After the moving in, which consisted of: posters for the wall; two suitcases (one of which held shoes); a Columbia backpack, which would be for carting books but was at that time full of personal hygiene items and makeup; my well worn yet well loved 8th grade boom box and my purse, we were thrown into two full days of carefully orchestrated orientation activities, some of which were helpful and most of which were fluff. The part of early arrival I liked most was the opportunity, as a brand new freshman, to find some friends and start creating a social circle before getting down to the brass tacks of book learning.
Upon arrival I found an orientation packet on my bare mattress. I'd been assigned a big sister named Karen. A female mentor of sorts; she was an upper classman who'd kindly volunteered for the role. Her duty as assigned was to be available to me in a one on one capacity should I need any help adjusting during the first week. I was given her full name, major, and room location. Then it was up to me to find her if I wanted to.
Karen was an orientation leader so I bumped into her on day two without having to seek her out. Most of the orientation leaders acted as though they'd multiple pots of strong coffee; there was so much yelling and dancing and jumping in order to prove to us how much fun we were going to have at college, but Karen was reservedly chill in her approach. Looking around at those clowning and leaping about, she presented her points about how to be a successful note taker quite succinctly and without any unnecessary cheerleading. During the required introduce yourself in a circle exercise, she heard my name and after she was done with the notetaking information blitz, sat next to me on the grass. Down to earth and self assured in her popped collar black Izod shirt and armfuls of colorful woven friendship bracelets, she sized me up, asking a few pointed questions. Finding the answers apparently suitable, she invited me to come to her room the following day. She lived in one of the many (carved up) Victorian style homes on campus and I was dying to go inside one as I lived in a sterile five story dormitory with all the rest of the freshman. She said I could meet her house sisters and learn about what they, as junior class members, were all about. I didn't feel like I needed mentoring but I wholly looked forward to making friends who had some expertise about college survival.
On day three of orientation week, I went to Karen's room. She and three of her sisters were lounging about, smoking cigarettes and day drinking. I was completely surprised by this since throughout the course of orientation there were almost no overt references to room gatherings of this type. Karen was so relaxed she seemed medicated. Her door was wide open, there was no fear of anyone walking by and "busting" them like the highly caffeinated orienteers warned about, they had Bad Company playing on the stereo and my presence made no ripples.
No one got up, so I just went in and sat on the side of a nicely made bed. I saw lots of photographs, and noted their huge shag carpet remnant, suggesting there would be a lot more floor sitting and casual gathering going on in there. Karen introduced me around the room.
The first girl I first met was Karen's roommate Lissa, overly dressed for the occasion. I later learned that she suited up like she was heading to work in Manhattan no matter what time or day of the week it was. She was always outfitted in heels (every.single.day.), super tight pencil skirts, long jewel toned blazers with contrasting pocket squares, a full face of heavy, almost theatrical, makeup and mountains of shoulder pads. She had been blessed with thick, shiny black hair as evidenced by her family photos but she had bleached it during her college years to a jarringly brassy blonde. It was sprayed and teased in true Bon Jovi style, bangs reaching for the sky and the rest of it reaching halfway down her back in a woolly convergence of overly processed curls. Although she was the quietest, by sheer appearance she drew the most attention.
Karen's other friends hanging out in the room were Chrissy and June. They were a rather tall and very short dead ringer for one another. Coca Cola rugby shirt and jean wearing mulleted besties, both dating suitemates in one of the more large and modern dorms, they finished each other's sentences and pantomimed as though they were constantly responsible for entertaining kindergarten children while speaking.
Karen, Lissa, Chrissy and June were all elementary education majors. When I asked about their confidence in their major of choice, they all groaned. They talked about how difficult is was going to be to get jobs when they were done with school. They talked about having to have reliable transportation to make it to their student teaching experiences had proved difficult. They talked about how teacher pay sucked and how they'd need to find roommates (or husbands) before graduation in order to be able to afford both an apartment and the expense of attending graduate school part time in order to fulfill our state's new Masters degree requirements.
I felt uneasy listening to their words and worried about my future before school had even begun.
Two of the four had those initially super sounding suitemate boyfriends. But then Chrissy lamented how crappy their relationships were and how they had to constantly chase these guys down to get them to pay a smidgen of attention to them. June cataloged and gesticulated as though she had a large invisible list in front of her about how the boys' basketball practices and games, dorm parties, and, later in the evenings, their jobs at a local beer distribution center were their true priorities; their schoolwork came in a distant fourth. The girls, who appeared to have been with these guys a while, didn't even register on this 'list'. The two of them exchanged knowing glances and physically reached out, during what I perceived as their glum cautionary tales, touching each other's knees while reassuring one another with 'uh huh' and 'oh I know' as though this shoddy rapport cheerless sorority of sorts was all they expected and deserved.
Now I was distressed about both my educational choices and the availability of a decent future boyfriend.
Lissa placidly and tactfully followed their tales of woe by explaining that she was newly engaged and her fiancé also lived on campus. They hailed from the same hometown and would both return there to become teachers at schools they'd already picked out. Their lives, at the tender age of 20, were thoughtfully planned. They were an anomaly.
Karen, completely nonplussed by any of what had been shared, seemed to like the idea of not being tied down. She used her speaking turn to count the many different guys she'd gone out with over the years, unimpressed by the lot of them. As their names and attributes were mentioned, the other three girls would make comments, mainly about what idiots they all were. There was a lot of genuflecting and ceiling pointing, particularly by Chrissy and June, and giving thanks to God as they exhaled grandly and stubbed out their cigarettes, that Karen didn't submit to lifelong companionship with any of these losers. Karen then concernedly warned me to be wary of the senior guys because freshman girls were easy targets for them. I wasn't sure I totally understood what she meant by targets but I took her warning and later that day passed it on to my dormmates with my eyes bright and my arms, newly inspired, moving wildly about with this bit of advice.
