Le Sigh
2007 January 9
For Christmas, IP gave me a coffee table book called The University of Michigan Story: Hail to the Victors (valiant, Hail! to the conqu’ring heros, Hail! Hail! to Michigan the leaders and best!). It is a lovely book full of pictures and drawings of Ann Arbor and the University from its establishment in 1817 to the present day. You can squee over State Street before parallel parking or see if you can spot your younger sibling in modern day pictures of the Diag. Of course, it’s also Nostalgia City for this alumna. A few key moments it reminded me of:
- Ambushing a fellow front desk worker with mega water guns as a “good-bye” to him before he went off on the geology field camp in 2000.
- Having a pool stick fall on my head during work hours because another front desk worker and friend was balancing it on his fingertip . . . only to lose balance and drop it over my precious noggin.
- Wryly telling my guy friends that I could not join them for a game of strip poker because I was washing my hair . . . and then having the cutest one offer to help (he meant it!).
- Getting sprayed by a University fire hydrant outside the Michigan Union thanks to some careless maintenance workers. I was wearing my Stevie jersey! I made one of them drive me to my dorm so I could change.
- Getting caught red-handed, along with my friends, with a Top 10 List of What I’d Rather Be Doing at a training session for front desk workers on North Campus. Hint: one of the things was “I’d Rather Be Having Phone Sex with the CRISP Lady.”
- Checking my email at NUBS.
- Having the gumption to ask out a guy from my poetry class; I couldn’t tell if he was interested or not. On the one hand, he always broke dates. On the other hand, he once got up to join me for a 7:00am run at Palmer Field—and he didn’t run.
- Instructing one of my friends that, no, you could not use a University Library copy card on a dorm copy machine.
- Having my first drink with two friends in October 1999. First and only time I’ve ever been inside Mitch’s.
- Standing in line at Shaman Drum to buy overpriced books that I would not be able to return the next semester.
- Exchanging notes in a Latino Studies class on the awesomeness of the Detroit Red Wings and the suckiness of the Chicago Blackhawks.
- Attending a Come with a Date, Leave with Someone Else Valentine’s Day party in the student ghetto and apparently chatting people up out on State Street.
- Reading The Second Shepherd’s Play in my dorm room, laughing out loud, and then realizing that not only could I read Middle English, I could get it.
- Filing my graduation papers in Angell Hall and audibly gulping when I signed and dropped them off.
- Doing a cartwheel in Angell Hall (Fishbowl area) one late night just for the hell of it.
- Seeing the old regulars at the CCRB’s elevated track at 7:00am every day. There was Skinny Woman, Two Old Guys Who’ll Tell You You’re Going the Wrong Way, Law Student Who Thought I Was Fast and Was Smitten with Me, and me. Hope you’re all still running.
- Cava Java. Oh, Cava Java! How I miss you.
5 Responses
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Hmm, sounds like you have a lot of good stories that you’ll have to tell me sometime over margaritas :).
Remember that scene, in King Size Homer, where he’s all flustered and laughing after he sees how much he really weighs? That’s me—there’s plenty that didn’t make that list because this is a family blog (not really, but the last thing I need is to be grilled by anyone).
No one really knows who I was in college; at least, no one these days. L and Lo (San Francisco) know the most, and they’ll go their graves first because they’ll reveal complicity if they confess. Man, I had fun in college.
But I shall tell you some stories, grasshopper. And I shall tell only you as you are not the grilling type. I’m sure you have some whoppers too, fellow alum. I shall take a mojitos instead of margaritas. Mojitos did nothing to me, margaritas are a bit more dangerous for this wordnerd.
Yay, I get to hear some stories. It may be a while, but yay!
Hey, I want to hear these stories, too!
But I’ll have a margarita. I like mojitos, but evidently they kick my ass. (Or maybe I just need to learn to make them properly. And then not drink too many of them. After all, the ones at the bar were fine. It was the homemade ones that killed me.)
I told you not to drink that last one, hon, but noooooo, you listen to what I say, but you just don’t do it! ;)
I still haven’t decided if I’ll tell you my tales, IP. You’re the boyfriend—it is inherently dangerous to tell the boyfriend about one’s college day.
Dorkus, on the other hand, is the sister who probably has some similar stories we can compare. Kind of a girl thing.