If there is any hard and fast rule for college students it
is: never be the one to break the bad news. In that way station on the way to
adulthood, keeping your head low is crucial.
About the same time America was getting used to the electric
light and flush toilets I went to college. I was a townie at Syracuse
University, back when Social Security would help pay for college if you only
had one parent.
One day I walked into the Varsity restaurant and recognized
a woman from one of my classes. She was sitting in a booth pretending to read
the New Yorker, and wearing one of the 200 sweaters she brought to campus from
New York City. When a guy spotted her you knew she was wondering: "Is it
me or my Cos Cob shirtwaist?"
Since I'd had less dates with girls then Truman Capote, I
agreed to take her down to Colgate for a party weekend.
We arrived at this one fraternity and all of a sudden she
was kissing and hugging all the guys in the fraternity. I asked one of the guys
what was going on and he told me she used to date a fraternity brother who'd
graduated. He'd told her they couldn't get married because he had a brain tumor. The
brother told me this graduate was
presently working on Wall Street and had wanted to dump her.
So I watched for a while and drank with a bunch of guys who
knew the story. After I was there a while I didn't seem so much a stranger
as somebody they'd adopted. The joke seem to have some bonding aspect to it.
Finally it became time to make the drive from Hamilton (Colgate's
home) back to Syracuse. On the way back, she couldn't stop crying. Feeling sad for her, I told her the truth. Soon the inside of my '54 Ford felt like
I was competing in the Iditarod without a parka. We never spoke again that year.
In my senior year she made an attempt to renew the
relationship. It seemed tempting, she was gorgeous, but I knew it would take a a guy who wouldn't care very much to make it work.
No comments:
Post a Comment