. I told her I had class at 2pm, but I would go ahead and skip it. Later she called me and said she found out that classes had been canceled for the rest of the day. I had no more excuses. I was going to have to let him drive me.

I didn't have a problem with someone else driving me home. The problem I had was that I would be home for four days and I wouldn't have my own car to drive around. I mean, I could borrow a car from my parents, but it just wasn't the same.

There were two other people from Lake Arthur going with us. We didn't leave until 2pm. It wasn't snowing at that time, but it was raining, which was probably even worse, considering there was still snow on the ground and roads. We didn't go any faster than 30 miles an hour all the way to Roswell. We were driving with the windshield wipers on the whole way. It's a two-lane highway on the drive to Roswell from Portales. Cars approaching us typically splashed muddy water on our windshield. It would be immediately removed by the wipers. However, a truck drove past us at one point. When the wipers went over the splash, the window was still covered. We all quickly panicked. Fortunately, all the water was removed on the next wipe. We collectively breathed a sigh of relief.

It took about four hours to get to Roswell. We stopped and ate at Long John Silver's. I ordered the "Treasure Chest," which was a combination of fish, chicken and fries. I thought the chicken would be Chicken Planks, but they were the wing pieces that look like little drumsticks. They called them "Peg Legs." It wasn't what I expected because I wanted something that didn't have any bones in it.

The roads had cleared up somewhat for the rest of the way home, but we still had to drive about 45mph, and we had to go through Lake Arthur first to drop the other two guys off. My friend dropped me off at home after 7pm, more than five hours after we'd left.

But the snow continued to have an impact on the long weekend. I'll have Part 2 on Monday.

College Enemy: Dird

Dird was a freshman the same year I was. I really didn't know much about his background. I think he may have been from Indiana, because the first time I was aware of him, he said something about me wearing a Ball State University t-shirt. We did not start out as enemies, nor as friends. We were just a couple of guys who would run into each other on occasion.

But that changed in January of 1985. I had just returned on a late Friday afternoon from Artesia. I was going to go with some other Theatre students to the Southwest Theatre Conference auditions in Fort Worth, TX. Mom was afraid my car wouldn't be able to handle that trip again, so she said I could borrow her Buick Riviera. I drove down to meet Mom, switched cars, and started driving back. It was snowing really hard after I got out of Roswell. Visibility was very bad on the two lane highway, and it certainly didn't help that the car in front of me only wanted to go 20 mph. (Yes, I know safety was a concern, but they could have gone 40 mph and passing was not an option because I couldn't see the headlights in front of me.)

It took me two hours longer than normal to get home. When I did, I just wanted to relax in my dorm room. My next-door neighbor was the Resident Assistant. All of a sudden, he starts blasting his stereo really LOUD! (There were other people in the room.) I was already frazzled and this didn't help. I called his phone. Someone picked up and started talking with a funny voice and acting like it wasn't the RA's number. I politely asked them to turn down the stereo. They hung up the phone. The next thing I heard was Dird yelling, "F*** you, Fayd!"

Then there was a knock on my door. Dird and a couple of other guys (who were all members of Toilethead's fraternity) started yelling at me, saying I had messed up a recording by calling. I apologized, but I told them I had no idea they were doing something special. I told them about having to drive back in the snow, but that got no pity from them.

Nothing else happened that night, but that triggered a series of pranks against me that I thought was never going to end. I started getting calls in the middle of the night. Someone left a cup of urine on the outside knob of my door, so that it would spill on my feet when I opened it. Somebody wrote on my door in Magic Marker, "Die a******!" I was able to paint over it, but they vandalized it again. I painted over that, but when they did it a third time, I decided to not bother anymore.

In the middle of all this, I saw Dird in the lobby of the dorm. He said, "Guess what? I'm going to be your new roommate!" I kind of ignored him. I went to my room to study for a test in one of my Theatre classes that was supposed to take place the next day. About an hour later, he and some of his frat buddies showed up at my room. "I told you I was going to be your new roommate. I'm moving in." Then they set about being jerks the whole time. One of them said he needed to go to the bathroom, so Dird told him to urinated out the window.

I decided to go see the Head RA. I asked him about Dird being my roommate. He said Dird had a private room. When I went back up, everyone was gone. I breathed a sign of relief. However, one of them left his jacket in my room. A few minutes later, Dird and a couple of the other guys showed back up. I opened the door and told him what the Head RA told me. "Well, he lied. I'm your roommate!" I tried to shut the door on him, but he forced his way in. Since there were three of them, I figured I would be better off just getting through the night. Around 2am, they finally left.

I woke up the next morning and knew there was no way I was going to be able to take that Theatre test. Fortunately, Dr. W allowed us to skip one test without consequences. I told him what happened and he let me off the hook. I went back to my room and decided to see about getting moved into the honors dorm. When I tried calling, the Head RA there kept saying, "Hello? Hello?" I realized that those jerks had removed the mouthpiece part of the phone. I asked the RA if he could try to get it back. He said he would try. I knew I couldn't go without a phone for the time being, so I had to go and steal the mouthpiece out of a phone in the Education building. I wasn't proud that I had to do that, but I felt like I had no other choice. Later that day, the RA came back to me with the mouthpiece.

