Audrey and the Probably-Definitely Missed Opportunity

Note:  Unless given permission otherwise, all names have been changed to protect privacy, most especially the name of the girl that is the focus of the chapter!

I.                   Graduation

I sat slumped in my chair, sleeping, hands rested on my pot belly, my graduation cap tilted to shield my eyes, the tassel swinging back and forth in time with my snoring.  It felt like the ceremony had been going on for hours, and my attention had begun to fade into slumber when they began announcing scholarship winners.  I had only applied for a handful of scholarships, and was certain I wouldn’t get a single one. 

I felt an elbow nudge me in the ribs and I sat up with a start.  “Hey dumbass,” my friend Erin whispered.  “They’re calling your name.”

“Wha…?  Who…?” I managed, wiping a string of slobber from my mouth.

“The winner of the 2000 Diana Hutchens Memorial Scholarship is Daniel Craig Williams,” the principal announced for apparently the second time.  “Is there a Daniel Craig Williams here?” 

“I’M CRAIG WILLIAMS!” I screamed like a hysterical old woman whose name was called on The Price is Right after years of waiting for an opportunity to be a contestant.  I tried to navigate clumsily through the sea of metal folding chairs, some of unoccupied ones snagging onto my gown and clattering as noisily as possible onto the gym floor.  The entire time I was yelling, “I’M HERE!  I HERE!”

When I reached the stage, I shook hands with the principal, accepted the scholarship, and reached for the mic to make an impromptu acceptance speech.  “Um, I just wanted to say thanks to so many people…”

The principal took the mic back, causing feedback.  “We have a lot of names to call.  Congratulations.”

I held the scholarship high to little adulation, except from my family who were as surprised as I was at my victory.  When I sat back down, Erin asked, “How much is it for?”

I opened the envelope and both of our eyes widened.  “Five thousand dollars!” I exclaimed.

“What the hell did you do to win that?” Erin asked.

I shrugged.  “I dunno.”

***

As it turned out, I had written an essay about one of the most important lessons I’d learned in life to win the scholarship.  For the topic, I wrote about my experience with Tricia, and how I had decided to channel my aggression into a sense of humor.  I had totally forgotten about having written the essay until my name was called during graduation.  

I was not only shocked to have won a scholarship, but to have done so because of something I had written.  My teachers had always encouraged me to be a writer, but I didn’t think I was good enough to win money.  It was a good ego boost before entering the daunting, foamy, beer-filled waters of college.   

After the graduation ceremony, I went with some friends to a post-graduation party, one of the only parties I ever attended during high school.  My friends and I stuck together, uncomfortably sipping our cups of beer, unsure of what was expected of us.  Johnny had drank so much he was soon passed out a recliner in the living room.  Meanwhile, Matt and I stood in a corner, trying to figure out how we could parlay the night into getting laid, but there weren’t any girls at the party that either of us were at all confident we could talk to, much less entice into sex.  All of the girls I liked were either not at the party or were in one of the upstairs bedrooms of the house, having sex with their boyfriends. 

At one point during the party, I sat at the top of the stairs, beer in hand, staring mournfully at a bedroom door like a fat guy staring at a closed Sizzler.  Right at that moment, two people my age were having sex - that mystifying thing the pleasures of which I was denied.  It was all happening right on the other side of those doors and I was so sex starved, not to mention buzzed from the beer, that I fell into the absurd fantasy of scratching at the door for sex like a hungry dog scratching for food.  The sheer desperation of such a thought was so depressing it crushed any party spirit I might have had and I ended up going home early.  During the sobering drive home, I made a resolution to finally unravel the mysteries of sex in my first year of college or die trying!  College would be my opportunity to reinvent myself - to cast off the sexless, nerdy carcass that was my high school self and transform into the cool, charming, amorous self I knew I was capable of being!

First, though, I needed to figure out just what college I was going to attend.

II. The Spirit Makes the Master… Bator

Since my academic achievements in high school were mediocre at best, colleges weren’t exactly flooding my house with scholarships like Hogwartz acceptance letters flooding the house of Harry Potter's hapless foster parents.  I had decided against going to the Chicago Institute for Art for a myriad of reasons, primarily amongst them being a paralyzing fear of moving to a large, unfamiliar city with absolutely no family or friend ties from home to ease the transition.  As one can imagine, this fear greatly limited my choices to within the state of Kentucky.  Ironically, my closest friends were being scattered to the four winds: Johnny was planning on attending Campbellsville University, a college that was founded on staunch Christian principles (party! Woo!), which was an odd choice considering me and Johnny's many nightly discussions of the folly of organized religion.  Matt was attending the University of Georgia, ostensibly to study psychology, but really to be closer to the alternative music scene that he loved, which tended to flourish in Athens, Georgia.

For me, it was never much of a choice.  I had been born in Bowling Green and had spent time at WKU whenever I visited my uncle Scott, and so therefor felt more drawn to that option out of the other universities in Kentucky.  The campus was actually quite beautiful during the summer, with plenty of foliage about, and everything was within walking distance of the dorms.  So, as in most of my life choices, I opted for convenience over risk, and applied to Western Kentucky University to study Studio Art.

***

In an inspired moment of pure, undiluted parental wisdom, my parents signed me up for WKU’s freshman orientation program, sinisterly named “The MASTER Program”, which would allow me to move onto campus two weeks before the fall semester so I could attend a series of seminars on campus life.  It was a brilliant way for me to get acclimated to college without being thrown into it head first.  Much like at a swimming  pool, my approach to new things in life is to daintily dip my toe in first before plunging in.  So this MASTER program suited me greatly.  

It suited my parents too, as they, unbeknownst to me, intended to give my bedroom to my brother and turn his room into my little sister’s room (who, up until then, had been sharing my parent’s room).  One might reasonably inquire as to why, since my parents had our house built to their own specifications, they didn’t bother to have a fourth bedroom built for my sister.  The answer is simple: my dad knew that I was imminently college bound, and so wouldn’t need a bedroom for long.  One less bedroom equals less money to spend on building the house... as if the unfinished tile in the family bathroom was testimony enough to my parents' thriftiness.  They all but tossed my stuff out of the window in their hurry to move my brother in.

