May 3, 1998.  The strategy that works one time might not work another time. (#172)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 6 Comments

I stepped outside the church building and looked around for friends to talk to.  It was 12:15 on a sunny, warm Sunday, and the rest of the day would be relatively free of stress.  The only homework I had to work on was to work on a project that was not due for another week, a project that I was expecting to be more fun than most major assignments.

I looked over and saw Courtney Kohl and Cambria Hawley.  “Hey,” I said.

“Hi, Greg,” Cambria replied.  “What’s up?”

“Not much,” I replied.  “Just going to work on an assignment for English this afternoon.”

“You’re a math major.  I don’t think of you as taking English.  That’s kind of weird.”

“The teacher training program for next year requires a certain number of English units beyond the writing classes that everyone takes.  But it can be any class, and I needed one more.  So I took Fiction Writing, because that one looked like the most fun.”

“That does sound fun!”

“How is that class?” Courtney asked.  “I know someone who took it last year.”

“I like it,” I replied.  “I’ve learned a lot about myself as a writer.”

“That’s good.”

“Guess what?” Cambria said.  “We got an apartment!  And,” looking directly at me, she continued, “I think it’s the same apartment complex where you lived last year.  Sagebrush Apartments, on Maple Drive.”

“Yes, that’s it,” I said.  I was surprised at first that Cambria knew that, but then I remembered that she had been to my apartment once last year, when she interviewed me for an assignment.

“Was yours a three-bedroom or four?” Cambria asked.

“Three,” I said.

“We got a four-bedroom.  There’s five of us, so two of us will be sharing the big bedroom.”

“Who all is living with you?”

“Us two,” Cambria said, gesturing to indicate herself and Courtney.  “Erica.  Sasha.  And my friend Kirsten.  You probably don’t know her.  She was on my floor freshman year.”

“That’s cool,” I said.  “Glad you found something.  I’m sure I’ll see your place at some point next year.”

“Yeah!  Speaking of which, we need to go find Erica and Sasha.  Have you seen them?”

“They were here today, but I don’t know where they went.”

“Oh, okay.  Have a good afternoon!”

I waved at the two girls as they walked away.  A few seconds later, Pete Green and Taylor Santiago walked up to me.  “Hey, Greg,” Taylor said.  “What are you doing tonight?”

“Tonight?” I said.  “Just X-Files at the De Anza house at 10.”

“I have this new board game that I want to try out,” Pete explained.  “I saw my sister and her husband over spring break, and I learned it from them.  You can play with up to four people, so Taylor and I were trying to get two more.  You interested?”

“What time?”

“I was thinking 7.  At Taylor’s house.”

“How long does the game take?” I asked.  I remembered when Pete, Taylor, and I were freshmen, Pete taught me the board game Risk, and that game took forever.

“Probably about an hour,” Pete answered.

“Sure.  I’m still going to go to X-Files at 10, so that should be time to get a couple games in, right?”

“Yeah.  That works.”

“See you then,” Taylor said.


In the Fiction Writing class, the class often began with a brainstorming exercise.  A couple weeks ago, I had to write, completely unedited, for ten minutes on one of three given prompts.  I chose the prompt “My parents lie.”  I wrote about how my parents say that it is okay with them that I have never had a girlfriend, and that they do not want to interfere with my life.  But they must have been lying about that, because of what happened with Allison.  Mom introduced me to Allison, a teenage girl from a family she knew at church, because Allison was having trouble in her math class and I might be able to help.  From the way Mom was acting, the likely explanation was that Mom was trying to set me up with Allison.

I wrote a total of three pages by hand about the Allison situation.  Of course, there was no requirement in these brainstorming exercises that I be truthful, and Allison was a fictional character.  There was some truth to what I wrote, though.  During winter break sophomore year, my mother introduced me to Monica Sorrento, who, like Allison, was a high school student from a family at my church back home.  But, in the writing exercise, when I went on to describe Allison’s appearance, I did not describe Monica Sorrento.  Instead, I described Sasha Travis, a girl from my current church in Jeromeville, one of Courtney and Cambria’s future roommates.  “I don’t know what it is that so fascinates me about Allison,” I wrote.  “She isn’t bad looking by any means, but I barely know her.  We live in different worlds; she is a 17-year-old high school student, and I am a college student getting ready to graduate.”  All of that was currently true about Sasha.  I even wrote a poem about her recently.