I called the Honor dorm again. The Head RA said they had no rooms available. I would be stuck at Lincoln for the rest of the semester and be subjected to the pranks. One of the worst was when the RA next door was out for the evening. His phone started ringing and wouldn't stop. Then Dird called me up and told me to hang up the phone. After a while, the RA returned with some other people. I could hear them talking about the phone. The RA picked up the phone and hung it back up. He then left. A few minutes later, it started ringing again and the RA did not come home for the rest of the night. I got almost no sleep. The dumb thing is that I knew whose room the call was coming from. But because I didn't know if Dird was going to be there, I didn't want to go up there and risk more harassment. I have no memory of what happened the next day or when the phone stopped ringing. I could only hope that the RA wouldn't go on another overnight excursion. He didn't.

(One thing I should point out is that Toilethead had nothing to do with these pranks. However, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that he knew about them.)

The next year, I was able to move into the Honors dorm. I felt like I no longer had to live in fear of Dird and his frat buddies.

However, about three months into the fall semester, I got a phone call in the middle of the night. I recognized that it was Dird making a prank call. He asked if I was Fayd Ogolon. I told him I wasn't. "Oh, sorry! Wrong number!" I wondered how he got my number. The next day, I saw that the student directories had been released. My dorm number was listed next to my name. This came about because of paperwork I filled out at the beginning of the school year. I had no idea this information was used for the directory. Fortunately, Dird never tried to prank me again.

The next semester, some people in the student government felt like the student body didn't know we were there. They came up with this idea that we would post all of our photos and phone numbers in the student paper so that the students would know who to contact regarding campus concerns that we could take care of. Dird had some position in the student government. We were all gathered to get our photos taken. I told the person collecting the information that I did not want my number published. They never asked why and they did not publish my number. I was the only member of the government who did not have a phone number listed under his name. I didn't care how it made me look, I avoided prank calls for the rest of the year.

I never saw Dird again after graduation. Five years ago, I wrote an essay updating my life for the ENMU Alumni Directory. When I received the directory, I noticed that he had also written an essay, which probably meant that he had purchased a copy of the directory as well. I had this fear in the back of my mind that he would see my name and start e-mailing me. However, that never happened.

Dird appears to have become some sort of military prosecutor. I never would have seen him doing that. I wonder how seriously he would be taken in court if they knew about his hijinks in college.

I have to admit I have a strong feeling that I will run into him again, much like I had a feeling I would run into one of my grade school tormentors. I honestly don't know how I will react if I see him. I can only hope that he feels regret for what he put me through and that an apology will be the first thing out of his mouth. If that happens, everything's going to be okay.

I was replaced by my parents

I have to backtrack a little for this post. It appears I missed an important event in the life of my family prior to me leaving for college. This little detail comes into major play in an upcoming article.

Before I started college, my parents decided to host a foreign exchange student. My father was a member of Rotary and the organization has a program to bring foreign students here and send domestic students there. My high school had seen a number of foreign exchange students while I was there. There were two my sophomore and junior years, and four my senior year. I know we didn't send that many of our students overseas and I don't know how they wound up in Artesia.

(One interesting aspect of the ones who came to our school when I was a sophomore was that in the American History class, on one of the tests, the only two students who got 100% were the foreign exchange students.)

We found out ahead of time that his name was Johad and he was from Sweden. We went to El Paso to pick him up at the airport. We were given a photocopy of his picture, but the copy showed him to have dark hair. We weren't able to pick him out of the crowd arriving at the airport. Somehow, Loyd saw this guy with blond hair and determined it was him. His English was actually very good. We started back home. It was a little difficult getting the coversation going at first, but things loosened up a bit and we started getting to know one another. His father owned a Volvo dealership. He was very much into Volvos, but hated Saabs.

Along the way, we had to stop at a Border Patrol checkpoint. The officer came up to my Dad's window and asked, "Is everyone in here an American citizen?" Dad responded, "Not exactly," and explained that Johad was a foreign exchange student from Sweden. The officer requested to see his paperwork. Dad had to get out of the car and open the trunk to get out Johad's suitcase. The officer looked at the papers and let us go. Mom told Dad, "You could have just lied and told him we were all American citizens. He wouldn't have known anything unless Johad started talking."

This was a week before I started college. Johad stayed in the small room at the end of the hall upstairs. Mom had used it as her sewing room, but it got turned into the guest bedroom after Loyd and I decided we couldn't stand being roommates any longer. After I went to college, he got my room and my water bed. I have mentioned before how I didn't like coming home from college very much. This was part of the reason, that I wouldn't get to sleep in my own bed.

Johad was at the house when my father had his 40th birthday party. Mom threw Dad a surprise party in our yard and there were a lot of people who came over. One of them was a teacher who had gone to college with my parents. He had hosted a foreign exchange student from Sweden during my sophomore year. When he came over, he shouted out some obsenity in Swedish and Johad heard him. Johad was originally going to steer clear of the party, but he knew he had to come down to meet this gentleman.