 

I was to live in Douglas Keen Hall, which was an all-male dorm where most of the football players lived.  I didn't recall filling out in my dorm application the desire live out my worst nightmare by sharing living space with a building full of athletic primates all of whom, if Revenge of the Nerds could be believed, would be able to take over my dorm room at will and with the full sanction of the college.  At least my family was there to help me move that day, which was super busy what with all the other Freshman also moving in.  Nothing brings repressed feelings of contempt and resentment bubbling to the surface in my family quite like physical labor mixed with a stressful environment.  My family and I were already squabbling, cursing, and blasting each other with accusations before we even reached the front door of my dormitory. 

“Are we getting ice cream after this?” my then 6-year-old sister Lindsey wailed, as if such an activity was implicit when helping someone move.  All of us were carrying giant Tupperware containers full of stuff I probably didn’t need to bring for a year of college, but my mom insisted I bring anyway:

Mom:  Do you want to bring this frying pan?  How about this spaghetti strainer?

Me:  No mom, I can't cook.

Mom:  I'll pack it anyway.  Will you need this cheese grater?

Me:  I can't possibly see how...

Mom:  Well, better have it and not need it, then need it and not have it!  How about this broken toaster?

Me: It's broken.

Mom:  Eh, maybe you can get it working again!  It'll be a project!

“No, we’re going back home after this,” my dad answered my sister.

“What?  We’re not even going to stop somewhere to eat dinner?” my brother Jon asked, aghast, as if dad announced that we were going to skip the meal of dinner entirely.

“I want ice cream!” my sister interjected.  

“I thought we were going to have dinner too,” I said. “You know, to celebrate my first day of college and all.”

“I want ice cream!”

“We will, on your first day of college, not on your first day of living in a dorm,” dad said.

“Dan, we should go somewhere to eat,” mom attempted to reason.

“I want ice cream!”

“SHUT UP, WE’RE NOT GETTING ICE CREAM LINDSEY!” my brother yelled irritably.

“JON’S YELLING AT ME!” my sister yelled back.

“Both of you shut up!” I snapped.

“Don’t tell me to shut up!” Jon responded.

“Don’t yell at your brother and sister, they’re helping you!” my mom pointed out.

“I WANT ICE CREAM!” my sister demanded, throwing the box she was carrying on the ground and crossing her arms.

“DON’T THROW THAT DOWN, IT HAS MY PLAYSTATION IN IT!” I growled at her, picking up the box with the same caution one would give to a nuclear bomb.

“You brought your Nintendo to college?” my dad asked incredulously.  “Uh, don’t you maybe want to have girls hang out with you instead of fiddling with a Nintendo, fiddler?”

“It’s not a Nintendo, it’s a Playstation,” I futilely corrected, hugging the box to my chest.

“Whatever,” Dad said.  "I think you've played enough Playstation, player."

“Wait a minute,” Jon said, peering into the box.  “Is that my copy of Metal Gear Solid?  Didn’t you borrow that from me?”

“What?  No, no, of course not… I bought it.”

“No you didn’t!”

“Hey, just because you lost your copy don't be mad that I went and bought a new one!”

“I only lost it because you stole it!”

“Nope.  It's mine!  MINE!” I said, patting my chest smugly, provoking Jon into threatening to drop my TV, which, in turn, triggered an all out argument.

“I WANT ICE CREAM!”

“SHUT UP!” my brother and I yelled at once.  Lindsey started crying which caused both my parents to round on us.  And this is how my Resident Adviser was introduced to my family.

“Can I… help you?” he asked with uncertainty, as if the help my family needed was much more than he was qualified to provide. 

I gave him my name and he quickly gave me a key to my room.  When we opened the door to my dorm, the air conditioner, which was running full blast, washed over us, cooling off our tempers and giving way to mutual curiosity about my roommate, who was already moved in but wasn't presently in the room.  The shades were drawn, making the room dark, yet oddly homey.   I mentally pumped a fist in relief that my roommate had a computer, alleviating the need for me to spend too much time in the campus computer lab.  I looked over his collection of PC games, noting with approval that he owned a copy of Final Fantasy VIII.  

Once all of my stuff was brought to my room, by which I mean sat haphazardly all over the room, my mom gave me a quick hug, and left suspiciously quick… presumably to go eat dinner after all, which was probably the plan all along, but my dad didn’t want to have to pay for mine.  Fortunately, part of the MASTER program is that meals are included, so all I needed to do was venture out to the student activity center (known as DUC, which was short for Downey University Center) to eat dinner.  I ate a modest meal at the Pizza Hut in the cafeteria by myself and observed the people who would be my schoolmates.  Somehow, these people had already paired off into cliques before the first day of seminars.  I could only assume they already knew each other.  I listened to some guy chatting up a girl he had just met.  The conversation seemed to be going well until she brought up the subject of her boyfriend.

“Wait,” the guy said, holding up a hand.  “You have a boyfriend?”

“Yeah...?” the girl answered.

He rolled his eyes.  “Well, fuck this then.” Then he strolled away, hands in his pockets, practically whistling Dixie, as both me and the girl watched him in awe for very different reasons.  She was probably understandably furious and offended.  I was incredibly impressed.  Oh, sure, the guy was a huge asshole, probably destined to take that misogynist attitude to a fraternity, where it would be welcomed and nourished into full douchebaggery, but I had to give him credit – it took balls to take such decisive action when things with a girl took an unexpectedly bad turn, such as the revelation that she had a boyfriend.  In his position, my confidence would have instantly left my body, like a spirit, leaving behind a stammering, simpering shell still pretending to be engaged in the conversation, but actually completely sulking in the string of rotten luck that had lead me to this point.  I would have walked away, so forlorn by my poor instincts in inability to find a girl who was actually single, I would stop talking to girls for at least a couple of months, because my fragile ego simply cannot handle another disappointing encounter.  

This guy, in his own shitty way, called an audible in mid-play, cut his losses, and moved on, presumably without sulking or feeling sorry for himself, to other prospects - no fuss, no muss!  While I wasn’t a fan of his style, I knew I could stand to learn from his absolute confidence of what he wanted.

When I got back to the dorm, my roommate was there.  “Hi, I’m Michael,” he said and we shook hands.

“I’m Craig,” I said, before cutting to the chase:  “So, I noticed you have a computer and Final Fantasy VIII.”

“Yes, I do,” Michael replied.  “I noticed you have several RPGs and a Playstation."  

 "I do.  I think we’re going to get along nicely.”

“Agreed.”

And that was that.