Serena Chang, the instructor for the writing class, had responded to my assignment, “This brainstorming seems to have taken off for you.  It might be worth it to explore this voice and this Allison character more.”  I did explore Allison more, in another writing assignment where we had to focus on describing a setting, and showing other things through the description.  I described Allison’s bedroom in great detail, being as specific as I could.  Serena pointed out that details like which CD was in her stereo were extraneous, although I thought it said something about her taste in music, which may be important to her character.

Serena did approve of some of the other details.  She liked the contrast when I described the two posters in her room, one a print of Monet’s Woman with a Parasol and the other a picture of a can of Spam.  In real life, I had once overheard Sasha say that she loved that painting, and I could also imagine her having something silly in her room like a poster of Spam.  Serena also noted two details I wrote that created tension that could be explored further: an unreturned message on Allison’s answering machine from a male friend who was away at school but in town for a few days, and an unfinished letter on her desk to a child in Mexico whom she met on a church trip there.

When I started thinking of ideas for the first full story I would have to write for this class, I kept coming back to Allison.  I already had two pre-writing assignments about her, and the real Sasha already occupied many of my thoughts those days, so it made sense to transfer some of those existing thoughts to the story I was creating.  In most of the fiction writing I did, the main character was like myself, and I was not sure if I could write a convincing story with Allison as the main character.  So I decided to tell a story from the perspective of the guy who left the message on Allison’s answering machine.  That detail from the pre-writing assignment came not from Sasha, but from Allison’s original connection to Monica back home, and my attempts to stay in touch with Monica for a while.  Regardless, it seemed like something I could connect to a male main character based on myself.  I typed a brief outline of this new story, then began writing until it was time to go learn Pete’s new game.


Taylor lived on the corner of Andrews Road and West 15th Street, just six minutes from my house walking, but I drove since I would be leaving straight from there to the weekly X-Files watch party that some other friends hosted.  Taylor’s house and my house were both halves of duplexes attached to the next door neighbor on one wall, with essentially the same floor plan, but reversed left to right.  Adam White, the youth pastor from church, lived here too, along with two other guys from church.

I knocked on the door, and Taylor answered.  “Hey, man,” he said.  “Come on in.  Pete’s setting up the game on the dining room table.”

“You said you can play it with four people?  Do we have a fourth?”

“Noah is on his way.  He was hanging out with the Hunters this afternoon.”

Lucky, I thought.  The Hunter family lived in an old nineteenth-century farmhouse about three miles outside of the Jeromeville city limits.  I knew some of their children from being a youth group volunteer; they were fun to hang out with.

“Hey,” Pete said when he saw me.  I looked at the open red box that Pete’s new board game came in.  The game was called The Settlers of Catan, an unwieldy but intriguing name for a game.  Pete had arranged thirty-seven hexagonal tiles in a roughly round pattern.  The tiles were illustrated differently, representing different kinds of geography and terrain.  Tiles which looked like forests, mountains, and fields were surrounded by a ring of water tiles, apparently representing an island.  Four piles of game pieces, made from wood and painted in four different colors, were piled on the table around the terrain tiles, with stacks of cards next to the tiles.  This game looked like no other game I had played before, and I was curious how this worked.

The three of us made small talk for a while until Noah arrived.  He walked in unannounced without knocking.  “Hey, guys,” Noah said.  “Sorry I’m late.  I hope you didn’t start without me.”

“We waited,” Taylor said.  “You ready?”

“Yeah.  So how do you play this?”

“The object is to be the first to get to ten points,” Pete explained.  “You build settlements and cities, connected to each other with roads, and those give you points.  These cards here are resources.  Wood, brick, wheat, sheep, and stone.  You use those to build things.”  Pete gave each of us a reference card that explained which resources are needed to buy different things.  The resources worked a bit like money, I thought to myself.  You spend a wood and a brick to build a road.  Makes sense.

“So how do you get resources?” I asked.