The four girls were heading to a local bar that night and invited me to come along. Not knowing them well enough to be in a position of assuming a ride, I asked if I could meet them there and bring along some other freshmen. They basically told me that this was fine as long as they weren't inexperienced goofballs (in other words, don't embarrass us). I was assured that no identification, fake or otherwise, would be needed. The bar was not known for checking such things. Also sensible footwear was recommended as the bar floor was old and syrupy and sticking to it while standing was an absolute inevitability.
That evening, I, along with five other freshmen girls, made our way out to to find Karen and her friends. The bar was a couple miles from campus, which surprised me, but we came upon it without any problem. A dark, modest place, the sheer loudness made up for what it lacked in size. It was packed with students. There was a retro style jukebox, with pulsing colorful tubes of pink and green light, terribly large for the space in which it was situated. The bar itself was a work of art with a surface comprised of copper pennies. Over the course of that evening I saw more than one wall eyed patron with his nose pressed against it trying to read their dates or perhaps just resting amidst their rusty glow.
The songs which the colossal and colorful jukebox spit out were all of the singalong variety and if you didn't sing, people would move away from you as though you had a social disease. We'd been there about twenty minutes and became inundated by senior guys (good warning, Karen) as we tucked into a small spot near the music. Duly prepared for this swarm of weirdness, I was polite and smiled at the guys who were crowding me but I kept cupping my ears saying "WHAT? I can't hear you!" and eventually they just drank their beers and stood among us. When Mony Mony, remade by Billy Idol, came blasting out of the speakers directly behind me I flinched and spastically spilled part of my drink on my hand and the floor. The seniors standing in our midst started hurtling and hollering the testosterone laden chants about getting laid while throwing their fists in the air and as we freshmen focused amongst each other, it became clearer as to what Karen's warning, thoughtfully reinforced with a pointed look every time she walked by us, was about. We huddled closer to protect our feet from being landed upon and our sneakers glutinously cemented floorward.
The other hot songs I remember from that night were Paradise by the Dashboard Light (which I knew by heart, sang while standing on a rickety wooden table, and was therefore ceremoniously lauded for), Sweet Caroline, We Are the Champions, and Brown Eyed Girl. I think we may have heard each of those titles a half dozen times that night. Even if you arrived not knowing the words, you at least knew the all the choruses by the time you left.
I wore my baggy, torn acid washed jeans, a white long sleeved tshirt with a surfer scene on it and an oversized Brooks Brothers men's oxford in purple and white stripes, unbuttoned. I also remember white slouchy socks and Keds that were bleached more than once after seeing their scuzzy surfaces in the daylight later the next day. No one dressed up to go out. We were strictly comfort driven back then.
Lucky for us, we all arrived back at the dorm arm in arm, completely unscathed after our first big night out. My new roommate's two friends were less fortunate. One of them was hooked like a fish by a fist pumping senior who ignored her the rest of the semester after sharing his bed with her. The second got in a ketchup fight with a girl from another college after one too many rum and Cokes. (The ketchup fight story is rather vivid in my mind because she came back to the room I shared with my roommate instead of her own, rolled herself in my white eyelet comforter without undressing and was snoring on the floor by the time I returned. Nice manners.) Both of these girls had already been on campus a month. Part of that orientation should have probably included how to successfully navigate the bar scene.
I went to 'The Penny' on only three other occasions that semester, setting foot in it for the very last time during November of freshman year. The walk back to campus seemed too long after standing and singing and, let's face it, drinking for hours. The drive back to campus was impossible for the same reason. I heard rumors about a few student DUIs that year, with police cruisers rightfully parked on the street between the bars and the schools. My big sister Karen and her friends remained friendly to me, and I ended up very briefly dating the other suitemate of Chrissy and June's beaus that October. He, just like they predicted, paid absolutely no attention to me.
Thinking back, the very tender beginning of college has the potential to set the tone for the rest of a person's scholastic endeavors. I am glad that I was exposed to these people right off the bat. In their own ways they helped me avoid a few potholes and decide what was right for me. When I hear about my friends' children, some of them freshman right now and having a difficult time, I want to tell them it'll all be okay, but will it? Do they have big sisters to tell them who to stay away from? Are they being glommed onto by the wrong kind of people? Are they uncomfortable saying no to things that they suspect aren't right for them? Is their group of new friends savvy enough to not let things get out of hand? Are they grown up enough to handle this stuff on their own? Do they have enough experience from high school to not be labelled inexperienced goofballs?
I think of Karen and hope she found something in life to light her fire. I think of Lissa who presented as one hundred percent sure of everything. I wonder if all the things she and her fiancé worked to achieve came to fruition with staying power. I think of Chrissy and June, who over the course of their remaining two years, fawned, cajoled and kowtowed to those two guys who never treated them like anything more than a pesky extra appendage. June did marry her boyfriend two weeks after graduation, or so I heard. I wonder if he even realized what she was planning. I pray that he grew to appreciate her. I also hope Chrissy found happiness being who she is without needing the occasional approval of a guy she ran laps around but who could hardly have cared less.
Ahhhh, life. My mind is full. I have lots more stories to share.
Someone recently asked me how I choose what to write about. Well, I thought of all of this "stuff" today because Lissa's fiancé, the schoolteacher and husband to be, was a relative of actor Kirk Douglas who passed away last week at the age of 103. Small world.
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#1980s #monymony #paradisebythedashboardlight #wearethechampions #browneyedgirl #BillyIdol #barculture #copperpennypub #keds #mushroomtumbler
