One Friday night, early in my senior year in college, I gathered with four other English majors at a bar across the street from campus to wind down after a long week. (The University still had Saturday classes at that time, but some of us had discontinued them for ourselves.)
After a couple of beers, we were about to leave when two professors from our department made an entrance. I’m pretty sure this was not their first stop of the evening. We were in a corner both. They sat down, one on each side, trapping us in.
They proceeded to ply us with more beer while they debated fine points of English literature, which had not been a part of any of our discussion to that point. One was Irish American, complete with red hair. The other was a transplanted Englishman with a commanding presence. The intensity of the discussion grew with each pitcher. It got personal at times. “Castrated Celt!” “Nerd from Northumberland!”
When they finally left, we sat there in a state not unlike shock. One of my friends broke our silence with, “I feel drained.”
We all enjoyed our classes and were serious students. Yet we valued strategic breaks from our studies.
We stumbled out and wandered through campus in a gentle, early-autumn rain. It seemed to be the best way to recover. The rain eased our minds as it slowly penetrated our clothes. That was good enough for most of us. The two females in the group, however, took it a step further. At the construction site of the new student union, they acted on an impulse to roll in the mud.
It didn’t occur to me until decades later to write about the experience. I wonder what the Celt and the Nerd would think of this meager literary attempt. I don’t doubt they would find a way to argue about it.
Tag: college
What I wish I’d said — round two
In an early post on this blog, some three years ago, I mused about things I wish I’d said in various situations. You know how it is. You think of exactly the right thing to say — moments, hours or days later. Sometimes I’m just too shocked to think of a response. I just can’t believe what I’m hearing. Sometimes it’s not that I can’t think of a good reply, but the opposite: I think of too many appropriate responses to choose just one. So, I stand there running through the menu in my mind while saying nothing.
In that post, I shared a few examples. Very few. Here, in no particular order, are more. I offer them for your amusement. I’m fairly certain you can identify.
During the get-acquainted time at the beginning of a statewide committee serving a charitable organization, I said, “I live in Chapel Hill and work at the university.” The chair was a graduate of another school and lived where it is located. She cynically remarked, “THE university?”
I don’t remember exactly what I said in reply, but what I meant was, “Yes, there’s only one university in Chapel Hill. If I were from Greensboro or Raleigh, I’d have specified which university. If I lived where you do and worked at your alma mater, I would’ve said, ‘the university,’ It’s like saying, ‘I work at the post office.’ “
Unfortunately, what I was able to compose at that moment was not this lucid.
(Later, a guest of our committee was a UNC medical faculty member. He introduced himself, “I live in Chapel Hill and work at the university.” The chair didn’t say anything, but I’d bet she was biting her tongue.)
__________
Some years ago, a friend and classmate was looking forward to a new grandchild. Both the friend and his son had been talented college football players, while the other grandfather played in college and the NFL. I was having lunch with the prospective granddad and dad, and we were speculating about the chances of there being a third-generation football star. Then my classmate said, “Of course, it could be a girl, and that would be fine, too.”
What I wish I’d said was, “Mia Ham’s a girl.”
__________
I was meeting with alums of a group in which I’d been active in college. We were planning a reunion. It was suggested that we have a live performer. Those who knew me in college knew I played gigs regularly, often for pay. I said, I’d be glad to play and sing gratis for a half hour or so.
As the discussion continued, someone said we should hire someone to perform because a freebie wouldn’t be that good.
What I didn’t say, but regret not doing so, was, “OK. In that case, I’ll do it for $100.”
__________
Over many years, I worked out in a gym on the UNC campus. For a couple of years, a graduate student from China had a locker next to mine. He was often there at the same time, and we talked regularly.
Shortly before Thanksgiving in one of those years, he was asking me about the holiday and its traditions. I wish I’d invited him, his wife and their child to our house to share Thanksgiving dinner.
__________
A friend was justifying sending his daughters to boarding school at an early age. “Birds push their babies out of the nest after a few weeks.”
What occurred to me, but I chose not to say, was, “And when those baby birds are a year old, they have babies of their own and after 2-3 years, they die.
__________
When I was in theological school, societal issues of the day were often discussed. Most students and faculty had progressive views, and several could be rather outspoken. This did not sit well with one of my classmates. He referred to them as “prophets,” and he didn’t mean it in a positive way.
To help decorate the student lounge, I hung a collage I had done, using newspaper photos depicting current events, affixed to a large poster advertising a campus symposium in which such events were discussed. I didn’t take sides on any issue, but rather tried to present a slice of history.