“Each tile is going to have one of these number tiles on it,” Pete said, gesturing toward a stack of small tiles the size of coins.  “Let me show you an example.”  Pete placed a settlement at the intersection of a forest, mountain, and field tile.  He placed a number 3 tile on the forest, an 8 on the mountain, and a 10 on the field.  “Settlements go on the corners, like this.  At the start of every turn, the player will roll the dice.  Whatever number gets rolled, anyone with a settlement touching that number takes that resource.  So, for example, any time an 8 gets rolled, I would get stone.”  Pete pointed to the mountain with the 8 tile; it was the same color as the stone cards.  Then he pointed to the 3 on the forest, and said, “Any time a 3 gets rolled, I would get wood.  And,” Pete continued, pointing to the field, “when a 10 gets rolled, I would get wheat.”

“I see,” Taylor said.”

“So when you start the game, it’s important to pay attention to what numbers you start on.  Because, with two dice, some numbers get rolled more often than others.  Numbers near the middle are more common, and the extremely low and high numbers, like 2 and 12, are the least common.”

“Yes!” I exclaimed.  “That’s math!  It’s a simple probability exercise.”

“Right,” Pete said.

“So will Greg be at an advantage because he’s a math major?” Noah asked.  I rolled my eyes.

“Not if you understand what I just explained about some numbers being more likely,” Pete replied.  “That’s the most advanced math that happens in this game.  And these dots on the number tile tell you how likely each number is to get rolled.”

“That makes sense!” I exclaimed.  “There are two dots below the 3, because there are two ways to roll a 3, and five dots below the 8, because there are five ways to roll an 8.”

“Ways to roll?” Noah asked.

“Yeah.  Two ways to roll a 3.  Roll 2 and 1, or 1 and 2.  Five ways to roll 8.  6 and 2, 5 and 3, 4 and 4, 3 and 5, 2 and 6,” I explained, counting on my fingers the ways to roll 8.

“Oh, okay.”

Pete went on to explain several other important parts of the game.  How to grow settlements into cities, by spending additional resources.  Playing the robber whenever 7 is rolled, and the risk of getting robbed for players who hoard too many resource cards.  Development cards, which included soldiers to protect players from the robber.  Trading resources.  Bonus points for the longest road and the largest army of soldiers.  I understood the resource production that Pete had explained first, but by the end of everything else, my head was spinning.

“Do we want to just start playing, and we’ll figure it out as we go along?” Noah suggested.

“That’s probably the best idea at this point,” Pete answered.

“I’m still a little confused,” I said.

“Just remember this.  Roll the dice, then trade, then build.  Every turn goes in that order.  And you have the reference card to show you how much it costs to build things.”

“Okay,” I said.

Pete placed randomly selected numbers on each tile of the island.  “That’s the great thing about this game,” Pete said.  “By shuffling the tiles, the board is different every time you play, so it’s always a new game.  And the strategy that works one time might not work another time.”

“Yeah,” Noah said.  “I was just thinking that.”

Pete explained how to start the game.  Each player took turns placing a settlement and a road, then the players placed a second settlement and road in reverse turn order.  Reversing the order for the second round kept the game balanced, so that the player who got the last choice for the first settlement, after the best spots had been taken, placed the second settlement first.  I placed my first settlement on a wood tile with number 6, a brick with number 4, and a sheep with number 10.  I figured that starting with wood and brick would be important, so that I could build roads and expand the part of the island I was settling.  Wood and brick were also required to build settlements, which would produce new resources.  And my wood tile was a number 6, so it was likely to get rolled often.

My strategy paid off at first.  I quickly built more roads and another settlement.  Then Noah rolled 7, which moves the robber instead of producing resources.  Noah placed the robber on my wood tile.  “Sorry, Greg,” he said as he stole a card from me.  “But you’re in the lead.  I had to.”  With the robber in my forest, I was no longer getting wood when someone rolled 6 on the dice.  The others quickly caught up to me.

“Thank you!” I said several turns later, when Taylor finally rolled a 7 and moved the robber to Noah’s most productive tile.  I got my source of wood back, but it felt like too little too late.  The others’ had much larger networks of settlements now, and they were buying multiple development cards and upgrading their settlements to cities that produce more resources.  My only wheat producing tile was an 11, which had not been rolled often, and I could not build much without wheat.  Later in the game, I began negotiating with the other players, trading what I had for wheat, but the other players only made trades that gave them something they needed in return, so my trading helped them in the long run.  Pete won when I had only five points.

