Thirteen senior year memories

Continued from last week.

I’ve written more about my last year at Berkeley than any other year of my life, thanks to Karen, but I’m sure I can dig up a few fresh stories for you, as well as a few links to old stories some of you may have missed. Onward!

1. The Kim Lab.

Early in our senior year, my friend Sam (another chem major with dreams of becoming a medical researcher) hooked up with a lab, which gave me a powerful jolt of me-tooism. I looked through our faculty roster and found someone, Sung-Hou Kim, whose work in part was far closer to molecular biology than chemistry.

Early on, I impressed Sung-Hou and his wife, Rosie (sharp, funny, lovely, pick your adjective). They explained their problem to me and asked me how I would go about solving it. I quickly came up with three or four methods, some practical, some impractical, but even the impractical methods later proved doable some years later. We never solved our little problem — not while I was in the Kim Lab — but the ideas were sound.

That was always my problem, incidentally. I could come up with solutions but I couldn’t get them to work in my hands. A year or two later, someone would publish the method I’d thought up and failed to turn into a reality.

I still remember the first time I did a minilysate — a procedure in which you extract plasmid DNA from a relatively small quantity of bacteria. That tiny white smudge at the bottom of the Eppendorf tube was DNA. Amazing! DNA! Sadly, I think that was the last time science gave me anything approaching a thrill.

Rosie headed the molecular biology section of Sung-Hou’s lab. He was, and I imagine still is, primarily an X-ray crystallographer, but at that time he wanted to use molecular biologic techniques to isolate large, pure quantities of a protein (metallothionein) for his crystallography work. Anyway, Rosie quickly became my surrogate mom, at least for the year or so I hung out in their lab. Here’s Rosie, Sung-Hou, and their two boys, Jonathan and Christopher, who are now full grown. I’m the geek on the left.

2. Stan’s dinner party. Stan himself was in girlfriend-search mode at the time, but that didn’t stop him from taking care of me. What a friend! I guess you’ll always love the person who introduces you to your spouse . . . unless you hate your spouse, of course.

It really is uncanny how rapidly I attached myself to Karen. Mentally, I mean. Stan threw his dinner party in November, ’82, and I think Karen and I didn’t have our first date until mid- to late-January, ’83, but I was thinking about her the whole time. As I noted in that linked story, I felt like we were on the same wavelength, psychic twins, and similar Altered States-era psychobabble rot.

It helped, of course, that she was a good height for me, and attractive, too.

3. The end of the road. I’d broken up with my high school gf Christmas, ’80, and it took me at least a year to write to her again. For the next year, we exchanged occasional polite, wary letters, but we didn’t call or see one another. Christmas vacation, ’82, I resolved to see her again during the requisite visit to my folks.

Did I want to get back together with her? Did I want closure? Neither one of us had a clue what I wanted. At one point that evening, we were talking about people we’d known in high school, and she realized I hadn’t kept in touch with any of them. She wanted to know why I’d kept in touch with her.

My response was typical of everything else that came out of my mouth that evening. You were one of the most important people in my life, I think I said. I may have even used the past tense. It was a short, almost unbearably tense get-together, and all I could do was blather.

About the only time I said anything sincere was when I told her that I still found her attractive. That surprised her for some odd reason. But then I indulged in more babble and before long the knives were out. We weren’t using the knives, mind you. Merely sharpening them in a conspicuous fashion, each aware the other was armed to the teeth.

I left her that evening feeling worse than ever about our failed relationship and never wanting to see her again. That feeling didn’t last long, but I was convinced that nothing good could come from seeing her again. It took me another seven years to get back to the wary, polite stage which had preceded that awful evening. And now, 25 years later, we’re about as close as two friends separated by a continent can be.

But at the time, that evening, it seemed to me we had reached the end of the road, and I felt like shit.

4. “Say what you mean and mean what you say.” I can’t remember if I’ve told this story before or not! My apologies if this is a rehash.

Back at school, I began to suffer serious angst over whether or not to date Karen. We were seeing each other, kinda sorta, in physical chemistry lab, or we would show up suddenly at each other’s apartments. I wanted to see more of her, but you have to understand: I didn’t know where I would be in six months. I was graduating, my applications to med school were pending, I didn’t know if I’d be in the Bay Area, UCLA, New York, or God only knows where else. The hurt was still fresh from one crash-and-burn long distance relationship and I didn’t want to start another one.

My friend Sam and I hashed this out in a little cafe across from the Co-op market (now an Andronico’s) on Shattuck Ave. I suppose we may have been a little loud, but that didn’t excuse what happened next. This old stranger (jeez, he must have been at LEAST 35), as he was leaving, said to me, “Say what you mean and mean what you say.”

My jaw dropped. Sam’s jaw dropped. After the guy left, Sam said, “WHAT an ASShole,” and I agreed.

But Sam must have said something to me that day which kicked me in the pants, because not long after that, I passed Karen a note in p-chem lab, and we started dating.

5. Karen. Yeah, I’ve told the story of our first date before, so if you want all the details click on the “June, ’05” archive button and start reading.

Walking her home from dinner that first night, I remember saying to her, “Well, I think we’re pretty compatible. Don’t you think so?” and she agreed. Which for me meant, “Let’s get married,” and Karen saying, “Yeah, sure,” but I doubt she realized that at the time.

Many of you have seen this photo before, but I love it, so here it is again.

6. Med school interviews. One word: PAINFUL. I made the mistake of trying to get into the MD/PhD combined programs, which were even more competitive than the MD programs, and I’d thought my year in the Kim lab would qualify as a good research experience. NOT. You mean you have no publications? was a common question, usually accompanied by a baffled look.