When I was in high school, the male foreign exchange students didn't get a lot of attention. Mom was afraid he'd be somewhat outcast and that Loyd would have to hang around him a lot at school. That turned out not to be a problem. Johad was very good looking and athletic. While he'd only played soccer in Sweden, he found that he was able to parlay that experience into becoming the football team's place kicker. He was instantly an Alpha male at the school. In addition, that was one of the years the football team won the state championship. Without really trying, he became the son I feel my father always wanted. (I should point out that Dad never actually made me feel that way.)

I still got along with him very well. As pre-arranged, he only stayed with my family for about five months and then stayed with another Rotary member and his family for the rest of the school year. He went with us for our spring break visit to Big Bend National Park in Texas. Loyd, Johad and I camped out in a tent for the week while Mom and Dad stayed in the camper. The three of us went to Boquillas, Mexico one day. Loyd, who was 16 at the time, bought some alcohol and snuck it back across the border. That night, he and Johad started drinking. They got drunk. I'd never been around Loyd when he'd been drinking, but he turned out to be really mean. That is, a lot more than he normally was. Loyd started throwing stuff at me while I was trying to sleep, saying, "Shut the f*** up, Fayd! Shut the f*** up!" Johad just kind of laughed along with it. They finally fell asleep.

Johad took part in the graduation ceremony for Artesia High School in 1983 and went back to Sweden. He came back to the United States twice that I knew of. I saw him in 1987, which would have been after he had graduated from college. He visted my family in Artesia and came with them to Clovis to see me and several other members of Mom's family. At this time, I was performing with a church choir for the first ever Clovis Music Festival and he came with them to see that.

That would be the last time I would actually see him. Johad came to the United States again with his family in 2009. My Mom lived in Phoenix at the time and I was visiting her on my way to see Loyd graduated from college. There was a chance that they were going to come visit Mom when I was there, but there was some sort of delay and they didn't make it out there before I had to leave to go see Dad in Artesia, whom he had already visited.

I hope I do get to see him again.

College Enemies: Pad and Scod

Pad and Scod were freshmen the same year I started going to Eastern New Mexico University. They had both graduated from Eldorado High School and had been rather successful in their school's Drama department. I had seen Pad perform about six months earlier in a play titled "Line" at the ENMU Drama Festival, but this was the first time I'd met Scod. There were two other students from Eldorado my freshman year: Elad, who would eventually marry Chud, and another person named Tood (who was not my roomate). But it was Pad and Scod whom I would have the most interaction with.

I got to know them better when we were working on the Theatre department's first production of the school year, "How the Other Half Loves." We were part of the backstage crew. I guess I burped audibly backstage during rehearsal and Scod started acting sick. Pad told him Scod was allergic to burps. I didn't buy it, but they kept insisting. I still didn't buy it. But because they kept it up, I started acting like I bought it and then they finally admitted to fabricating it. I got back at them by writing a short play about someone who claims to be allergic to burps. It was actually doing to be produced for the Alpha Psi Omega (the Theatre fraternity) Evening of One Acts. I told them if they pulled any more stunts like that, I was going to write a play about it.

So there would be times when we would sway between being friends and antagonizing each other, or so I thought. I figured out sometime later that all they were doing was patronizing me, so that meant we were probably never really friends to start with.

One of the things about being a freshman in the Theatre department, and I didn't realize this at first, but there's kind of a race to see who gets cast in the mainstage shows the earliest. Getting cast first means you get to start the foundation for your reputation as an actor. The first production of the year was "How the Other Half Loves," which has only six characters. One freshman got cast for that, and it wasn't any of us. (However, this casting appeared to be politically motivated. It was an obvious effort to cast a freshman and he was rather lackluster during the performances, except for the drunk scene.) The second production was "The Threepenny Opera." This time, none of the freshmen theatre majors were cast, even though there are a lot of characters in that play.

After the cast list was posted, Dr. R, who was directing, put up an announcement that he was also looking to cast people in non-speaking roles as beggars. I approached Dr. R and told him I was interested in playing one of the beggars. He said he would consider it. However, Pad and Scod went to Dr. R, got on their knees and begged him to be cast. He went ahead and cast them. I was angry on so many levels. I was angry that I took a high-ground approach to trying to get cast and they came in, put on a show and got in the production. I was angry that he didn't cast me anyway, because there was plenty of room for beggars. (I even understand that a third person got cast, but dropped out of the show, and I still was not asked to be a part of it.) But basically, I was mad because, at the time, I thought we were friends, and they just cut me out of the whole ordeal.

I worked with Pad again on the crew for the annual Dance presentation. I was running the sound booth. Pad was the Stage Manager. Right before a dress rehearsal, Pad asked me to do something backstage. I told him I had to get the tapes ready for the show, and he snapped, "Yeah, I can see how that's really difficult!"

Everybody ooo'ed and aww'ed over them and wanted to work with them. They frequently got cast in student projects for the Advanced Directing class. I had to admit I was lucky to get cast in one project, but it was practically out of pity.

The next year, I finally managed to get cast in a mainstage production for "A Midsummer Night's Dream." I played one of the mechanicals. However, they were cast in the leading roles of the young romantics. And again, everyone ooo'ed and aww'ed over them.