“Want to play again?” Pete asked.

“Sure!” Taylor replied.  “You guys in?”

I looked at my watch.  “Yeah,” I said.  “The guys at the De Anza house don’t start X-Files until 10.  We have time for another game.”

“Same board, or want me to shuffle this one?” Pete asked.

“Shuffle,” Taylor said.  The rest of us nodded.

Pete shuffled the tiles and the numbers and dealt out a new board.  This time, the spaces for brick were spread out; the three brick spaces had numbers of 2, 3, and 11, all unlikely numbers, so brick would be rare this game.  I began with settlements on two of the brick spaces, but no stone.  I figured I would be able to trade for stone, and I could work toward building a port settlement on the coast, which made trades with the bank less costly.  I planned to negotiate trades more aggressively this time.

My brick numbers rarely got rolled, unsurprisingly.  Pete focused his strategy on development cards, using wheat, sheep, and stone to buy the cards that gave him soldiers to protect himself from the robber and other ways of acquiring resources.  Noah focused his strategy on trading, like me, but he built on the port location that I wanted first, putting me at a disadvantage.  Pete won that game also, but Noah came in a very close second.

“I need to get to X-Files,” I said after the second game.  “But this was interesting.”

“We’ll play again sometime,” Pete said.  “Thanks for coming over.”

“Have a good one, man,” Taylor added, shaking my hand.

“Bye, Greg,” Noah said.  I said goodbye to everyone again and walked out the door.


This week’s episode of The X-Files was a standalone episode not connected to any of the continuing storylines.  There was a huge crowd of around twenty people at the De Anza house, and I had to sit on the floor.  I liked that these X-Files watch parties were becoming more popular; I always had fun there.

After the show, I got in the car and headed home.  Hootie and the Blowfish was playing on the radio.  I felt kind of frustrated at having lost both games of The Settlers of Catan.  I had mixed feelings about the game.  Although I had not done well, it was fun to play.  I liked the idea that the board could be arranged differently every time.  I wanted to play again, and I hoped that I would get better.

Although it would be several weeks until I played The Settlers of Catan again, I did play many times that summer, and over the following years.  I bought my own copy a few months after that night when I learned the game.  New expansion games, incorporating new features into the game, came along in the next few years, and the game, whose title was officially shortened to just Catan in 2015, would grow to become one of my all time favorite board games.

Pete said that, with every Catan game having a different board and different numbers, every game was different to the point that a good strategy in one game may not work in the next.  I did not realize at the time what a profound statement that was about life in general, with implications reaching far beyond Catan or any other game.  Hootie and the Blowfish certainly knew that, for example.  The quartet from South Carolina had the best-selling album in the US in 1995, standing out in the world of grunge rock with a more bluesy Southern sound, but their similar sounding follow-up disappointed fickle music aficionados, and their popularity quickly faded.  They never went away completely, recording three more albums over the next decade and one more in 2019, but their lead singer Darius Rucker enjoyed a major career renaissance in 2008, leaning deeper into these bluesy Southern influences and reinventing himself as a country singer.  Everyone is different, every time period is different, and one strategy for success and prosperity may not work for others in different places and different times.

Readers: What’s your favorite board game, and why? Tell me about it in the comments.

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April 24-26, 1998. My lasting friendships had been captured in that group photo. (#171)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 4 Comments

Although this was only my fourth trip to Muddy Springs for a retreat with Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, the routine was starting to feel familiar.  Meet at the parking lot by the North Residential Area Friday afternoon after I was done with my classes.  Find out who had been assigned to my car.  Head north on Highway 117 until it merges with Highway 9.  Stop at Wendy’s in Bidwell for dinner, then continue ten miles into the foothills to the Muddy Springs Retreat Center.  Once we reached Highway 9, the rest of the drive was very familiar to me, since my family drove that way many times to visit my dad’s relatives in Bidwell.

One thing was different about this retreat, though: it was spring.  I had been to two Fall Conferences here and a winter retreat, but I had never been here in spring.  The hills surrounding the retreat center were green, and more water rushed through the stream running through the canyon compared to my previous three trips here.