Highlights of my interview season: meeting Jean Verdi (not the composer), which I told you about here, and nearly getting run down by the motorists in the Bronx. No respect for crosswalks, those Bronchi. I also remember the amazing makeup women wore in New York. I was used to Berkeley women (little or no makeup), so these women looked like clowns. To this day, I find heavily made-up women (or even a moderate degree of makeup) to be somewhat unnatural.

7. Chicken pox. Rosie Kim figured it out. “You have chicken pox.”

Well, what do you expect from a mother of two? I was feverish. I had spots. I felt like two-day-old roadkill.

“Go home. Drink lots of fluids,” Rosie said.

Karen nursed me. She made sure I had plenty to drink and eat, and she washed my sweaty tee shirts and underwear when I was soaking through four or five a day. My fever got up to 104 at one point, but Karen was there for me.

I found out much later, in med school, that adult chicken pox is potentially lethal. IIRC, there’s a 1 in 4 chance of developing pneumonia, and if that happens, a large number of those people die. Good thing I didn’t know it at the time. I was miserable enough as it was.

But damn, was I ever impressed with Karen.

8. “Karen is a slut.” You know that saying, my friend’s friend is not necessarily my friend? Well, who knows, maybe I just made that up.

Stan’s friend David was like that, though. We never knew quite what to make of him. Still don’t. But when Karen and I started getting serious (to use the euphemism of the time), David announced that Karen was a slut.

Did Karen call him on his rudeness? Did he apologize? Yes and yes, I think, but some things are not easily forgotten. But jeez, David, what a prude.

Here’s David. He’s the one in the apron. Next to him is our friend Gary (Stan’s roommate at the time).

Who’s the slut now, David?

9. The Evolution of Human Behavior. In all of these college remembrances, I haven’t talked much about class. I loved nearly all of my classes except for Poli Sci, an unavoidable requirement. But Vincent Sarich’s experimental class, The Evolution of Human Behavior, has remained my favorite. A close competitor: cultural anthropology, which I took Freshman Year. Nothing like a healthy dose of cultural relativism to help you shake off all the narrowminded assumptions of youth.

If you want to read more about Vincent Sarich’s class, click on the link.

10. Wherein Karen proves her inherent superiority (Molecular Spectroscopy). After p-chem lab (most memorable for our senile professor, who — I’m not kidding — drew stick-figures of four-legged critters on the chalkboard meant to represent some molecule or another, and said, “Here’s the cowboys on their cows.” Trust me, this didn’t make any more sense at the time), Karen, a far more studly chem major than I could or would ever be, convinced me to take an advanced class with her — molecular spectroscopy.

Oy. I still shiver to remember the homework from that class, and I’m still amazed I squeaked by with whatever grade I received (probably a B+. I tend to be overdramatic about anything lower than an A). Karen cruised through it, of course, and helped me survive, too.

The prof was a dead ringer for famed hammer-murderer (and mathematics grad student) Theodore Streleski. Streleski was a local legend. In 1978, he murdered his faculty advisor with a ball peen hammer, saying the killing was morally justified. He turned down parole three times because they wanted to forbid him from ever stepping foot on the Stanford campus.

I knew at least a few grad students who liked to kid their thesis advisors, “I’m gonna get my hammer . . .” Yeah, not too funny.

11. Waiting. So I’m falling in love, and I think I’ve really found my soulmate, but I have no idea where I’ll be in the Fall. Talk about stressful. I even broke down and cried about it, and amazingly, Karen didn’t run from the room in terror. There was the anxiety of not knowing. There was the feeling of a looming disaster if I found myself yet again in a long distance relationship. And there was Molecular Spectroscopy.

12. Not waiting. The rejections came in, one after another, and it looked like my fallback option (Cornell Med School’s graduate program in molecular biology) would soon be my only option. Karen (who was a junior) and I would be apart at least for a year, assuming she could find a chemistry grad program in New York which wasn’t the total shits, and assuming our very green relationship could survive a year apart.

Then I got the letter from Stanford Med School. They wait-listed me. Woo-Hoo! Oh, hang on, it’s just a wait-list. Lower case, woo-hoo.

I didn’t find out until August where I would be the following month. As y’all know, Stanford took me after all.

13. Graduation! Here’s one story from my graduation party.

My family came up to see me graduate. I wanted to be the Big Man On Campus and take them out to a nice restaurant, using what little money I’d earned at Stauffer and in the Kim Lab. (I managed to save enough to buy an engagement ring, by the way.) But I should have known better; my mother is notoriously difficult to please. On the way out, she said, “Dougie. That was the worst meal I’ve ever had in my life. Thanks a lot.”

My big moment, and she had to pop my balloon. Grrr.

But hell, I’m not gonna end on such an irritable note. Here’s me and mah girrrl.

That’s it, my friends. Leave a comment if you want some hot, sweaty, linky lurve.

MARVEL! at Darla’s thirteen clocks.

REVEL! in the Hollywood Babylon of Erin O’Brien’s writing life. Oh, and Erin? I wish my wifer were so easily impressed.

CRINGE! when Kate Rothwell pulls out her red editing pen.

On second thought, REJOICE AT THE IMPOSITION OF EDITORIAL JUSTICE! when Kate Rothwell pulls out her red pen.

ABSORB! Dean’s seven rules for writing.

DIG! Da Nator’s knack at coming up with thirteen admirable traits. Damn, she’s good.

SCRATCH YOUR HEAD! at Shaina’s bottomless font of innocence.

D.