After the fall semester ended, Scod decided that he didn't want to do theatre anymore and focused on his other studies. However, Pad continued and got cast in "Deathtrap," in which I also played a role. We had one brief scene together. But there were issues surrounding Pad and his participation in the play. A graduate student trying to get her Master's at Texas Tech had cast him in a play that was to be part of her thesis. He would be required to rehearse this piece rather extensively, to the point in which it would interfere with his rehearsals for "Deathtrap." Push came to shove, and he was told he would have to drop out of the other project as the mainstage production took precedence. This didn't sit well with that graduate student, who had already been rehearsing the piece for three weeks and would have had to start over. At the beginning of rehearsal one night, Pad got mad at the director, Mr. H, and quit the production. He decided to come back.

The next day, before rehearsal, he said something like, "Boy, all of this drama over me." I said, "Well, that's what you get for being a popular actor." He then said, "But I'm not." I WANTED TO STRANGLE HIM AT THIS POINT! I wanted to scream out as I was bashing his head into an auditorium chair, "YOU ARE THE MOST IN-DEMAND ACTOR IN OUR CLASS AND YOU KNOW IT! EVERYBODY WANTS TO WORK WITH YOU! I WOULD DO ANYTHING TO HAVE EVERYONE RESPECT MY THEATRICAL ARTISTRY LIKE THEY DO YOURS! AND I CERTAINLY WOULDN'T BE COMPLAINING ABOUT IT!"

I have no idea how the issue with the graduate student played out. Pad and Scod did not return to school the next year. However, Pad and his classmate Tood (who also did not return) did come back for a visit once. They came in the theatre building and watched a little bit of a rehearsal. I said hi to them, but I didn't really talk to them. I think I just got enough information to determine that Pad was not coming back to ENMU.

That was the last I saw of Pad and I never saw Scod again after sophomore year. I feel the same way about them that I did about Toilethead in terms of standing in the way of other people getting their shot on the stage, but that they specifically kept me from being able to grow artistically in the Theatre department. If they hadn't been there, I'd like to think that I would have been seriously looked at for some of the roles they had been able to land.

I have no idea what happened to Scod. His name is actually rather common and difficult to pinpoint on the Internet. As for Pad, it appears that at one point, he became the head of the Drama department at West Mesa High School in Albuquerque. Later, he appeared to have started a counseling business in Albuquerque. He got married at some point prior to 2010, when his mother died.

It wouldn't bug me if I never heard from either one of them again, but there are a lot of people in my life like that.

Money Grubbing Rags

Sometimes, you feel like your world is not complete without some magazine subscriptions.



I'll probably get around to these after Boyd goes to college and realize I did everything wrong.

Road Trip!

I wasn't aware that the first college road trip I experienced was a road trip. At least, not in the current vernacular. Basically, there was a theatre festival of sorts being held in Fort Worth, TX. Dr. W was the President of the Southwest Theatre Conference and was going to do a presentation at the event. He asked if any students wanted to take part. Chud and I both volunteered, as did four other upperclassmen. However, those of us going were not considered the cream of the crop of the Eastern New Mexico University Theatre department.

We prepared some staged poetry readings. We also performed the one-act play "The Valiant." As part of the presentation, we did the entire piece in phases. The first part was a staged reading, the second as a reading in which we did actual blocking and then we performed the ending without the scripts. We rehearsed this, but our cast was short a couple of people, so Dr. W was able to recruit some students from Vernon Community College in Texas to help us out.

The day we were supposed to leave to go to Fort Worth, we gathered in the parking lot of the Theatre. We were going in two cars. Chud and I were in my car. The other four were in a separate car. It was my understanding that the other car was going to lead and we would follow all the way to Fort Worth. We were just going to leave out of the parking lot. So, they left first and we started following them, but we got stopped by the first light and they kept going. We tried to catch up, but we couldn't find them.

Chud said we should go back to the Theatre and wait for them to come back. We waited an hour, but they did not return. I told Chud we had waited too long, but he wanted to wait longer. I just started driving.

There's a special shortcut to get to Lubbock, TX from Portales, but I didn't know where it was. The others took this shortcut, but my map did not have this road on it. We drove through Clovis, Texico and Muleshoe to get to Lubbock. About an hour down the road, I got a flat tire. Chud and I got out, and like my first day driving to college, we couldn't remove the lug nuts. There was some kind of gas station about a quarter-mile away, so I walked over there while Chud worked to get the tire off. There was someone there who was able to give us a hand, and drove me back to the car. When we arrived, Chud told me he broke one of the lug nuts off. The guy told us we needed to stop by an auto parts store to get a new set of lug nuts and then a tire store to get a new tire. We would find those in Lubbock.

We drove to Lubbock and found a parts store and bought the lug nuts. Pretty soon after, we found the tire store. We asked them to replace the lug nuts. They said they didn't do that kind of work. They would only put on the tires. However, without much argument from us, they relented and said they would put them on. Chud and I went to a nearby Taco Villa for lunch. We came back, the car was ready and we were back on the road.

We had to keep calling Dr. W with updates on our whereabouts. I had to keep putting coins in the phone booths that we stopped at along the way. (Boy, those days before cell phones and free long distance really sucked.)