A week ago, as I stood around waiting for JCF’s weekly large group meeting to begin, I overheard a group of students who were student leaders with JCF talking about plans for the upcoming retreat.  “I like that we’re going to keep people in the same Bible study together at the retreat,” Tabitha Sasaki said.

“Wait, what?” I asked.

Eddie Baker jumped in to explain.  “For your small group at the retreat, you’re going to be with people from your Bible study.”

“Hmm,” I said.  My first opinion of this arrangement was unfavorable.  These retreats had in the past provided opportunities to meet new people, or at least to get to know people better whom I had not interacted with much at JCF’s weekly gatherings.  But I already knew all the people in my Bible study.  In some ways, JCF operated in ways that perpetuated cliques that I was not a part of.  I heard this would be changing next year, but the current way that Bible studies were organized and handpicked kept those cliques in place.  With only people from my existing Bible study in my small group on the retreat, I would not be in a group with anyone from any of those cliques.

I would never admit this out loud, but I had another reason to want a heterogeneous small group.  Freshmen typically lived on campus and had separate on-campus Bible studies, which met in dorm rooms on campus.  With the people in my small group only coming from my off-campus Bible study, there would be zero chance that my girl crazy self would be in a small group with any of the cute girls from this year’s freshman class, like Brianna Johns or Chelsea Robbins.  Of course, I may find opportunities to connect with people outside of my small group, but the small group provided a natural way to connect with someone new, and now there would be no one new in my group.

 As I heard the music begin, I went to find a seat, and I saw an unexpected trio sitting together: Taylor Santiago, Pete Green, and Noah Snyder.  These three had not been to JCF at all this school year.  For that matter, I could not ever remember having seen Noah at JCF, at least not since I started going sophomore year.  I knew all three of them from our church, Jeromeville Covenant, and even before that, I knew Taylor and Pete from my freshman dorm.  Taylor and Pete had regularly attended JCF their first couple years at the University of Jeromeville, but they had become more involved at J-Cov instead as time went on.  I met Noah through mutual friends shortly before I started going to J-Cov, but Taylor and Noah had gone to the same high school and been best friends since their early teens.

Caroline Pearson, who had also been in our dorm, sat next to Pete; I found out a few months ago that they were dating now.  Interesting how some couples know each other for years before they realize that there is mutual romantic interest, while others, such as Liz Williams and Ramon Quintero, get together almost immediately.  In that freshman dorm, Liz and Ramon were in a serious relationship by the end of our first month; they were together for two years, broke up for about a year, and were now back together.

“Hey, Greg,” Taylor said, reaching his hand out to give me five sideways.  I lightly slapped his hand.

“What are you guys doing here?” I asked.

“We had to turn in our money for the retreat next week,” Pete explained.

“You guys are going?  That’s cool.”

“Yeah,” Noah said.  “We figured it’s our last year, so we may as well go to one last retreat with JCF.”

“Nice.”

Shortly after that, the worship team began playing.  During the opening song, my mind began to wander back to the thought of the small groups on the retreat being people from the same Bible study.  Whose small group would Taylor, Pete, and Noah be in?  They were not in a Bible study with JCF.  And since my Bible study was so big, big enough to split into three smaller groups every week, would my group be much bigger than the others at the retreat?  And what of Bible studies where few people were able to come on the retreat?  This plan just did not seem ideal, even for reasons that do not involve myself being secretly girl crazy.


The retreat center at Muddy Springs was built around an old building from the early 20th century that was once a resort hotel.  The building fell into disrepair decades later and was purchased by a Christian organization, with the intent to remodel it into a retreat center.  We began the night meeting together in a medium-sized meeting room attached to the hotel building.  Cheryl from the JCF staff team acted out a skit along with a few students which incorporated all of the important announcements for the weekend.

At one point, Cheryl told a student character played by Tabitha Sasaki, “So after this we’re going to meet in small groups.”

“I don’t know who’s in my small group,” Tabitha explained.

“Oh.  Your small group is your small group.  The people from your Bible study back in Jeromeville are your small group for the retreat.”

“Oh!” Tabitha exclaimed enthusiastically as I grumbled to myself at this arrangement.