Michael was an easygoing guy, almost too easygoing as far as attending his classes went, preferring to spend most of his time either at the Baptist Student Union or playing my Playstation.  He would constantly ask me if I wanted to hang out at the Baptist Student Union with him, but only because there were fun things to do there, free food to eat, and it was a good way to meet girls.  I was still way too suspicious of such religious organizations at that point, so I would always turn him down, but years later I would finally relent out of necessity for a cheap place to eat (they would have delicious home cooked meals, called "Mana Meals", for only $2).   

As it turned out, my suspicion of the organization wasn’t entirely unfounded, as I'd observe several of the college kids that worked there almost exclusively engage the foreign students they had duped into coming there under the auspices of meeting new American friends.  They would patronizingly feign interest in listening to the foreign kid talk about his own culture, before inevitably bringing up Jesus or the Bible as a passive aggressive critique on how flawed his culture was.  It was all very sneaky.  It kind of reminded me of being in a clothing store, like American Eagle, and having a salesperson engage you in conversation, only for it to abruptly turn into a sales pitch for blue jeans that look as if they were taken off the body of a dead illegal immigrant who got stuck crawling under the border fence.  Even my interest in converting to Christianity was prodded at least a couple of times by Jeff, one of the youth pastors that ran the facility.  I remember one conversation when Jeff asked why I distrusted religion so much, to which I replied, “Because religion is for the weak willed, who need religious supplication as moral guidance for defining right from wrong, because they lack the conviction and courage to do it themselves.  They need something to point to as an example of moral excellence and also something to blame when they fail to live up to that impossible standard.  I do not need a god to tell me that it’s wrong to treat people badly.  I can see that for myself by observing the consequences of my actions and taking responsibility for it.  It takes strength to do that, and I am more intent in developing such inner strength without relying on the crutch of religion.”  I then went back to eating my plate of home cooked broccoli casserole.  

 

“Oh.  That’s… an interesting perspective,” he said, either because he had not expected such an articulate, well thought out answer or such an aggressively ignorant one.  Whatever the case may be, he never approached me about my faith, or lack thereof, again. 

This was never an issue with Michael and I, as my views were quite clear, and he had no desire to proselytize to me or anyone.  So we got along famously.  We would spend most of our time either watching each other play video games, movies, or staying up all night waxing philosophic about the mysteries of women.  Like me, Michael was single and, from what I could glean from our conversations, seemed just as clueless as I was on what to do about it. Considering that nearly every interaction I had with a female that year ended in awkward failure, it was good to have someone at home with whom I could trade “war stories” with, instead of brooding alone in self-pity.

A good example of one such interaction occurred during the MASTER Program.  In one of the seminars, I met a girl named Brianna.  She had red pixie cut hair, a sharp, pronounced nose (a feature on girls I find particularly attractive for some reason), and a short, lean body that ended with a perfectly curvaceous butt that would make Sir Mix-a-lot silently weep “thank you” to the Heavens.  She had a kind of Gen-X grunge sense of style, as if she walked right out of movie Empire Records, but wore clothes that accentuated her body, rather than hid it in loose, saggy clothing.  By all indications, she seemed like my "type" at the time, so you could imagine my surprise when she would barely give me the time of day, or even chuckle at my attempts to be funny.  Yet at the same time, she'd lavish heaps of attention to another guy in our seminars named Andy, who was better looking, funnier, and more charming than me by miles.  Andy was one of those guys who was so charming, even I had a little bit of a completely platonic man-crush on him.  He was also just an incredibly nice, gracious dude, who had the grungy attractive looks of a 90s tanned surfer boy, complete with long brown hair, which he kept tucked in a bandanna, and a soul patch.  

I liked Andy, but at the same time I hated him.  Here was a guy who had all the advantages I would never, ever have, and also had an unbelievably beautiful girl like Brianna practically throwing herself at him... AND HE COULD CARE LESS!  He politely ignored her obvious crush and even seemed annoyed by her.  I couldn’t imagine being in a position where I could turn down a girl as attractive as Brianna, because I was used to having a variety of girls to choose from.  So this would be my competition in college?  In life?  Would I constantly be futilely vying for attention against "Andy's"?  If so, than my situation was fucked… I had a long way to go before I’d be an “Andy”.   

I barely made a decent “Craig”.  

III.                   Craig Williams:  Night Clerk of the Year

When I graduated from high school, I had left my job at the newspaper with such zest, it could have only been better if the place exploded behind me in slow motion as I continued walking to my car.  Not long after I quit, they began printing the paper at a larger press, and laid off my former co-workers when they realized that it was quite insane to pay humans to do a job that a moderately clever, domesticated raccoon could do.  When I quit, I promised myself that I would work such a shitty job for the rest of my life.  When I moved to Bowling Green, though, it proved to be challenging to find a job that wasn't as shitty, or worse, than my stint at the printing press.  I still had car payments to make every month, which I could barely afford, and now I had to provide for my own groceries and entertainments.

The week before class started, however, I discovered that my dorm was hiring for “night clerk” positions and I managed to snag it almost as soon as I turned in my application.  On the surface, it seemed perfect: the job was literally in the same building I lived in; it would involve me mostly sitting down with nothing to while away the time but read, draw, or do homework; plus, I had authority to be a giant cock block to every dude getting laid in that dormitory, because a large part of my responsibility was making sure all girls were checked out by midnight.  This was a very therapeutic position to be in when one isn’t getting any sex at all.

Like any job, the night clerk position had its multitude of pros and cons.  The “pro” was how laid back and easy the job was compared to what I was used to.  At last, I had found the job that catered to my lazy tendencies that I had desperately sought out when I applied at the bowling alley at home.  The big “con”, though, was one that was obvious but I had failed to consider: I’d have to be up late most nights with little to no sleep in between.  At this time in my life, I was much too stupid to simply make a sleep schedule that would harmonize with my classes and my job.  Budgeting time is a skill that college students have to learn right along with budgeting money, and I was a slow learner on both fronts.  Instead, I chose to either not sleep at all or simply sleep through my classes.  At one point, my sleep deprivation had gotten so bad I fell asleep at the desk and woke up in my dorm room with no memory of how I had gotten there.

It was fun, though, being the gatekeeper of the dorm and feeling like I had a little authority.  The worst part about living in Douglas Keene Hall was the assholes that pulled the fire alarm so they could sneak girls in, or out, of their dorms after hours.  It is absolutely infuriating to be woken up at 2 am by a fire alarm, forced to go out into the frigid, sometimes raining, cold night just to wait until the fire department did god-knows-what before we can come back inside.  It is even more infuriating when this happened 2 or 3 times in the same night.  Murderous mobs have formed and killed people for less than this.  To this day, I hope those responsible for all of those false alarms have perished in fiery traffic accidents, been eaten by sharks, or some other such horrible fate.  One of the best perks of working as a night clerk, though, was that I got to stay indoors during these false alarms and hang out at the front desk with my co-workers.  