At this time, I was not very good at judging distances on road maps. I thought we were just a couple of hours away. NO! WE WERE STILL AT LEAST FIVE OR SIX HOURS AWAY! AND THIS WAS IN 1982 WHEN THE NATIONAL SPEED LIMIT WAS 55 MPH! IT TOOK A LONG TIME TO GET THERE!

The good news is that we didn't have anything else bad happen along the way. The only real problem we had was that we didn't know where the Motel 6 was where we were going to be staying. However, we knew the address for the hotel where Dr. W was at. We just drove straight to downtown Fort Worth and found the hotel. When we walked in the lobby, there was Dr. W, just like when I ran into my Mom in Chicago.

Dr. W took us up to his room. Because he was the Conference President, he was booked in the Presidential Suite. This room had an upstairs and a downstairs. It had a kitchen. IT HAD A BABY GRAND PIANO! I have never been in another hotel room that was this nice.

The others in our group came to the hotel. One of them started yelling at me, "We told you we were going to stop at the convenience store. We stopped and you just kept on driving." Neither Chud nor I heard them mention anything about stopping before we were to officially set out. It was just as well anyway, because I'm pretty certain they would have been even madder to have to deal with our car problems on the way there.

We met the other two students from Vernon and practiced the play upstairs. Downstairs, Dr. W was entertaining guests who kept coming over to the room. Everyone else was just as impressed as I was. And they were LOUD! We had a hard time upstairs being able to hear ourselves. We then all went back to our motel rooms. What a letdown!

We three guys stayed in one room and the three women stayed in the other. There were two beds in our room. Chud and I shared the bed. We figured that since we were the freshmen, that was what we had to do. Interesting enough, there was no discussion of the sleeping arrangements beforehand.

The next day, we drove to the hotel. We couldn't figure out where to park, so we just parked on the street at a meter. While I paid for two hours, I had to run back out and put more money in. I came back out about 2 hours and 15 minutes later. I already got a ticket. I had to pay $5. That was a lot back then.

We did our presentation, but there weren't a lot of people who showed up for the workshop. And everyone who did show up were those who came to Dr. W's room the night before. I felt like the whole thing was a waste of time.

One funny thing happened that night. The other guy, who played the lead character in "The Valiant," started talking in his sleep. He was reciting lines from the play!

There was nothing really eventful about the rest of the conference. We got in our cars and went straight home. Nothing else spectacular happened along the way.

The one bad thing about all this is that Chud and I would never get to do another road trip by ourselves again.

College Enemy: Toilethead, Part 3

In the previous two posts, I discussed the good and bad experiences I had with Toilethead. All the abuse and degradation he put me through would have been completely worth it if I had been able to watch TV with my son and say, "You see that guy? I went to college with him." Now, I'm reduced to saying, "Yeah, that was a very inspiring story about that college football player. But he grew up and got into trouble with the SEC for an alleged pump and dump stock scheme and this guy I went to college with was his CFO!"

After he graduated from college, Toilethead did a lot of things that were of questionable morals. The first thing I was aware of was his involvement in the non-profit organization Beer Drinkers of New Mexico, a state offshoot of Beer Drinkers of America. When articles about the organization started making the rounds in the media, he was listed as the spokesperson. The concept of the group was to improve the image of people who drink beer, much like how the NRA tries to improve the image of gun owners. They were working to let it be known that there is nothing wrong with someone sitting back and enjoying a beer.

The national organization was a lobbying group financed by the major brewers aimed at trying to keep the taxes on alcoholic beverages from going up, among other things. When I saw his picture in the paper, my first thought was along the lines that he just wanted to keep being a frat boy, even after graduating from college.

And that turned out to be a very accurate assessment. When I started searching for him on-line, I found that he continued to be very active in his fraternity on a national level, even serving in a presidential-type position for a period of time. I left all my old organizations from college behind when I graduated. I just figured that was in my past and I didn't need to deal with it anymore. I'm just surprised that he could let go of his dream to be an actor, but never let go of the fraternity, probably because no one at the fraternity ever asked him to go down on them. (See yesterday's post.)

After that, he set up some kind of sports and entertainment agency in Albuquerque. This went on for awhile. At one point, Rod told me that Toilethead had come into the Hasting's where he worked and he rang him up, but he didn't really say anything to him and he didn't seem to notice who he was, even though they were both freshmen at ENMU the same year.

Then he became some kind of financial advisor. As I mentioned in the first paragraph above, he served as a CFO and was among those who got in trouble with the SEC. Everyone involved had to pay fines, but no one admitted any wrongdoing. Some time after that, the head football coach at a major university was released from his contract. There were issues regarding having the university pay out the rest of his contract. Toilethead advised that the coach could receive the money due him from the charitable foundation that was set up in his name. Now, I'm not an expert on this, but to me, that was wrong. I mean, the foundation is supposed to help out those in need, not provide a golden parachute for an underperforming coach.

And there is probably a lot more that Toilethead did that I did not uncover on the Internet. And there's probably going to be a lot more that he's going to do.

Some time ago, I considered sending him an e-mail letting him know how disappointed I was that he chose a different path than the one he wanted to follow in college. I wanted to tell him that because of his talent, his presence kept a lot of people at ENMU from being able to grow as artists. He didn't need that growth, as he was already at the level most of us aspired for. He really didn't need Eastern, but other students really could have used that experience before they went out in the world.