After the skit, we met in small groups for the first time.  I noticed that both of the logistical problems I had thought of last week had also been considered by whomever assigned the small group.  My very large Bible study had been split into two groups; with each of the two leaders, Joe Fox and Lydia Tyler, taking one group.  I was with Lydia, along with Courtney Kohl, Colin Bowman, and Kendra Burns.  Taylor, Pete, and Noah were also in our small group.  That worked out perfectly.  Someone probably knew that those three guys knew me and Courtney from volunteering with the youth group at J-Cov, so they put them in the same group as me and Courtney.  Smart.

Janet McAllen, half of the couple who was the head staff of JCF, made an announcement as soon as we had all broken into small groups.  “We’re going to do an icebreaker,” she said.  I was unclear on the need for icebreakers since all of us knew the people in our small groups, but whatever.  This could be fun.  Janet continued, “I’m going to say a word, and all of you are going to think of a song with that word in it, and then you’re going to sing a little bit of the song.”  Okay, I thought, slightly less fun.  Although I had been in chorus for part of my time at UJ, the idea of singing unrehearsed with a small group of people was slightly less appealing.  But I would just go with it.

For the first round, the word was “love.”  That was an easy one; every group quickly thought of a song with the word “love.”  After we finished that, Janet said, “Your next word is ‘blue.’” This seemed more difficult.  A song immediately came to mind, and I sat contemplating for about ten seconds whether or not it was too silly and embarrassing to share with my group.  I eventually decided to share.  “‘The Water Buffalo Song’ from VeggieTales,” I said.  I sang, “‘Everybody’s got a baby kangaroo, yours is pink but mine is blue…’”

“That’s great,” said Noah, who was responsible for the fact that I knew that song in the first place.  VeggieTales was a series of computer-animated videos, sold in Christian bookstores on VHS tapes, with a cast of anthropomorphic vegetables acting out stories with morals from the Bible and singing silly songs.  The kids from church loved VeggieTales, and I had borrowed many of those videos from the youth media library.  Noah hosted a five hour Sunday afternoon VeggieTales marathon in the church youth room a few months ago.  While watching all of the videos, I noticed that only about a third of the attendees of this movie marathon were children in the target market of VeggieTales; the rest were high school students and young adults.

“Wait, what is this?” Colin asked, looking confused.  Noah explained VeggieTales to him, and I added the part about the silly songs.  “I’ve never heard of that,” Colin said.  Fortunately, the song was simple enough that he picked it up quickly.

After everyone had had five minutes to choose their song, the small groups took turns singing brief snippets of the songs they chose.  Groups sang “Blue Christmas,” “Behind Blue Eyes” by the Who, and “Counting Blue Cars” by Dishwalla (which surprised me at a Christian retreat because of the slightly blasphemous lyrics) before our turn came.  We all stood up and sang, “‘Everybody’s got a baby kangaroo, yours is pink but mine is blue…”  About half the room laughed and cheered, and the other half looked confused, like Colin had.  Clearly not everyone on this retreat was familiar with VeggieTales, but I smiled at the sight of my group using my silly idea.


The serious part of the retreat focused on the beginning of the Old Testament book of Joshua.  In this book, Moses has recently died, and the time has arrived for Joshua to lead the people of Israel into the Promised Land.  As the guest speaker talked about these verses, I kept thinking how timely this was for my life.  In a little over a month, I would graduate from the University of Jeromeville.  Although I would still be enrolled at UJ next year for the teacher certification program, my life would look considerably different.  I would spend mornings in classrooms somewhere at a school that had not yet been determined.  I was hoping for Jeromeville High; I was familiar with that campus from interning in classrooms there before, and I knew some kids there from church.  But this was unlikely.  The UJ Department of Education typically sent its student teachers to Woodville, Silvey, Nueces, or across the Drawbridge to Capital County, since the highly educated upper middle class families of Jeromeville were demographically atypical for this state.

Late Saturday morning, I sat outside thinking about this as I admired the beauty of the hills across the stream, with puffy white clouds slowly sailing across the blue sky.  I would still have classes on the UJ campus in the afternoons, and I would still have Friday nights free to attend Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, so I would still see my friends around.  But many of my friends were also graduating, so I would not see them.  I would still see my younger friends, and some from my year were not leaving Jeromeville right away.  Taylor, for example, needed one more quarter before he finished his degree, and Eddie would be joining the staff of Jeromeville Christian Fellowship.  But many others, including Liz and Ramon, and Sarah Winters, all of whom I had known since the beginning of freshman year in Building C, were moving on.