I'm hard pressed to complain much about a job that mostly involved sitting in a cozy desk chair, with the freedom to read a book, watch late night movies like Krull (an already trippy movie that became ten times trippier on a big screen TV in a huge empty lobby at 3am), and bounce a ball whenever I got really bored or had trouble staying awake.  I was good at my job too - good enough that I won a "Night Clerk of the Year" award, which, as I would eventually discover, is a certificate that is more valuable than my current degree.  

Despite how glamorous it may seem to be a professional cock block, it may surprise you to know that it had one major drawback:  it didn't pay dick.

IV.                   Would You Like Some… Plasma?

"Never spend your money before you earned it." -Thomas Jefferson

What little money my job paid might have sufficed if I didn’t have that nagging, persistent, budgetary buzz kill that had stalked me through high school called... “The Car Payment”.  I began using credit cards to supplement my income, which is quite possibly the most stupid financial strategy ever.  Its little wonder credit companies loiter on college campuses, like drug dealers, encouraging naive, well meaning college kids to bolster their credit rating by spending money they don’t have… and get a free t-shirt for signing up, because who doesn't like free stuff?

One day I came home to the dorm, particularly despondent on my money problems because I'd spent the last of it on a mediocre and wholly unsatisfying Subway sandwich.  When I walked into the door, Michael, who was lying on his bed watching TV, pointed to it and said:  "Hey, you're on television."

He was referring to the striking resemblance I had at the time to comedian Jim Gaffigan, who was on television doing stand-up.  "Yeah, thanks," I said humorlessly, although I'd be lying if I said seeing someone who looked like me doing comedy didn't sow the seeds of trying stand-up years later.

"Something wrong?" Michael asked.

I shrugged.  "Eh... just starving and broke."

"Didn't you have a twenty dollar pasta dish from O'Charlie's delivered to you last night?"

"Well, yeah, a guy's got to eat, what's your point?" I asked defensively. 

"You know what you should do?  Come with me to the plasma center."  Michael had been trying to sell me on this for weeks, but I refused out of both stubborn pride and a basic hatred of medical facilities.  With no other option, besides working for my uncle Scott doing construction, which was no option at all, I reluctantly went to the plasma center.  It was in a small, nondescript strip mall not far from campus.  When I opened the door, I was immediately struck with the general atmosphere of despair and hopelessness that seemed to permeate the air of the place.  In case you're curious what an atmosphere of despair smells like, it's the smell of a sterile hospital combined with cigarette smoke which, in the case of this plasma center, was wafting into the facility from the smokers outside the front door.  It had the same air of futility as an unemployment office.

The variety of donors range between broke college students like myself, to the perpetually unemployed, Section 8 people, to people who were mostly like actually homeless, to the rare, occasional actual Good Samaritan who is there purely for the karmic brownie points.  I don’t mean to sit in judgment of these people – poor or no, at least they were contributing something for money, as opposed to people who contribute nothing but unwanted, delinquent children that grow up to be criminals, or just assholes, all so they can collect a free check from the government.  Nevertheless… I wouldn’t have been surprised if the majority of people at that plasma center were also leeching off government welfare programs and food stamps.

I had given blood before in high school, but before one mistakes my intentions for anything remotely selfless, I did it not only to get out of class but also to get free cookies and Cokes.  So I had no problem with the donation process, although getting my arm stabbed with a large needle multiple times by a barely trained college student trying to find vein, only to find out they didn't have this much trouble when they trained "by sticking an orange", is not a fun way to spend time.  Fortunately, they would have movies always playing on the TV and I would always bring a book to read.

  

 I continued going to the plasma center for extra money for a couple of years while in college, although it began to get to the point where each visit depressed me more.  Selling my bodily fluids to be able to afford groceries was not exactly the good times I had expected my college experience to be.  If that weren't bad enough, my actual classes were worse...

V.                   Art School Blues… and Yellows… and Reds

Classes had started almost like an afterthought, and I quickly got into the academically treacherous habit of treating them as such for the rest of the year.  I was super excited to receive a residual check for nearly $1500 from the Student Loan People, which was (and is) a lot of money to me.  Like every college student in the country, I thought it was “free money”, never considering that it was a drop in the bucket that would become an insurmountable debt I’d drown in after graduating.  I never imagined the Student Loan People calling me, night and day, at home and at work, demanding payment on the loan while holding a knife to the throat of my credit rating. 

 

Fortunately my parents explained to me that the money should be used for school books and supplies, or I might have blown the money on video games, pizza, and whatever whims struck my fancy (which, for the most part, I still managed to to).  Something I never considered when I chose Studio Art as my major was that I would be responsible for buying ALL of the supplies I’d need.  I was used to such things being provided for me in class.  So as I crossed each thing off my list, I was distressed to find more and more of my “free money” trickling away.  I bought so many art supplies I still own some of them, which I use for personal projects semi-regularly.  If the cost of art supplies weren’t enough to make me cry, I had a really rude awakening waiting for me when I bought my textbooks.  Each year of college, I began to get into the habit of waiting at least two weeks into the semester before buying my textbooks, just to make sure I actually needed them, as some professors tended to prefer hearing themselves talk over reading from a book they had nothing to do with. 

I hated every single one of my classes with a passion.  For my first semester, I took Astronomy, Drawing, Freshman Seminar, Sociology, and Art History.  I quickly dropped Astronomy because it was dreadfully boring, and an early morning class that mostly took place in a dark, cozy planetarium, all of which was an irresistible combination of things that strongly encouraged naps.  I also dropped Sociology because it was even more boring than Astronomy.

I thought Drawing would be my favorite class of the whole year, but it turned out to be the worst.  My professor, let's call him... Dr. Black, because he wore nothing but black and, well, he was black.  I'm not racist, I'm just terrible at coming up with fake names for people (when I bother to do so at all).  He was a stereotypical art teacher, much like the one John Malkovich portrays in Art School Confidential: egotistical, arrogant, more focused on his own art career, and seemed passionately disinterested in the work of his students or their artistic growth, especially if their talent threatened his own.  I got the impression that Dr. Black, like so many professors of the Humanities, taught purely for free health insurance.  He had no sage wisdom to offer, only harsh criticism, which is useful in its own right, but not for an impressionable student such as me who already had a fragile belief that I had real talent for art.