But I'm pretty certain he would delete anything that had my name on it without reading it first.

College Enemy: Toilethead, Part 2

Yesterday, I had some nice things about the person I am referring to as Toilethead, but I will admit there was a tinge of pressure underneath what I wrote. I guess I can sum it up by saying that Toilethead was a rather abrasive individual. But on this blog, you know I have to go into more detail, so here goes:

Part of of the problem that I and a lot of the other Theatre students had was his idea that he was much more talented than everyone else in the department. I mean, he definitely was respected for his acting by everyone, but he refused to acknowledge that other people can be talented in other areas. He had very little regard for the abilities of the other students, with the exception of Bid.

My freshman year, I was working in the lighting booth for "Fiddler on the Roof." After rehearsal was over, everyone started gathering in the auditorium for notes from the director, Dr. R. I sat a couple of rows behind Toilethead. Before addressing the cast, Dr. R was talking to him about getting in the right spot for the lighting. Toilethead said something like, "Yeah, Fayd's not too smart." Dr. R said, "He's right behind you." "Yeah, he's still not too smart." (Dr. R later told me, "No, you're the smart one.")

My sophomore year, I was cast in two productions in which I got to act side by side with him. In "A Midsummer Night's Dream," he played Nick Bottom and I played Tom Snout. In "Deathtrap," he played Sidney Bruhl and I played Porter Milgrim. In both of these, he did what he could to inflict physical pain on me while on stage in front of the audience. In "Dream," during our introductory scene, he did a Three Stooges-style downward nose swipe, and he did it really hard. I laughed while on stage, but it hurt. The skin on my nose was starting to peel, so I finally had to tell him to not do it so hard. He complied somewhat. In "Deathtrap," I had to shake his hand when I made my entrance. The way he did it, we should have just called the play "Deathgrip." (I should add that he never did these things very hard in rehearsal, so it may have just been the adrenaline from the live performance that caused him to triple his efforts, but it was probably still intentional.)

But those were the only two times I had to come in direct contact with him on stage. I'm pretty certain I'm not the only one he abused onstage (or off, for that matter). I remember that during the post-mortem for "The Elephant Man," one of the cast members complained about all these stressful situations that were happening behind the scenes. While no one mentioned any names, I immediately knew they all had to do with Toilethead.

But when you really got right down to it, he just didn't have any respect for me. When he landed the role of Tevye for "Fiddler," everyone gathered around him. I kept sticking out my hand to congratulate him. He kept ignoring me while shaking everyone else's hands. That is something that has stayed with me all this time. It's not like I was that good or competing against him for the role (which I wasn't, because I didn't even make the callbacks.) I really don't know why he decided to have that much disrespect for me. I never again congratulated him on another role.

During his sophomore year, he pledged one of the fraternities on Campus. Suddenly, his passion was split between acting and his frat brothers. The next couple of years, he wanted to spend more time with the fraternity and less time with the Theatre department. And while a lot of the students didn't like the direction this was going, I actually think many of them were a little jealous that he had this life outside of the Theatre that we couldn't be a part of.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, he got accepted into a program at NYU toward the end of his junior year. But I didn't mention that after he received the official word, he was saying stuff like, "I'm glad to be getting away from this place. There's nothing for me here." A lot of us were really looking forward to not having him around the next year.

When I returned in the fall of 1984, I talked to one of the Theatre professors, Dr. W. He casually mentioned that he had just seen Toilethead. I shuddered. "No, what are you talking about? He was supposed to go to NYU." "No, he's decided to finish his education here at Eastern." Moments later, another student walked in to see Dr. W. I broke the news. "Guess what? Toilethead is back this year." "NO! He was supposed to be at NYU!" Whenever some of us Theatre students congregated before the start of the year, the conversation would turn to Toilethead's return. The consensus was that if we had said the things he did, we wouldn't have come back to Eastern.

When we did see Toilethead again, he appeared very uneasy to be back. I'm certain he got all kinds of darting looks from everyone and he looked like he had his tail between his legs. But after a couple of days, he was back to his old self. However, he only auditioned and participated in one production that year.

So what happened to NYU? I don't know, but I am quite willing to speculate. A few years ago, I saw an episode of "Mr. Show" that featured a sketch that was a parody of the opening scene from "The Firm." The law school's top student is being interviewed by a prestigious law firm. The recruiters tell him that before they hire him, he has to give them all blow jobs. This got me to thinking that something like this happened to Toilethead. He was probably all set to meet with the Theatre department heads and may have made some kind of homophobic comment beforehand that got overheard by someone in charge. (Toilethead made it very clear at Eastern that he wanted nothing to do with homosexuals.) They probably decided to teach him a lesson during the department interview and told him he had to give them all blow jobs.

"What? You're kidding, right?"

"No, we're absolutely serious. Do you think theatre professionals cast on talent and skill? No, they cast based on who gives the best blow jobs."

"But I'm a really good actor!"

"Then you're probably really good at giving blow jobs."

(Yes, I am aware I stole the best lines from the sketch. You should check it out here if you haven't seen it.)

Chances are that the NYU people would not let up on their "act," so he likely just walked out and started thinking about no longer pursuing a life as an actor. He decided to just come back, finish his degree and find some other avenue for making a living after he graduated.