After a few days, I found that someone had glued a handwritten note onto the work, referring to our school as a “home of the prophets.” I had a pretty good idea who had done it. I removed the vandalized collage.
A few days later, I heard that classmate lamenting that there were “so many prophets on campus.” I thought of saying, “Yeah, I know what you mean. Some prophet recently destroyed one of my works of art in the student lounge.”
__________
Many more times that I could begin to count, a conversation has (usually quickly) gone in a direction that has made me want to say — though I usually don’t — “Not everything is a competition.”
__________
At one point, I devoted a lot of volunteer time to a charitable organization to which I also gave generous financial contributions. A local church had raised questions about a policy matter. I was involved in a private conversation in which one of the leaders of the organization derisively referred to that congregation as “those Southern Baptists.”
I could’ve said, and wish I had, “The Southern Baptist church in which I grew up is where I learned to be philanthropic.”
__________
I expect a person to be loyal to their alma mater, including supporting its athletic teams. But some fans are just that — fans and nothing more. They choose to root for whatever team for whatever reason.
Often, it seems the supporters who go overboard in expressing their support are not those who in fact went to said institution.
There have been times when such a person has become so obnoxious, I’ve been tempted to ask, “And what year did you graduate?”
__________
In a discussion via text or email, some cable TV show came up. One person stated that they figured they could find it “since we have 120 channels.” After a couple more comments, I mentioned that we didn’t have cable or a dish. That person’s retort? “Braggart!”
What I chose not to type was, “Let me get this straight. It’s not bragging when you say you have 120 channels, but it is bragging for me to note I have five or six?”
__________
After a church talent show, in which I’d offered a song from “back in the day” — maybe “If I Were a Carpenter” — a friend joked, “You must have been a hippie.” If I’d replied, “I’ve been called worse,” the friend would’ve appreciated it.
Another year at the same event, the printed program grouped my performance and a few others under the heading “It’s a Little Bit Country.” Before the show, I was looking at the program with a friend whose group was on right after me. He saw that and said, “Which country?”
If my thinking had coalesced in time, I would have introduced my song — George Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun” — from the stage by relaying my friend’s comment and saying, “In this case, the country is England.”
__________
Many years ago, at some kind of meeting, I encountered someone who was a friend of a friend. As we introduced ourselves, she said something to the effect that our mutual friend had been right about my being good looking. That’s, of course, not something I usually (or ever) hear, but if I hadn’t been so dumbfounded, I could’ve said, “I never tire of hearing that.”
__________
I think it was at the conclusion of my second year of college, the last year I returned to my hometown for the summer. That first Sunday evening, I attended the summer college-age youth group. We began by going around the circle of 8-10 people to say where we were now in school.
One of the first attended a school that had recently changed from “college” to “university.” She gave only the name, but another person quickly added “Uni-ver-si-ty!” After that, each person was sure to add an emphasized “col-lege” or “uni-ver-si-ty.”
I was last. I said simply, “I’m at Chapel Hill.”
One guy, who attended a rival school in another state, felt a need to add “college.” I think my non-verbal response, just a subtle facial expression, said all that needed to be said. (Translation, “What a pathetic comment.”) Yet I could have said, and considered doing so, “Yes, in one of the many colleges within the university.” Or maybe, “Yes, I just completed the General College and am entering the College of Arts and Sciences in the fall.”
__________
It was a mid-’60s group discussion of race relations. The leader supported integration and was accepting of interracial romantic relationships. He drew a line, however. He had read or heard about some “young people” having an interracial orgy. The way he said it betrayed a belief that somehow this was more immoral than a monochromatic orgy.
My attempted response, something about swinging the pendulum, was a swing and a miss. I couldn’t get my thinking together enough in that moment to speak directly to what I saw as a problem with his comment.
I realized a day or more later that I wish I’d said, “So if I rob a bank with a Black accomplice, is that worse than if I rob a bank with a white accomplice?”
__________
Seeing me with my then-five-year-old daughter, a colleague smiled and asked, “Who’s this?”
Too late to say it, I came up with, “A big reason I bother getting up each morning.”
__________
Many years ago, I participated in church league softball. One Sunday afternoon, I took my accustomed place at third base as warmups began. Someone I didn’t recognize was at shortstop. When the first baseman threw a ground ball over to me, I scooped it up and gently threw it back.
After a couple of these, the shortstop said I shouldn’t play as deeply since my arm (it seemed to him) was weak.
What popped into my head was, “Who died and made you the coach?” I opted only to stare back incredulously.