“Your drawing is too comic booky,” he’d coldly say to me after merely glancing at my work and moving on to the next student.  This was an especially irritating critique coming from a man who, on the first day of class, confessed to being a gigantic fan of The Incredible Hulk and would give extra credit to anyone that gave him Hulk memorabilia that he didn’t already own (the chances of which, he said, was “unlikely”).  This was also an odd critique to understand considering that being a comic book artist was on my list of careers I wanted to shoot for, so, in that case, wasn’t my style being “too comic booky” a good thing?  Considering how my high school art teacher, Mr. Stinson, couldn’t heap enough praise for my ability, I was not used to this level of indifference from a teacher.  It was as cold slap of reality that maybe my artistic talents weren't going to be enough to get by in the world.

As my work was persistently ignored by both my teacher and my peers, my interest in excelling in the class waned to nothing.  Our final was to meet with Dr. Black and go over our portfolio from the semester.  I vividly remember it being a particularly cold and rainy December day when I was scheduled to meet with him.  I had stayed up all night working and I stared out into the dull, gray rainy morning feeling no motivation to brave such weather for the sake of hearing how mediocre my drawing talents were by someone I didn't respect.  So I went back to bed and ended up failing the class.

My Art History class was headed up with by an intrepid fellow named Dr. Crab, who’s extensive travels throughout the world, meticulously recorded onto a series of slides he mercilessly forced us to look at during his tediously boring, drawn-entirely-from-the-textbook lectures, had failed to make him into even a remotely interesting human being.  Every day he wore a matching khaki fishing cap and vest, either because he expected, at any moment, to be called away into a sweeping, dangerous treasure hunting adventure; or he went fly fishing everyday; or he had a side gig as curator in Jurassic Park.  I barely passed the class, but only through lucky guesses during the tests, and consistently finishing my homework.

Finally, there was Freshman Seminar, which was "taught", and I use the term loosely, by a plump lady whose actual credentials as a university teacher I couldn’t tell you if I were water boarded.  I think she was one the librarians.  She had clearly been drafted to teach this bullshit class, which was created to help freshman learn how to be proper college students.  It was basically a condensed version of “The MASTER Program” for kids who had not been privileged enough to participate in the MASTER Program.  The only issue was, for students like me who had gone through the MASTER Program, the class was entirely redundant, boring, and useless.  Unfortunately, it was a mandatory class, so I patiently sat through it, usually reading whatever Star Wars novel I happened to have on me at the time during lectures that went over how the meal program worked, how to budget our time, how to tie our shoes, breath air, etc.

 

At one point, we held class at the campus library to go over how to properly take advantage of its resources (something I had to do maybe twice in my five years of college).  Something about the college library depressed the hell out of me.  Maybe it was because it had obviously been built in the late 70s and had never been updated since, which made it feel sadly dated.  There is nothing more ugly than 70s-80s architecture and interior design, which I can sum up thus:  browns, beige, and blocks... lots of squares and blocks.  People in the 70s seemed to fucking love squares and blocks.  Just go to a building that was built in that era and was never renovated (usually a government building), and it's everywhere in your face.  Don't even get me started on the felt walls - ugh.  

Anyway, after a thorough explanation of the Dewey Decimal System, our teacher encouraged us to explore the library on our own.  It was here that I ran into a welcome and familiar face from high school: Audrey.

VI.                   A Timely Reunion

In my first year of college, I didn’t make very many new friends.  I’m not very outgoing when it comes to meeting new people and I can be distrustful of people that reach out to me.  My first week, during the MASTER program, I did meet a group of guys who were into the same geeky interests that I was into, but to such an extreme degree that I felt completely out-nerded.  We had spent a night in one of their dorms listening to video game music remixes, while playing Super Smash Bros on his Nintendo 64.  It was a good time, but I never felt part of the group, probably because I lacked the same zeal as they had.  My primary goal in college was to try and reinvent myself.  I had been “nerdy, introverted Craig” all through high school, and it resulted in me never getting laid and having a pity date for prom.  I didn’t want to waste the chance of a clean slate by being “even more nerdy, introverted Craig” in college.  As I have come to discover over time, though, is that my nerdiness is pretty much hardwired in my brain and I actually like being a nerd. I still feel very out-nerded whenever I go to conventions.

   

One guy in this group of nerds I met, Bruno, would talk to me incessantly about the Playstation game Chrono Cross.  I had once casually mentioned how much I enjoyed the game and so this guy brought it up anytime he saw me in public.  “Hey Craig,” he’d jog over to me after class.  “I was thinking about that part in Chrono Cross where you find the Masamune, but now it’s an evil sword, and how that might have happened…” then he would launch into his long-winded theory, much of it fan fiction of his own creation, complete with hastily drawn manga visual aids, prompting the occasional “Wow, that’s interesting” responses from me to disguise my sidelong “oh brother” eye rolls to the camera that I imagined filmed my life.   In Bruno’s defense, Chrono Cross is a pretty dense game, with a complicated, intriguing storyline, a wide array of compelling characters, a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack, and re-playability that is through the roof.  I'd write an even fuller review right now, but it would be an inexcusable tangent.

 

Bruno seemed to ponder the game’s significance with the same feverish energy priests-in-training pondered the Bible.  He was a nice guy, though, and I always saw him hanging out with cute nerd girls, so he had enough looks coupled with charm to get by socially.  He was simply excited to find someone who was even remotely familiar with his current passion, which was a feeling I could relate to considering I came from a town where finding someone who had even heard of the Final Fantasy series was like trying to find a Babylon 5 fan in Baghdad.  Still, I found his fervent desire to befriend me, with this sole mutual interest as our bond, rather irksome to my loner sensibilities, so I regretfully kept him at arm’s length. 

 

I was hoping a familiar face or two from high school would be at WKU, not that I was very close to many people from Russellville either.  There were  a couple of high school acquaintances I attempted to hang out with that year, but that only resulted in the awkward realization that we lived in two completely separate worlds as far as what it means to “have fun”.  These guys were content to sit in a dorm room, smoking pot, and watching sports… meanwhile, I was the fidgety one, asking if they had any video games we could play. 

