Odd anniversary

Exactly 27 years ago today, I packed up and moved off to the Salt City, first to work for three weeks in conjunction with the very first Empire State Games, and then to go to college. Everything that has happened in my life since really started on that day when my parents dropped me off at scenic Dellplain Hall with my trunk, my typewriter, and my fridge. Things were less than perfectly organized, as I recall, but I got into a room, met my roommate, hung up my ABBA poster, set up my typewriter and got settled in. It was an odd crew of work study students that were brought together those first few weeks, both confused incoming freshmen like me and worldly upperclassmen (and women). We swept carpets with brooms for a week, then did food service for the games, then did some more sweeping. (I’d never been on a union work crew before, and had never been told not to work so fast.) I met some people I would continue to know throughout my years there, and many more I would completely forget. My first roommate was from a very small town in Western New York, a graduating class of twelve, and he would wash out of the engineering school just three weeks into the year. I met a guy who would later work at the paper with me, and liked him just fine for a while. I also met a number of people who were more than willing to help me refine my penchant for completely uncontrolled drinking — this was not a good thing.

And, has so often been told, one night a couple of weeks in, a bunch of us started a party in an elevator — when you pushed the “stop” button, there was no alarm, so we essentially controlled the elevator, and we goofed around in there until we finally got kicked out, and moved the party to a stairwell, where we had pizza delivered (my first Domino’s — also the best, because it never got any better after that). And although I had gone into the elevator to get to know a certain girl a little better, another one caught my eye, and it turned out she’d be living right next to me at our regular dorm assignment when school started. She was so slender, had long straight brown hair, big pretty eyes, and an odd manner that I couldn’t quite figure out (no one could). I was very intrigued. We met again when we moved to Day Hall, up on Mount Olympus, and just started doing things together — meals, movies, this and that. It wasn’t what you’d call dating, it was more like being together. But it seemed to work. (In fact, the one time we did try to go on a “date,” it felt odd and awkweird. It didn’t seem like us.) And we kept on going like that.

So now it’s 27 years later, and I’m still not sure I’ve figured her out. But I’m trying.