And he did manage to do that. I'll have more in tomorrow's post. (Yes, I have to do a Part 3.)

College Enemy: Toilethead, Part 1

When I was in college, I always envisioned myself becoming a big shot in the entertainment industry. Not as an actor, but as a writer, director or producer. I had hoped that I would become important enough to write a book about my life's story. That never happened. That's why I'm doing this blog.

One of the things I wanted to do in an autobiography was go into detail about this one student in Eastern New Mexico University's Theatre department. I was going to heap lots of praise about him, but I wanted that praise to cause him problems. My solution was to call him "Toilethead." If he came to auditions, directors would say, "I see you went to ENMU at the same time as Fayd Ogolon. You wouldn't happen to be 'Toilethead,' would you?" This would cause him to either say yes or no. If he said yes, the response could be, "I don't need your attitude poisoning the cast. Get out!" If he denied being "Toilethead," it might be, "Oh, that's too bad. I understand that guy was a really good actor. I need someone like that in this production."

So, even though no one of influence is reading this, I'm still going to call him "Toilethead." However, I won't be using the quotation marks anymore. While this wasn't planned ahead of time, it still ends with the letter "d" designation that I have been giving my family's and friends' names. The rest of it has nothing in common with his real name. I have made reference to him once before in a previous post.

Like Bid, I first became aware of Toilethead during ENMU's Drama Festival in 1982. He played "Teddy" in the college's production of "Arsenic and Old Lace." When I came to ENMU the next semester and met him, I wasn't aware he was the same actor because he had make up that made him appear considerably older and look like Theodore Roosevelt.

Toilethead was originally from New York. At some point, his family moved to Albuquerque, where he went to Cibola High School. He always dreamed of going back to New York and hoped to be able to do it as an actor.

He definitely had the talent and skills to be a success. He probably wouldn't have become rich and famous, but out of all of us at ENMU, he most appeared to be destined to make a comfortable living as an actor. He could have been the next Ronny Cox (who had also graduated from ENMU). His forte would have been as a character actor. At the age of 19, he was capable of playing roles that were aged more than 20 years older than him. If he had put his mind to it, he could have gone straight to New York or Hollywood and started getting cast right away after graduating from high school. However, I guess he felt like he needed something to put on a resume and headshot, so he came to ENMU.

One of the Theatre professors, Dr. W, told me that when Toilethead first arrived, he thought he was going to take over the department, but that didn't happen. However, Dr. W never explained what kept him from realizing that goal his freshman year. But to those of us who came in the next year, it appeared that he had done what he had set out to do. He scored the roles of Tiger Brown in "The Threepenny Opera" and Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof," and this was without any real ability to sing. He simply acted his way through the songs.

The next year, he got cast in major roles in every mainstage production, except for the Dance department's annual showcase. (He couldn't dance, and acting doesn't help there.)

He always got chosen for the big roles because he could deliver the performances that the directors were looking for, every single time. He also proved very popular with the Theatre patrons. Many people who lived in the Portales/Clovis area would tell the professors how much they enjoyed watching him act. They also felt like they were seeing the start of something much bigger.

Toward the end of his junior year, he was accepted into the Performing Arts program at NYU. He had appeared to have accomplished one of his major life goals. However, he came back to ENMU the next year. (I will speculate on this in tomorrow's post.) He only participated in one production his senior year and focused more on his studies. He also returned to ENMU the year after that, but he didn't get involved in the Theatre department at all, except to do his senior recital requirement for his degree plan. He was living in the same dorm I was in during my senior year and was just a couple of doors down. I saw him coming and going from time to time, but he didn't have much to say to me.

So, this was the good, the praise that I am able to give Toilethead. Tomorrow, we'll get into the bad. And Thursday, it will be the even worse. (I can't believe I'm devoting three posts to this guy.)

One less thing to whine about

I just started taking the Caltrain from Tamien Station in San Jose. I used to take it from the Blossom Hill Station, which is closer to my house, but I found that I could save $53 a month on the pass by driving an extra 10 miles. An additional benefit is that more trains come to Tamien, but not all of them.



The funny thing is that I later found an extra quarter in the hopper.

Old enough to vote!

There I was. I was 18 years old and I could finally vote in elections. It was a day I was looking very forward to. 1982 was the year of the Gubernatorial election in New Mexico. I couldn't vote in the primary, because my birthday is in September, but I was geared up for the general election.

When I went to the first meeting in the Student Senate, they told us that it was the last day to register to vote. I filled out the paperwork and looked forward to 11/02/82.

This is something I have to confess about myself. I actually registered as a Republican. This was during the Reagan administration, so I thought that the Republicans were the political party that were really on the ball. Besides that, I would rather be an elephant than a donkey.

My Mom was furious when she found out! She told me my grandfather would be rolling over in his grave if he knew I had registered as a Republican! This came as a surprise to me because all throughout my childhood, my parents never had one political discussion with me or Loyd. I actually had no idea which party they preferred. They wouldn't even tell me who they voted for in the Presidential elections. This was really perplexing, considering they knew I was rooting for Gerald Ford in 1976. (I even had a poster of him in my bedroom. See, I told you I was a loser.)