Another thing I thought about saying but didn’t, because I didn’t think I owed it to him, was, “These are warmup throws. Throwing as hard as you can without first warming up can cause injury. That’s the purpose of warmup throws. And I play back this far, because it’s much easier to run forward than backward.” (I considered throwing the final warmup well over the first baseman’s head.)
Looking back on the incident later, I imagined offering a short piece of fiction: “Well, I made it to Double A, playing this way.”
I think my non-verbal reply was fine, but eventually I came up with one that also would have filled the bill: “No, I’m fine, but a shortstop has to handle a lot of hot grounders and line drives and bad hops. It may be too much for you. Maybe we should switch positions.”
__________
I’ve always looked for underlying meanings in everything, especially music. A high school teacher seemed to be challenging me when she asked what was the underlying meaning of Billy Ed Wheeler’s “Ode to the Little Shack Out Back,” a song about outhouses that was popular at that time.
I thought a moment and came up with something about its being a spoof on people who can’t let go of the past. That seemed to meet the challenge but didn’t feel exactly right.
Eventually, I came to wish I’d said, “It’s just for fun.”
__________
While visiting with some people in Germany, I mentioned that my wife and I often turn on the closed captions when watching a British TV show, because we can’t always understand what the characters are saying.
My hosts seemed surprised. I knew there were many different Duetsche dialects and imagined some might differ from their own as much as British English differs from mine. I couldn’t come up with a reply based on this notion. But maybe I could’ve asked how they fared listening to a German-speaking Swiss person.
__________
At a UNC football game many years ago, Fed Ex Corporation provided free t-shirts with a school-spirited message on the front and a Fed Ex logo on the back. Sometime later I was wearing mine in a context other than a game. It caught the eye of someone who admired it and asked if I’d added the Fed Ex logo. No, I said, it came that way. They paid for it.
He was a Fed Ex employee (or maybe former employee) with such good feelings about the company, the logo was what he liked best about the shirt. He was envious.
When I told someone else later about this encounter, that person pointed out I should’ve offered to give the admirer the shirt in exchange for a Carolina shirt without a commercial ad on it.
Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?
Memories of a friend
The word “unique” gets tossed about too casually. Often it is used incorrectly. It means “one of a kind.” Thus the word takes no modifiers. Not “most unique,” “somewhat unique” or “very unique.” Just “unique.” Many times the appropriate word is “distinctive,” which refers to someone or some thing that is quite special and rare, but allows that there may be a few others with similar characteristics.
I am about to tell you about a unique individual.
When I relocated to Chapel Hill in the fall of 1965 to enter the University of North Carolina, I became involved in the Baptist Student Union (BSU). One of the regulars was a guy named Bill Colclough. He was older — how much, I was to learn, was part of a delightful, on-going mythology. He had graduated in some previous year and immediately began working on his master’s degree in summer sessions while teaching school. After completing his graduate degree, he continued taking classes. More on that in a minute.
I think my introduction to the myth came one evening at BSU when we were singing songs from mimeographed sheets. When we got to “Too Old to Cut the Mustard Any More,” it was dedicated to Bill. He smiled appreciatively and waved his arm as if to direct while we sang.
Yet while the myth — enjoyed by no one more than Bill — was that he was ancient, the reality was that he seemed ageless. He was at home in each generation of college student. He seemed never too shocked by current trends and was not judgmental. He was accepting of his friends and genuinely interested in them. I’m sure these qualities contributed to his success as a teacher and guidance counselor.
One memory illustrates his subtle wit and his proclivity not to say anything bad about anyone, as well as his perceptiveness. A past mutual acquaintance, a guy prone to affecting an air of wisdom, came up in a conversation one time. “As I recall,” Bill commented, “he was studying to be an intellectual.”
I witnessed these characteristics through the BSU community for many years. And then there were all those decades of courses.
Sometime, maybe in the early ’90s, I was in a gathering of BSU alums. We were introducing ourselves. I said I graduated in ’69. Others similarly said, ’72, ’80 or whatever their class year was. When it was Bill’s turn, he said slyly, “I graduated in June.” In a sense, though, he was a member of each class.
As long as possible, Bill’s summer break featured attending both summer sessions at UNC. Eventually, the shifting schedule limited him to only one session. He was a little disappointed. After he retired, he moved to fall and spring semesters, taking one class in each. He chose from among courses offered on Tuesday and Thursday, 9 a.m. or later. Most, if not all, were in history, his undergrad major, or English. There are few courses in either department that he never took, and I think that in time he may have revisited some.
