Bear all Things

I was jarred into looking for this ID because Baylor Women just won the national championship for basketball. I began to wonder: What claims do I have to Baylor? I only went there for one year--a great year. Can I call myself a Baylor Bear?

I remember the day this picture was taken.

I woke up and drove down to Baylor at some ungodly hour. My mom laid out my clothes-I tried to wear jeans, but there was no way in hell-she was running the show that day and was so stressed out it wasn't worth fighting over-so I wore stark white pants, the ones that I was previously warned by friends not to wear because they made me look "like an Iranian tourist" (?). All I remember is knowing that someone could see my underwear through them, which was obviously not good. Also, the blue Henley, which I wore all the time, and was warned by a teacher not to wear in a high school annual photo because "in the future, people will laugh at what was in fashion right now..." (aren't Henleys still in?) And it was so early in the AM that I couldn't take a shower--so I'm getting this picture taken while feeling greasy and gross with my ass hanging out. And that's what I thought of every time I used this ID card, which was 3 times a day for meals and every time I went to the library...

Fran calls this photo my "Concentration Camp Picture". I was definitely malnourished at this point in my life for various crazy reasons. But don't worry--I got a chance to make up for lost time later in life...

For this orientation day, I was paired with a guy with very curly hair whose dad was an FBI agent--immediately and inexplicably (was it the pants?), he hated me and wanted nothing to do with me--I never heard him speak a word, even when we were freshmen together in class. Oh well.

We toured the campus, which is beautiful like most old, expensive college campuses in that tree-filled, green grass, red brick, clock tower, archway thingy sort of way.

When you enter Baylor, there is a week-long orientation before classes start. You are broken up into small groups filled with guys named Brett and Blake and Todd and somehow genetically altered girls with blond hair and blue eyes and bows poofing out on top of their heads (nicknamed: bowheads, synonomous with: airhead). So, after a couple of days I got "sick" because I couldn't take anymore of the nonstop, saccharine-sweet BS...Well, I felt like crap because I got Get Well cards from the bowheads which were even signed by Blake, Brett, and Todd. Maybe they weren't so bad, after all--they seemed sincere.

My freshman English class had only 12 people in it--and I thought it was neat that one time, my professor called me in my dorm to ask me a question about something I wrote on a test. She really seemed to like me, even though my writing was crap. That was pretty good.

I entered the roommate lottery and lost, big-time. Most unfortunately. One super rich kid who was nice, but a phony. Another guy who was a preacher's kid who was actually very poor, desperately wanted to hang out with rich kids, and who was also a phony. I owe him $175 still, which could have been $1.75 million at that time to me, because I was the last one to use his motorcycle and somehow he never found the keys that I laid on his desk and apparently that was the only key for the damn thing--I would send him the $$ right now to clear my conscience except his name is friggin' John Smith and there a million of 'em. Also, there was this whole thing where I ended up having to kick his ass royally and relentlessly in front of everyone, and he wouldn't back down, so I had to keep knocking his ass down and then picked up his bicycle like Hulk Hogan and threw it on top of him and told him to stay down, but he kept getting up...but I digress...I would still write him a check if I could find him.

Next roommate--homosexual. Got "outed" when he propositioned another guy on our floor, who everyone (I guess including my roommate) thought was gay but just turned out to be weird. Well, about 20 of us were eating pizza in the dining hall, and weird guy tells me "Hey, you'd better watch your ass! Your roommate is gay!" By the time I got back to the room that night, he had moved out (but...left his TV, fridge, carpet, stereo, and lamp until the end of the year, so---thanks, dude! Good luck with the gay thing...)

Then I met my best buddy Gar. We used to play tennis at 1:30 AM--also good. One time I locked him in our dorm room and laughed while he called every room down our hall trying to get someone to let him out. When I came back, he had taped all of my textbooks on the outside of the window to our dorm. We were the poorest students at the school. Seriously, on Friday nights we would walk across the street to the gas station and buy a chocolate milk...if we had the $1 available, which was about 2 Fridays per month. Good times.

I went to the football games--here's how phony they were: People wore suits and ties to the freakin' football games! In TEXAS!!!! Hello? What the hell is wrong with you? And our team sucked so bad...it was difficult to watch. But I still went, and even joined the Freshman sprit group like a dork.

Our telephone number was a single digit off from the campus information line--we would get calls all day and night asking for people's phone numbers--so we just kept a directory by the phone and we would look up the names, pretending to be the information line people. Sometimes we would even sing, whistle, or play the radio into the phone and laugh our asses off. I thought we had it pretty bad til I met some guys down the hall whose phone rang everytime someone forgot to hit "9" before they dialed a 1-800 number...

I identified with Baylor. I used to go and watch the bears in the bear den across the street from me all the time. They would feed them oreo cookies and make them do tricks--seemed okay at the time, but is oddly disturbing now...

I knew the Baylor fight song, which freshman were obligated to sing if the upperclassmen initiated it somehow. I would do the Baylor cheer. I would hope like hell our team would win something. I wore green and gold. I still have Baylor mugs floating around my house...somewhere.

Through no fault of my own, the rest of my college career had more transfers than the Long Island Railroad. I ended up graduating from a branch of UT that was less prestigious and took me seven years of hard-fought study and work. I still haven't gotten beyond a slight tinge of defensiveness when I tell people that I just went to Baylor for my first year. Almost as a reflex, I tell people: I did great at Baylor (which I did to the surprise of everyone), but we just couldn't afford it. Then I feel stupid and self-conscious, like a 17-year old should have had it all worked out and planned and seen everything coming. I wanted to be on the "4-year plan" like a normal person.

I actually consider my education to be all the experiences and knowledge I gained during the time I went to college--classes and study were just the venue, the knowledge was what I learned in life.

But Baylor was the pure college experience. Leaving home for the first time. Living in the dorm. Being on my own. Pulling all-nighters because it was fashionable. Walking to class. A simple life of undistracted study--a luxury I would wish for so many times in the future, where a full courseload and long hours at work meant that I had to decide what I was going to study and what I was going to just miss because I couldn't get to it.

I get an alumni magazine! Requests for donations! They call me an alum when they have their hand out--although I'm sure they aren't so discerning about such things when they are asking for a check...

When I finally graduated, I was so relieved and satisfied at my accomplishment--I did it myself, and I didn't owe anybody anything. But it was anticlimatic, in a way. My work career continued on as before, and I just stopped going to classes. It didn't even occur to me to get a class ring, because I didn't sense that it was a big change--maybe someday I'll get one when I come to the realization that my education is over, a fact I'm not sure if I've faced yet...

But when I left Baylor, I left a piece of my heart there. It makes me nostalgic for that innocence and happiness. Sometimes, I wonder if I should claim it.