The worst part about this is that I didn't find out until much later in my life about the fundamental differences between Republicans and Democrats. After learning about them, I changed my registration to "No Party Affiation." I agree with Democrats and Republicans on a number of separate issues, but I have more disagreements with them. At any rate, I still somewhat identify as a Republican and when I hear all the terrible things Democrats say about them, it does sting me a little.

Anyway, back to Election Day. There were voting machines set up in the Campus Union Building. I thought this was where I was supposed to vote. I went up and told them my name. They didn't have my name on their list. They asked me where I lived. I told them I was in Lincoln Hall. "Oh, you're voting at the Methodist Student Center." This didn't make sense. Why wouldn't they just have all the students who lived in the dorms vote at the CUB? Everybody from school went there almost every day. It would have been very convenient to have everyone vote there and increase turnout from the campus. Not to mention that there are some people who probably didn't want to set foot in the Methodist Clubhouse.

But before I went over there, they checked the records. They found that I wasn't registered to vote. Apparently, even though we were told in Student Senate that it was the last day to register, it was actually the day before. I wasn't permitted to vote. I was stunned. I wasn't going to have a voice in who got elected to be the next Governor. And the guy who did get elected, Toney Anaya, made a lot of people mad during his four years in office. (Back then, incumbent governors were not permitted to run for the next term. This is why we had Bruce King every other four years several times. That was actually a good policy. It forced the Governor to focus on the job at hand and not be distracted by a re-election campaign during the last year.)

But if my late registration was bad for me, it was worse for many others who had registered on time. Someone who registered a lot of students on campus lost all the forms. This was discovered when one person re-registered under her married name, but they had no record of it. Fortunately, she was able to vote under her maiden name, but everyone else was not so lucky.

So, I wouldn't get to vote until 1984 when the next Presidential race was held. I wasn't able to vote in the primary because I was registered in Portales but was living in Artesia with my parents that summer. I didn't know anything about absentee voting. In the general election in November, I voted for Reagan. I have no idea who my parents voted for.

The funny thing is that both my parents registered as Republicans in the 1990's. I go into a little more detail about my Mom's experience with that on my old A Liberal Christian project.

I have voted in every single election since then. At no time were any of the elections I participated in decided by one vote.

College Friend: Bid, Part 2

I kept in frequent contact with Bid for a few years after graduating college. He always sounded excited to hear from me. I don't know if he really was, but he certainly made it appear like he was.

For a few years after college, Bid worked regularly in the chorus of an opera group. He went around the country and performed in productions of various plays and musicals, but usually came back home to Chicago. I could normally get a hold of him by calling his father there. It's interesting, because I know him as "Bid." But when I called his father, I had to ask for "Bid, Jr."

Once Bid told me about a TV-movie he got cast in. He told me the title and that a particular well-known actress was in it. He told me he played a pimp. I actually came across the movie late one night when I was living in Denver. However, I never saw him in it. (I must admit I fell asleep first.) A couple of months later, there was a story in Denver's alternative weekly Westword about a TV-movie being shot around town. The author of the article was an extra. He played a pimp. I realized that Bid's role was probably also as an extra.

Bid once called me in San Diego and said he was performing in a touring production of "Ain't Misbehavin'." They were going to be in San Marcos, CA. I asked him if I could get a free ticket. He said, "I make a percentage of the ticket sales. No, I am not giving out free tickets." I couldn't blame him, but I was flat broke and probably couldn't have even afforded to drive up to San Marcos at that time.

When I started doing music, Bid was one of the few people I turned to for a review of my songwriting abilities. I sent him a cassette. He was rather critical of my work, but everything he told me was the absolute truth. His advice helped me to make a lot of improvements on my next project. However, it still did not make me rich and famous.

After awhile, I found I could no longer keep up with Bid's whereabouts. We lost touch. Every time I looked for him on the Internet, I discovered that I was constantly six months behind him. I was always reading about productions that he was a part of, but they were always in the past. I could never find where he was at that moment in time. I saw that he had played Othello and had done a production of "Dreamgirls" in Dallas (for which he received really good reviews).

This changed a little less than five years ago, when ENMU issued its first Alumni Directory. In there was his phone number and e-mail address. I sent him an e-mail. He responded. He lived in Seattle, WA. He had achieved a goal of his to perform in all 50 states. He was looking to get out of the live performance aspect and do something else, like radio or voice work. He has the ability to do very well in those areas. But even though I worked at a newsradio station at the time, I had no idea how he could get started doing that.

Afterwards, we became friends on Facebook. Occasionally on his profile, he will write about what show he's doing next. It would be nice if I could just get on a plane to go out to see him. I would definitely enjoy seeing how much he's grown as a performer. He was stunning and energetic in college. I get the idea that he was able to sustain and improve upon that level throughout his entire career.

Something I do have to mention that he looks REALLY GOOD. I thought I had a youthful look about me, but he appears ageless for someone in his 50's. His profile photo on Facebook may be a few years old, but I'm certain he still looks the same way. I'm also certain he maintained being in great shape all these years.

Interestingly enough, he is the only college friend I have that I never saw again after he graduated. But it really is nice to keep in contact with him.