Bill attended each year’s graduation ceremonies, as well as other commencement weekend events. One of those was the “Friday Frolic,” at which each reunioning class had its own tent. Bill dropped in to most or all. He once told me about running into a young woman who remembered him from a class or two they had shared. Though she was with her classmates, Bill was the only person there she knew.
This ability to relate to college students continued the rest of his life. In recent years, he had gotten to know some students at his church who eventually made him a member of their fraternity.
Many years into our friendship, Bill told me the actual year he graduated. It would be inappropriate for me to divulge that, but I will say, it was later than the 1910s. Still there is the myth. . . .
One evening in the early ’70s, a group of us were at a UNC baseball game in the then-new Cary Boshamer Stadium. Mr. Boshamer himself was there. When he was recognized, it was noted that he was of the Class of 1917. We all turned and looked at Bill. He smiled, nodded and said, “I remember him well.”
Bill often attended UNC games and various other campus activities. He rarely missed a football or men’s basketball game. I dare say he is the only person who was an enrolled student in the years of all six of the Tar Heels men’s basketball NCAA championships.
My wife and I saw Bill at so many events on campus, we grew to assume he always would be there. That tapered off some in more recent years, but it still seemed that he was always around. It will take time for me to stop assuming he’ll always be there.
Bill’s email address referred to him as “Wild Bill.” This was wonderfully ironic. He was a gentle man, who walked the straight and narrow, albeit with a sharp wit. Each email included a header that said something like: “A message from the past.” The default signature was: “Your best friend, Bill.” I’m sure he intended both to be humorous, though there was a lot of truth in the latter. Taken together, they present the myth and the man.
Alma Mater — Thoughts on team support and being true to one’s school
If I remember my Latin, “alma mater” means “beautiful mother.” In terms of where one went to school, I think we sometimes translate it as “foster mother” or maybe “nurturing mother.” In any case, the term connotes the special relationship with one’s school, esp. college.
A concept I sometimes have trouble explaining, especially to people who have “adopted” a team or teams from an institution they did not attend, is the difference between an alum and a mere fan. I have nothing against fans. Pulling for one team or the other is a big part of what makes sports exciting. However, I cheer for Tar Heel teams and want them to succeed, not so much because I am a fan, but because they represent the institution that was my home for four years as I evolved from a teenager into an adult. Yet the athletic programs of UNC (or UNC-CH, if you must) do not define my entire relationship with the University. Nor does my relationship with UNC, though significant, define my entire being.
I wear school colors when I attend games (just as I wear Hurricanes colors when I attend NHL games). At other times, when I happen to wear a light blue, it’s because that’s what came up in the rotation. And it likely is not Carolina blue. (That is a specific color on the Pantone chart, darker than your average light blue dress shirt. Similarly, the darker blue of a nearby institution is also specified on the chart and is lighter than Navy blue.) When I wear other colors, it’s for the same reason, not to make a statement. I drive a red car, not to show loyalty to the Hurricanes (or disloyalty to UNC), but simply because I like brightly-colored cars. So far as I know, no person or organization owns any color.
From time to time when someone learns I live in the Chapel Hill area, they assume that automatically means I am a UNC fan. I explain that there are people living here who went to various schools and pull for them. I go on to note that I am a UNC graduate and would be loyal to my alma mater wherever I lived. It’s not because I live here or, for that matter, because I once worked at UNC.
Some people seem to begin pushing their offspring toward their alma maters almost from birth. What we have tried to instill in our children is to find a college where they can have the kind of experience we did, wherever that might be. We even encouraged them not to go to UNC, but rather to get away from the place in which they had lived their entire lives to that point. Two ended up deciding on UNC. The reasons they decided to do so were compelling, but were not because of parental expectations.
It seems that the more loyalty one has to one’s own school, the less he/she needs to put down others’. That’s the “cheer for your team, not against the other” theory. I don’t think it builds up my alma mater to insult others. In fact, I think it may reflect badly on it.
I’m somewhat bemused by the individual who talks as if he/she thinks everyone should be fans of his/her team. What would it be like if everyone supported the same team? What would be the point in competition? Indeed, would there be any sports competition?
I know other people see things differently. This is just a brief outline of what I believe on this subject. I realize it means that I choose not to play some popular games (i.e., trash talking) others seem to enjoy. For that I do not apologize.
There are some places where you can get cut if you say something bad about someone’s mother. You won’t hear me say something bad about your alma mater, not however because I fear you will cut me, but simply out of respect. I hope others feel about their alma maters — especially undergrad, because that it such a formative time of one’s life — as I do about mine, regardless of where they live or work. I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t.
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