Memory

Twenty: The Me Age

/ Gerry Wilson / 14 Comments

At least, for me it was. Not much was happening. I was studying less (even with a double major in English and Psychology), maintaining great grades, and playing a lot more–dates, parties, football games!

I have not mentioned home much lately. I went home occasionally on weekends, but I had weaned away. I had my own car (a gift from Santa), so I was free to travel back and forth as much as I pleased.

Until I became the mother of adult children, I didn’t fully realize the significance of an incident that happened about this time.

I failed to call my mother on  Mother’s Day until very late in the day. It was obvious by her tone that she was hurt and angry, and at first, I didn’t understand why. Then she told me. I might as well not have called at all, she said, if I was too busy to do it earlier. Was she overly sensitive? Or was I terribly insensitive, too caught up in my own little life? Or maybe she simply felt me pulling away, and it was that sense of loss that hurt her more than the late phone call. She’d had her share of disappointments, after all.

The old house would have to do.

There was the house they didn’t build, even after buying land and hiring an architect. They had the plans and were set to go when my father balked. He was fourteen years older than Mother, and he worried about her being left alone on that hill out in the country. He wanted to be sure that I would be taken care of, too, if something happened to him. So they abandoned my mother’s dream house. She had worked alongside my father for years. They still shared a house with my grandmother.

Wasn’t it time she had something to call her own?

Maybe it seemed to her that I was having all the things she’d dreamed of. I don’t doubt that she was proud of me, though. That was clear, and I was ashamed for neglecting her that day.

We were so mature. We thought swapping sweatshirts was cute.

 

 

Shall I add here that I was in love? That cute boy from the Mississippi Delta, the one with the blue, blue eyes, was turning out to be the one.

I wish I’d been more thoughtful of my mother that day. Is there anything in your young past that you wish you could go back and undo? 

At Nineteen: Already a Has-been?

/ Gerry Wilson / 11 Comments

I have news: the Sophomore Slump isn’t a myth. I know. I lived it.

After a pretty exciting first year of college, at the start of my sophomore year, I hit the slide. Oh, I was going out some, but there wasn’t anybody special. Generally, life was good. I liked my classes, and I wasn’t as anxious about grades as I had been during my freshman year. But my social life slowed way down.

I was living with two other girls–that’s right; three of us crammed into a room meant for two. We had a set of bunk beds plus one other, and one closet for all of us. But we were great friends. I guess we had to be! One roommate was a morning person who, the instant the alarm went off, leapt out of bed with “Good morning! How’s everybody this morning?” (I cannot italicize that word enough to give it the proper emphasis!) I would groan and roll over, dying for just five more minutes of sleep. She was also the one who, when she answered the hall phone and it was for me–yes, there was just one pay phone for the entire floor–would scream, “Goochie! Phoo-oone!” at the top of her lungs. I didn’t like being called “Goochie.” But I loved my roommates, anyway. I still do.

This is what our room sometimes looked like:

After the ball is over . . .

But that doesn’t address the slump. I dated a football player briefly that fall. He thought he was God. (I knew how to pick ’em, didn’t I?) He took me to a drive-in movie and ran over the speaker. He asked me to be his date to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. Do I need to explain to you what a huge deal that was? My parents didn’t understand it. They refused to let me go. The Big Football Player didn’t call me again, and I was crushed.

There was this other guy, though. He’d cut in at a dance back in the fall, and one afternoon after class, he offered me a ride to my dorm in his white convertible. He didn’t call me until the spring, and I thought he’d forgotten all about me. When he picked me up for our first date, he was driving an old Ford, not a convertible. A bird had hit the front grille, and he hadn’t been able to get the dead bird out. That car smelled awful! It turned out the convertible belonged to his sister. By then, it didn’t matter. He was a pre-med student, a Mississippi Delta boy with the bluest eyes I’d ever seen and a great smile. He wasn’t handsome, exactly, but those eyes. He was intelligent. He loved books and music. He had a great future.

If you had handed me a checklist of all the things I was supposed to look for in a mate, I would have checked all of them off. I’d been schooled in the primary goal, you see: to find somebody to marry who would give me smart children and provide for me well. My college degree was like a trophy. I wasn’t really expected to do anything with it, although my father had advised me to get a teacher’s license so that if something happened, I could take care of myself.

This New Boy and I dated the rest of our sophomore spring. I won’t tell you the end of the story. Not yet.

At what point did your life take a turn that would determine your future? Were you aware of its importance at the time?

Thanks to Jane Ann McLachlan for bringing us the October Memoir and Backstory Blog Challenge!

Eighteen: The Frosh Year

/ Gerry Wilson / 6 Comments

Scared to Death!

And so the girl went off to college! I’d been given a terrific scholarship, but I figured I was woefully unprepared for college courses, coming out of my small high school. For the first time in my life, I had to study hard.

The English and lit courses, though, I adored. A professor named Charles Noyes taught my freshman English Comp class. Dr. Noyes loved his pretty girl students (not in a dirty old man way) and tolerated the guys. He would perch on the edge of the desk with his pipe between his teeth, ask me a question, and listen, as though I had something remarkable to say. One of our writing topic choices (which I aced–wonder why?) was “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” I credit Dr. Noyes with giving me confidence and helping me discover my voice.

The freshman year wasn’t all grind. 

I’ll confess it: I went out for rush and pledged a sorority. Yes. I was an Ole Miss Sorority Girl. (What kinds of stories have you heard about that, I wonder? It seems Ole Miss girls are legendary.) That meant a whole new set of friends, meals and study nights at “the house,” work days, campus political campaigns, and volunteer activities. But it also meant fraternity swaps and parties and football games. In those days we got very dressed up for games: a suit, high heels, a hat, and a big mum corsage, accessorized by a frat-boy date. This was Hotty-Toddy land, the golden era of Johnny Vaught football. (If you never heard of Johnny Vaught, look him up. This was the year that LSU beat Ole Miss 7 to 3, courtesy of Billy Cannon’s 99-yard punt return.)

Roaring Twenties Party
(I made my flapper dress. And there really wasn’t any gin in that bathtub.)

Our freshman dorms were overflowing that year. I started out with two roommates, neither of whom I’d known before. By second semester, both were on academic probation, which meant they had to be in the dorm by six in the evening, so they would go out on dates in the afternoon. By sophomore year, they were both gone. There were no coed dorms in those days, and everybody had to be in at nine on weeknights. No pants or, God forbid, jeans except on Saturdays, and then we had to wear a raincoat over them. We had to sign in and sign out of the dorm. There were panty raids (No, Mother, I never threw anything out my window!) and romantic fraternity serenades when somebody got “pinned.” It was a wondrous time.

Free!

There was still the shadow of The Old Boyfriend, who had transferred to Ole Miss that year. We had agreed to date others, right? But he was possessive, and he acted out if I showed up at a party with somebody else. He flunked out after a semester and was gone. (He will reappear once more in these stories. Stay tuned.)

Then, I was free. I was having the time of my life.

When were you on your own? College? Working? Military? Tell me what your leaving home was like.

The memory quest continues with Jane Ann McLachlan’s Memoir and Backstory Blog Challenge through the month of October. Go over to Jane’s site and have a look at other bloggers who have dared to meet the challenge.