Thirteen college memories: freshman year

What, only thirteen? Yes, you can regard this as an extremely limited selection. I’ll be attempting to come up with tales you haven’t heard before. No small feat.

1. Shin splints. During orientation, on our walking tour of the Berkeley campus, the guy walking next to me noticed me limping.

“Don’t baby it,” he said.

“Huh? It’s shin splints.”

“Yeah, I figured that out. But don’t be a wimp. Walk through it.” And that’s how it went for the next hour or two — me limping, him ragging on me to stop being such a pussy.

His name was Russ, and he became my roommate, and remained so for all but one year.

2. Apple pie. Mrs. Slater’s apple pie, to be exact. That first year, Russ and I shared a room in a boarding house run by Marguerite Slater, a lovely old gal who had taken classes from Julia Child and who had a little known (at the time) actor for a son, Lance Henriksen. More on Lance below. Mrs. Slater ran a catering business out of her home, and oh my God she was an amazing chef. Her apple pie rocked my world — as best I can tell, she used puff pastry in the top crust, but I’ve never been able to replicate that recipe . . . and she would never reveal her secrets.

Click on picture for more Berkeley photos.

3. You’re better than you think. Let’s just say I had self esteem issues, hmm? Because that first quarter, all I took was Chem 1A, a classical literature class, and an art class. I aced them all, even art, but the A in classical lit disturbed me. I’d been dissatisfied with my performance on the final and the A shocked me enough that I went to the prof later to complain. I think I managed to appall her — no one had ever complained to her about getting a good grade.

4. Crystal power. Before finding Mrs. Slater’s boarding house, my brother and my cousin Steve helped me look around the area for a place to live. Steve (being the ex-hippy he is) whipped out a map of Berkeley and a quartz crystal tied to a string. Yes, he dowsed a map to find me housing. We headed straight for the location, a quiet neighborhood northwest of the campus, but the renters told us no, they weren’t looking for another roommate; we must be mistaken.

Kind of. Sort of. Stay tuned for my eventual thirteen memories from junior year. (I really hope I haven’t told this story before!)

5. The Men’s Women’s Room. My senior year of high school, I don’t know what I was thinking. I really don’t. But I’d asked/told my GF that I thought we should see other people while we were away from each other at college. Within my first week at Berkeley, I realized I had zero interest in seeing anyone but her, and I proceeded to write her daily mash notes. I guess she was my blogging outlet of that era, huh? But that’s not to say I didn’t talk to other women that first year. One — I think her name was Wendy Bernstein, an achingly cute redhead — used to commiserate with me, since she was away from her boyfriend, too. I remember sitting next to her on her bed, thinking, Omigod I’m sitting next to a girl on her bed and she isn’t my girlfriend omigod and all the while she’s reading me passages from that feminist manifesto, The Women’s Room. She was trying to enlighten me, you see, but I didn’t hear a word she said.

6. Trips home. Ugh. Greyhound buses, ride shares, the occasional flight (if Braniff offered a cheapie special). But I never minded, because I was going home to the GF, and that was all I could think about. When we would finally get together, I would dance around her like a puppy. She echoed none of my enthusiasm . . . which I guess should have been my first clue.

7. Ratchatooey. My freshman year, I took breakfast and lunch at the International House, dinners back home with Mrs. Slater. I-House was rumored to have the best food of all the cafeterias and, in fact, the food was edible. For years, though, thanks to the accent of the serving gal, I was convinced this dish was pronounced “ratchatooey.”

8. Sniff some o’ this. One morning, before Chem 1B lab got rolling, an acquaintance I’d known from 9th grade (a guy who used to boast that he’d gotten into Berkeley thanks to the fact he was 1/4 Native American — hell of a thing to boast about, in my opinion) did a line of coke. I couldn’t believe it. He offered me some, but I wouldn’t snort it. Instead, I touched a little to my tongue, which promptly went numb. “Jeez!” I said. “You weren’t kidding!” Well, duh, was his reply. As best I recall, he managed not to set himself on fire during that day’s lab session.

9. San Francisco adventures. Weekends, Russ went home to Novato and left me alone. If I was all caught up on schoolwork, I would take BART into the city. Then I would walk, and walk, and walk. San Francisco is an awesome walking city; as many times as I did this, there are still many neighborhoods and sights I’ve never seen. One of my favorite stories: on the way to a lecture on tarot, I was accosted by two young women who were trying to pull people into a lecture on Scientology. I tried to get them to come with me but they weren’t interested. Imagine that!

10. To protect my future in politics (yeah, right), I’ll phrase this one in the negative. I never got effed up on Olde English 800, pot, and fake shrooms, never watched the movie Eraserhead in that state, and never compared notes later with my similarly effed up friends: You’re kidding me. He did WHAT? I thought I was dreaming! I never smoked pot with these same pals whilst listening to Pink Floyd’s “Be Careful with that Axe, Eugene.” Nope, never happened.

11. My one experience with Dungeons & Dragons. We spent the whole afternoon rolling up characters. By the time we were done with that, we were too tired to do anything else. The guy who was going to be our dungeon master — what an airhead. “In high school?” he said. “I made this dungeon? And it was like huge? And I called it Morevast, because, you know, it wasn’t only VAST, it was MORE VAST? Get it?”

That was enough to put me off D&D for life.

12. Hammett. In 1980, video games had not progressed much past Pong and Pac Man. Two-dimensional scrollers on arcade consoles, that was state of the art. One night, though, I had a dream: I was playing a computer game called Hammett, based on the works of Dashiell Hammett, in which you played a sleuth working a case. The graphics were three dimensional, the environment immersive. My subconscious was a good 15 years ahead of the times.

13. Lance came to visit his mom — and his dad, who lived with Mrs. Slater as a boarder. (That’s a great story, but it’s not mine to tell.) I don’t think Russ had met an actor before, and my whole exposure to Hollywood was already ancient history. But Lance impressed both of us. He was a hell of a nice guy who wasn’t the least bit full of himself, and he told us a story or two about certain lushy actors, so he wasn’t above gossiping with a couple of college kids he’d just met. He almost certainly doesn’t remember us, but as far as I’m concerned, we’re still on a first name basis. “Look, Karen!” I’ll shout and point at the TV. “There’s Lance!”

That’s all for now, folks. Leave a comment and you’ll secure your ounce of linky lurve.

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D.