I dabbled with pot in high school, but never really took to it, especially since my parents didn’t mind me smoking just as long as I did it away from my siblings.  As with alcohol, my parents’ leniency robbed the drug of its mystique and made it a mediocre activity at best, so I was never terribly interested in partaking. 

I also didn’t like the dazed, out-of-control feeling I’d have when high, such as the time I was supposed to babysit my little sister, Lindsey, but accidentally got more stoned at my friend’s house than I intended.

When I got home, my parents, who knew what I had been up to, closely scrutinized my bloodshot eyes and asked if I was “okay” to babysit, which I insisted I was.  Then I took my sister to McDonald’s.  I was having a difficult time comprehending the drive-thru menu and my sister kept babbling about wanting a “Mighty Kids Meal”. 

I looked at her. “You want a what?”

“A Mighty Kids Meal.”

“Huh?  I… what?  I don’t understand.”

“I want a Mighty Kids Meal.”

“What are you talking about??”

“What is wrong with you?”

I was startled.  I leaned in close.  “You… you think something’s wrong with me?”  I felt a wave of embarrassment and panic that maybe I was too stoned for babysitting after all if my kid sister could recognize that something was wrong.  “Nothing is wrong.  I’m fine.”

I turned to the speaker box.  “I’ll get a Happy Meal.”

“Mighty Kids Meal!”

“You’ll get a Happy Meal and you’ll like it!”  I felt like a retard.  Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the last time smoking weed would lead to intense confusion, panic, and shame at a fast food restaurant.

I felt even more lost and socially adrift in college than I did in high school.  I had no real friends, had met no interesting girls (well, girls who were interested in me anyway), and even my family had all but forgotten about me now that I was out of the house.  They literally went on vacation to the Bahamas within the first month I had moved out.  I felt so lonely that one day, while meditating, I thought of my family and burst into tears.  So by the time I ran into Audrey, one of the few girls from high school, besides Erin, who I felt any familiarity with, it was an immensely welcome relief.

  

I almost didn’t recognize her, as she had changed considerably since I had last seen her in high school.  Her brunette hair had been cut drastically short, in a Pixie style.  She had also gained a little weight, that infamous “Freshman Fifteen”, although, since she was quite skinny in the first place, it only served to fill her out more rather than make her appear fat.  The most dramatic change was her clothing style.  In high school, she would wear layers of loose fitting, non-revealing, somewhat conservative clothing.  When I ran into her in the college library, though, she was wearing low-cut shorts and a very low-cut tank top, which was the most revealing outfit I had ever seen her in.  It seemed Audrey had wasted no time in reinventing herself while in college. 

She was just as excited to see me as I was to see her, and immediately embraced me in a hug.  “How’s college going for you so far?” she asked.

“Great!”  I answered, before revising it.  “Well, good… Before further revising it.  "Eh, okay…” I stopped myself before collapsing into a pile of self-pity right there in front of Audrey.  I had to maintain the facade that things were going well.  I puffed my chest out with renewed vigor.  “Things are great!  I… love my classes so much!”

“Ugh, I hate my classes,” Audrey said.  “Truth be told, college feels like a big fat waste of time so far.”

I laughed.  “Ha, well, maybe it is a little…”

"Have you taken Freshman Seminar yet?"

"I'm taking it literally right now."

"Ugh... it is the worst."

"Yeah.  I have an important test coming up in the class where I have to correctly spell my name.  I'll be pulling an all-niter studying for that shit."

She laughed. "Yeah, I think I remember failing that one," she joked.  "College is hard!"

We spent a little more time catching up, exchanging horror stories about the dorms we lived in, before exchanging phone numbers.  Then we parted ways, with vague plans to catch up more at some future date.  I felt good finally running into someone I liked.  This could work.

VII.                   Second Verse is Worse Than the First 

I went home for Christmas vacation, with nowhere to sleep but the couch in the living room.  My first semester of college was a miserable failure.  My parents didn't get on my case about  it quite yet, probably out of feelings of guilt that they had gotten rid of my bedroom so quickly they had neglected to consider I might still need it for Christmas break.  I still felt awful about it.

If that weren't bad enough, I got a call from my boss at the dorm informing me that, as a result of my academic failings, I had to be "let go".  This news came literally a week after I had won "Night Clerk of the Year", making me wonder if I had won the award to soften the blow.  I certainly didn't feel that I was really that good of a Night Clerk.  So now I had failed, or just barely passed, all my classes and was unemployed.  The second semester of school was shaping up to be magical.  

This time I had Computer Art, Math 101, Bowling, and English 1.  Bowling was a bunny class, and the only way I would have possibly failed was to not show up, but why would I do that?  It's free bowling!  Bowling was quite possibly the only sport I enjoyed playing, mostly because it involved sitting down and eating food (or, as my father would say, "if there were a sandwich involved, you'd do it" and, in this case, he was right).  I still sucked at it, most times barely breaking 100 points, a milestone event in my life if ever there was one.  

I had to take Math 101 because I was so mathtarded that I couldn't take a college level math class until I passed this rudimentary class first.  I missed one day of the class, which must have been an important day, because I was utterly lost afterwards and, instead of seeking tutelage, simply stopped going to class and just took the F.  Computer Art was one of the worst classes I had ever taken in my entire six year college career, which was disappointing, because I was really looking forward to it.  Since I couldn't possibly use the word "taught" in this context, I will say the class was presided over by a terminally bored professor named Dr. Apple.  His wore his total disinterest in the class, and the vocation of teaching, with no shame, usually laying back in his chair, his hand behind his head, surfing the internet while we worked on whatever bullshit busywork assignment he gave us out of our workbooks.

"Today you're going to learn how to clone an image," he'd drone on in the rare lectures he'd bother to give, complete the visual aid of him performing the task via projector.  "First you click the image like so, aaaaaand click the clone icon, and clone the image like so.  Ta-da.  The cloning assignment is on page 63 of your workbook and is due at the end of class."  If you needed help, he was basically useless, and would either respond with a flippant remark to make you feel stupid or refer you to the workbook.  I needed all the help I could get, as the classroom utilized Macintosh computers and I hadn't ever used a Macintosh my entire life.  I felt like an old person confronting technology for the first time, which was a feeling that especially annoyed me since I prided myself as nothing if not somewhat tech proficient.  I was the guy my family looked up to for hooking up VCRs or fixing the family computer when it was acting funky (because of the porn I downloaded, no doubt).  

