The Terrible Catsafterme

After my ‘last hurrah’ in Florida, I had roughly three weeks before my first days of college at Wright State University were to begin. Christi would be making her return to Beavercreek High School for the first time since before Ashleigh’s birth and was ready to complete her senior year.  Things began to evolve unfavorably almost immediately upon my return. Christi and her family now had a new houseguest in her cousin Jennifer. Fundamentally, I got along with Jennifer and was appreciative that she was there to help look after Ashleigh.

But she, being a young single attractive girl in a new city, needed to have someone to go out on the town with and Christi was the prime candidate. This was initially only a minor irritation to me, but of course they ended up hanging out with an unsavory group of guys who I couldn’t stand…mostly because their very presence was an intrusion into my life. One of them happened to be Jason, Christi’s ex-boyfriend, and the best friend of Jennifer’s new boyfriend, Matt. ‘Nuff said about that whole situation…but eventually it would lead to us nearly breaking up later in the year. Although we are the best of friends to this day, things were never the same after this point.

Ashleigh and Jen-Jen

I began my classes at Wright State in early September. I was intensely nervous about trying to find my way around the buildings on my first day and actually brought a map of the campus along with me. Little did I realize just how small the campus was – with one giant quad surround by four main buildings Allyn Hall, Fawcett Hall, Oelman Hall, and Millett Hall- and then a few others surrounding them.

One of my friends from high school who I reconnected with in college was Kyer Phillips. Although we started out as enemies in junior high (in fact we once got into a fight in Science class), we later grew into friendly acquaintances. I have little recognition of Kyer during high school, but had a great time hanging out with him quite a bit during my first quarter at WSU. He got me into reading Stephen King once again and I got him into some of my music: namely Styx and the Beatles. I recall making him tapes of some of these bands’ albums. I don’t know how well he would now remember me, but his friendship was one I truly prized.

The classes that I took during my first quarter were:

Freshman Composition (English): No real recollection of this class at all, which surprises me because writing was my forte. Final Grade: A (16 points, 4 credit hours)

Ancient Western World (History): This class was in a movie-theater like room in the Medical Sciences Building. This is the class that Kyer and I had together. Our teacher was Dr. Melton and we both laughed explosively at his antics. On one occasion his microphone was giving a deafening feedback. Melton, not knowing what to do after briefly fiddling with it, had no choice but to simply throw his hands over his ears and wait for a student to help him get it turned off. Kyer and I laughed at that until we nearly wet our pants. This I remember; the topic of what we were studying I have no clue. Final Grade: C (6 points, 3 credit hours)

Science of Behavoir (Psychology): Set in a hugely informal room in Oelman Hall, this was perhaps the most interesting of all the classes – as I’ve always felt I am good at analyzing human behavior. I kept the textbook for this class for the longest time. I planned to use it as reference whenever I wrote the ‘great american novel’ sometime in the unforeseen future. Final Grade: B (12 points, 4 credit hours)

Social Life (Sociology): Mildly interesting as I recall, but no real memories of any kind here either. Final Grade: B (9 points, 2 credit hours)

College Study Strategies: This was one of those pass/fail classes worth one credit. Final Grade: Pass (0 points, 1 credit hour)

In all, I ended up with 15 credit hours. I had to be going full time to utilize my Hewitt scholarship – and I think full time was classified between 13 and 18 hours. My college days were mild in contrast to some of my mid-high school years. I lived at home and worked nearly full time, so I wasn’t involved with any extracurricular activites. Most of the friends I had in college were kids I knew from high school: Mark Harris, Nicole Perez, Steve Johnson, Brian and Eric Bagdonis, Dave Graeter, just to name a few off the top of my head.

Ashleigh tries walking in my shoes as I head off to work

Other memories of the period: I was still working at the Beavercreek Kroger as a bagger during these and many more college days. Some of my classes would end before noon, so I would go over to Christi’s and spend time with Ashleigh. Jennifer had gotten her up and given her a bath and breakfast so she was ready for a nap by the time I got there. My daily routine was to lay her down on my chest and watch The Price Is Right…and usually drift off into sleep. I generally worked the evening hours during the weekdays.

“The Price Is Right” must have been on…

I also began my love affair (not literal, of course) with Depeche Mode, the last of the bands to be inducted into my Big Seven as I started racking up a complete collection of their CD’s.

Matt Bohlander and I hung out quite a bit both during the Summer and later into the year. He would come over one or two weekends each month. Our routine was almost always the same: we’d go to Pizza Hut and order two medium meat-lovers pizzas (sometimes Christi and Jennifer would join us), then we’d go back to my place and I would drink oodles of beer and Matt would chug wine coolers, all the while chain smoking cigarettes out on my patio and playing tunes on Matt’s boom box. It was like dueling CD’s – he’d play a song or album for me and then I would reciprocate, each of us trying to convince the other that our bands were the greatest things since sliced bread. One CD that introduced me to and completely won me over to was the Broadway soundtrack to Hair. We even went and saw the play together at Memorial Hall on October 11.

I mentioned in my intro to the early 1990′s that it would be my least favorite time period to re-visit. This is not because of a lack of truly great times, but because it harbors some of the darkest portions of my life. Ashleigh, of course, was the shining beacon of light amidst this era – but gone were the sheltered days of childhood, school, my parents, and the (somewhat) carefree and innocent days that Christi and I shared the last of together. College seemed big and cold, the relationship between Christi and I began to falter, my parents had split up, and the future seemed like a large, gaping uncertainty that I was scared to face.

1990 will continue…

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 6:47 am and is filed under 1990's - Early. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.