As an example of how hopeless I was, I remember saving my first assignment and then looking for the button to eject the floppy disk.  It was nowhere to be found.  I looked at my classmates, who all seemed totally comfortable with these confounded computers (of which I have since become more familiar and even acknowledge as vastly superior to PC).  Not wanting to interrupt Dr. Apple's web surfing for a such a noob question about basic Mac functions, I quietly caught my neighbor's attention, who took her headphones off irritably to better hear my question.  "Um... this is kind of embarrassing... but how do I get my disk out?"

"You don't know how to eject your disk?" she asked me back in that annoying, slightly outraged tone that people do when they think you're a fucking idiot but don't want to say it.

"No. No I don't."

She rolled her eyes, shooed my hand away from the mouse, and proceeded to drag the floppy disk icon into the trash icon, prompting me to shoo her hand away and go: "What are you doing?  Don't delete my disk!"

"Ugh.  I'm not deleting it. That's how you get it to eject."  She resumed dragging it to the trash, making my disk pop out of the machine.  

I stared in disbelief at the Mac screen.  "Really?  That's how you do it?  That doesn't make any sense at all!  How is that remotely intuitive!  'Hey, get rid of that stupid button for ejecting diskes, I got a better idea - let's fuck with people and make the disc eject only with the threat of deleting everything on it.'  Ugh... I wish they had PCs in this class!"

The girl looked at me with that glazed over, zealot expression of a hardcore Mac user.  "PCs are shit.  Macs are the future."  I halfway expected everyone in the room to repeat, "The future." as they continued typing.  Then she put her headphones back on and mentally dragged my existence into her brain's trash icon.  

"Whatever," I said, taking my hard disk to Dr. Apple for him to grade my project.  When he opened the disk, however, all my work was gone.

"What?" I exclaimed. "But... but I worked on that for hours!  There's nothing?"  He shrugged.  "I swear I did the assignment!  Something must be wrong with the disk..."

He started rubbing his thumb and forefinger together.  "This is the world's smallest violin, playing just for you."

I blinked, my temper coming to a boil.  "Well, I'd probably do better in this class if we didn't use stupid Macs!"

His eyes glazed over with the same religious fervor of the girl who sat next to me.  "Macs are not stupid.  They are the future."  "The Future..." everyone in the classroom droned in my imagination.  I groaned and threw up my hands, which Dr. Apple mocked like the man-child he was.  Eventually, I lost my patience with the Dr. Apple and his stupid class, so I showed him and stopped coming, earning yet another F. 

The only class I absolutely loved that entire year was my introductory English class.  It was taught by a woman named Professor Clark, though she insisted her students call her “Pat”.  She had fiery red hair which perfectly matched her fiery, vibrant personality.  Although she taught a few English classes, her main passion was theatre, which she both taught and participated in with some regularity.  Her classes were always so compelling, if only because she held such strong opinions on the subjects she’d teach and expressed them with unabashed honesty.  She held no love for religion, in particular, and didn’t hesitate to make it known.  It was like having a woman version of George Carlin teach our class. 

One time, we were going over the Book of Job as part of the curriculum and at one point, while we were having a classroom discussion of the text, she waved her hands and said:  “Okay, so there are many ways to interpret this text.  Some people read it as validation that maintaining faith in God pays off in the end.  Personally, I find this to be the most abominable story in the entire Bible.  Here we have Job, a man who has lived his entire life devoted to God, and what does he get for it?  God allows the Devil to wreak havoc in Job’s life as part of a bet – as part of a bet!  What kind of son-of-a-bitch God would do that to one of his most devoted followers?  Are we not in the hands of a madman?”  Her off-the-cuff ranting about taboo subjects like religion and politics were refreshing, as I had never heard a teacher talk so freely to her students about such things, and it would very quickly filter out the more conservative members of her class.

Professor Clark would become one of my favorite teachers, whose classes I made a point to take, and was always richly rewarded with engaging class discussion and encouragement from her about my ability to write.  "You have such an incredibly cinematic way of writing that's very unique!  I can vividly see everything you describe." I remember her saying about one of my short stories in one of the later classes I'd take.  Her enthusiasm and vibrancy was a stark contrast to the gauntlet of boring, dispassionate teachers I'd had thus far.  If it weren't for Dr. Clark's class that disastrous Freshman year, I probably would have decided against going back to college.  I have had many wonderful teachers since Dr. Clark, but few were as inspiring as she was.  She passed away a few years after I graduated, which made me incredibly sad, yet also grateful that I got the opportunity to have her as a teacher several times during college.  I wish she could read this, though, and know what an impact she had.

VIII. He Who Hesitates...

 

In one of my few phone conversations with Audrey, I was raving about how much I enjoyed my English class, which prompted her to ask if I could help her with her English homework.  I thought nothing of it and gave her a noncommittal "Uh... sure, I guess."  When she came over to the dorm, she was wearing low cut gym shorts and a t-shirt... which struck me as odd apparel for winter, but since her dorm was literally next to mine, I figured she just didn't want to bother changing into something warmer.  We had the dorm room to ourselves that night, as it was Magic: The Gathering night at the BSU, which Michael never missed since he tended to dominate in that game.  Audrey and I sat on my bed, she laid out her homework between us, and leaned in very close to go over it with me. 

We went over a few grammar issues she was confused about, which were minor at best, before our conversation took an abrupt turn from homework to the familiar territory of sex.  We had a comfortable history of talking about sex in high school, as Audrey was the first girl I ever had such conversations with.  Since she mostly hated the kind of guys that lived in our hometown, Audrey had decided to wait to explore her sexuality until college.

I asked her if she had met anyone since being in college.  She shrugged and wrinkled her nose.  “I met some guys, but nobody special.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Anybody special enough to… you know…”

“What?” She teased, smiling.

“You know,” I nodded suggestively.  Then I jokingly made the gesture of my fist entering an orifice of some sort.

“Have I been fisted?” She asked, laughing. “Ah, no.  I have had sex though.”

“Really!?” I asked, sounding far too excited then I meant to.  “I mean... really?  So... how did that go?”

“Not much to tell really,” she said.  “The first time was like how you always hear about, you know, it hurts, then it’s over, and it pretty much sucks.”

“What about the next few times?”

“Those were alright.  The couple of guys I’ve been with couldn’t last very long.  As soon as they put it in…” she made an explosive gesture with her hand, accompanied by a “splat” sound.  Bear in mind, as we had this conversation, we both lay in my bed, her homework in between us.  I can't vouch for Audrey, but this conversation had me so sexually aroused I was practically vibrating.  This was a whole different beast than two teenagers whispering in a classroom about what sex might be like; this was a fully developed woman, laying in my bed with clothes that left practically nothing to the imagination, giving me a detailed, uncut account of her sexual history up to that point. 

I swallowed nervously.  “So… what’s your favorite... er, position so far?”

She shrugged.  “I don’t really have one yet.  Like I said, the guys I’ve been with finish so quickly I haven’t been able to determine a favorite position.  There is this one position I read about that I'm anxious to try," she hopped off the bed.  “The girl gets on top like this…” she squatted on the ground.  “…and spins like this.”  She made a 360 degree turn while squatting, before standing back up, and giving an exaggerated shrug.  “How the fuck would that even work, right?”  She sat back down on my bed.

We made eye contact and I knew this was the moment.  If I was ever going to make a move, this was the time.  It was all so overwhelming though and I found that I was seized with what I could only describe as terror - the kind of terror one would feel before bungie jumping.  There are two ways to deal with this terror: face it headlong or pussy out. 

 I coughed into my hand and pointed to her homework.  “So anyway, I notice here that you have a couple of sentence fragments... maybe it would work better if you combined them into one whole sentence?”  It is at this point that, if I were visiting this moment in time with the Ghost of Sexual Failures Past, my future self would frantically scream curses at my past self for my utter cowardice.   

It has to be said at this point, I don’t know for a fact that Audrey had used English homework as an excuse to come over and have sex with me.  Audrey has done so thorough a job of staying off the internet, I have no way of contacting her to verify her side of the story.  Short of hiring a private investigator, ala, There’s Something About Mary, I wouldn’t even begin to know how to track her whereabouts and, frankly, tracking her down just to ask if she wanted to fuck me over 10 years ago seems creepy and depressing.  I can only take what paltry experience I have since had with women and apply that knowledge to the scenario, which I remember with admittedly foggy accuracy, to come to the conclusion that had I made a move, it would have likely been reciprocated.  I don't know that, though, and maybe it's better that way.  

I had been practically obsessed about losing my virginity all through high school, whining about how girls didn’t pay attention to me, and how I wished they would just give me a chance.  So there I was, facing the opportunity I had been begging for, with a girl literally lying on my bed… and I didn’t know what to do.  We finished up her homework, and I checked her out of the dorm.  As she left, the desk clerk, who used to be a coworker, looked at me with his eyebrows raised.  “So… what’s the situation with that?”

“Huh?  What do you mean?”

“Did you tap that?”

“Oh, ha, no, no… we’re… just… friends?” I said, as if I wasn’t quite sure of it myself.

His response to that was to shake his head and look at me with an expression of pity mixed with contempt, that almost seemed to say:  You deserve your virginity.  I wouldn’t have disagreed with that sentiment.

 

 

IX.                   Give Up? Retire?  Start Training Make a Come Back!

Audrey and I didn’t hang out much after that night.  I would call her every now and then to chat, or see her on campus, but I was too nervous to invite her to my room again and too embarrassed to simply ask her out on a date.  Once she graduated from college, she drifted out of my life altogether, until I got my first apartment during my fourth year of college.

I’m not sure what compelled me to call her out of the blue.  Perhaps I was riding the high of finally having my own apartment after living in the dorms for so long.  More likely, I desperately wanted to replicate the circumstances of that night in a pathetic attempt to redeem myself.  We got caught up on the phone, wherein she told me she had moved back home until she could figure out what her next move would be.  I invited her to come up to Bowling Green and check out my new apartment. 

She finally came up one weekend, ostensibly to visit another friend, but she stopped by to see me as well.  At the time, I was going through a lot of stressful situations in my life (which I will elaborate on in a future chapter) and was so depressed, I didn’t bother to clean up either the apartment or myself.  I was still in my bed clothes, both my face and head unshaven, and the apartment was a mess.  Maybe it was all in my head, but the apartment had the same smell of pure despair that the plasma center had.  

I immediately regretted not having mobilized myself, because when I opened the door, the girl standing on my stoop took my breath away.  Audrey had dropped her “Freshman Fifteen”, grew her hair back out, and wearing tight jeans with a modest top, small jacket, and high heels.  My jaw had to have noticeably dropped to the ground when I opened the door.  She took off her sunglasses and gave me a hug, before assessing the apartment.

“Huh… it’s… nice,” she said carefully.

“Yeah... yeah, it’s better than a dorm, I think.”

“Sure,” she agreed.  “So..."  She looked around the apartment again.  "...how are you?”

“Eh…” I swallowed.  My heart was so heavy it was difficult to pretend otherwise.  It was equally different not to throw myself on Audrey and just weep on her shoulder.  Instead, I managed to choke out: “Things have been… okay.”

She must have sensed how loaded the word “okay” was, because she didn’t probe into further, and instead changed the subject to how she was doing.  “I’ve been thinking about maybe moving to Nashville,” she said, hands on her hips in a relaxed pose, while still taking in the apartment.  “I don’t want to be stuck in Russellville the rest of my life and I’ve had enough of Bowling Green.” 

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I said in resignation, sitting on the couch like Little Mac in the game over screen in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out.

She remained standing.  “Well…” she began, after taking a deep breath and putting her sunglasses on.  “I better hit the road.  I have to meet my friend for lunch.”

“Oh,” I stood up and feebly straightened the toothpaste stained Hard Rock Café t-shirt I’d been wearing to three days.  “So soon?  You just got here.”

“Yeah, sorry, but I’m in kind of a hurry…” to get the hell out of here, I completed the thought.

“Well, thanks for coming over.  It was good to see you.”  We hugged again.  I think she arched her back to avoid as much physical contact as possible.  It could have been my imagination.

“Hey Audrey,” I called out as she turned to leave.

She turned back:  “ Yeah?”

“Could we have been together?  Like, if I had the guts to have told you that I liked you, would have you been happy or horrified?  If I had made a move that night, like kissed you, would you have been disgusted or would you have reciprocated?  Could we have been married by now?” 

“Nothing,” is what I actually said.  "See you."  She closed the door and I haven’t seen or heard from her since.  After she left, I buried my face in my hands in utter dejection.  I hated my life. 

What I didn’t know was that would be the year I’d meet one of my best friends in my life.  This person would bring me out of my depressed stupor and galvanize me to better myself in almost every way possible.  I didn't know it yet, but this amazing girl was waiting for me in one of the most unlikeliest of places... Athens, Georgia.