Next year would be a transition for me; I would take on some of the responsibilities of a teacher, but I would still be in Jeromeville.  Life after I completed the teacher certification program was far more uncertain.  If all went according to plan, in August of 1999, just sixteen short months away, I would be working full time as a teacher somewhere unknown.  I would have no day-to-day connection to the UJ campus anymore, and it was likely I would not even be living in Jeromeville.  I would certainly be living somewhere else if I took a job more than thirty miles away.

But I had no need to be fearful of the future.  As God’s people prepared to enter the Promised Land thousands of years earlier, Joshua spoke the word of the Lord to them: “As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you or forsake you… Be strong and courageous.  Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”  I would grow apart from friends, I may have to leave Jeromeville, but God will still be there.  I could trust God to lead me to a new church and a new group of friends, and maybe a wife and a family of my own someday.

By the time I finished going through the reflection questions that we had all been given, it was time for lunch.  I was one of the first ones in the cafeteria, and when I was about halfway through my meal, Sarah came and sat next to me.  “Hey, Greg,” she said, smiling.  “What’s up?”

“Just thinking,” I replied.  “About how we’re about to graduate, and life is going to look totally different.”

“I know!  I move home the last week of June, and my boyfriend and I are going to start looking at rings.  I feel so grown up.”

“Nice,” I said.  I knew that Sarah had a boyfriend back home, and I had been good friends with her for long enough that I did not think of her as a potential romantic interest.  But it still made me sad to know that she was off the market, another woman whom I would not ever end up with.

“So I was thinking at the group meeting this morning,” Sarah said, “there are seven of us here this weekend who were all in the IHP in Building C as freshmen.  We should all get a picture together before we leave.”

“That’s a great idea!”

“If you see the others, tell them.  I will too.”

“Yeah.  I will.”


In our small group time Saturday night,  I told Taylor and Pete about Sarah’s idea to take a group picture; they were on board.  Caroline came over to join Pete at some point, and she was excited about the picture idea as well.

We had one more study on the first chapter of Joshua Sunday morning.  When our group finished discussing the assigned question, I mentioned my thoughts about the future, how the next few years would look very different.  “This has been a good reminder that God will still be there, no matter what changes,” I said.  “He will show me where he wants me next, and he will be there.”

“I think it’s important to remember, though, that God sometimes gives you choices,” Taylor replied.

“What do you mean?”

“Like, for example, what if you’re applying for jobs next year, and you get two good offers.  What if God isn’t clearly leading you to one instead of the other?  There isn’t always one clear path that God will lay out for you.  Sometimes God will give you a choice.  And whichever one you choose, he will be there.  Just like the verse said tonight, God will be with you wherever you go.”

“Hmm,” I replied.  “That actually makes sense.  I like that.”

“That’s not to say you shouldn’t pray about the decision when you’re in a situation like that.  Just that sometimes it isn’t so clear cut, and that’s okay.  It doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”

“Yeah.  I get it.”

A couple hours later, after I had packed and loaded the car, and made sure that the rest of my carpool had done the same, I walked around, looking for the others who had been in the Interdisciplinary Honors Program with me as freshmen.  Near the building was a flagpole, flying the United States flag, with a few other countries’ flags around it, to symbolize that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was for all nations.  Taylor, Pete, and Caroline stood near the flagpole at the front of the building.  “Hey, Greg,” Taylor said.  “We thought this would be a good place to take our picture.”

“Sounds good,” I replied.

“We’re still missing Liz, Ramon, and Sarah.”

“There’s Sarah,” Caroline said, pointing at Sarah walking toward us.  “I’ll go find Liz and Ramon.”

Sarah joined us as Caroline walked off to find Liz and Ramon.  Group pictures were a great source of priceless memories, but they sure were a hassle to organize sometimes.  “Did anyone tell Liz and Ramon about the group picture?” I asked.

“Caroline and I did,” Pete replied.

I saw Liz and Ramon walk across the parking lot about a minute later.  I made eye contact and waved them over to us, but by the time they arrived, ready to be photographed, Caroline had not come back yet.

“Who’s gonna take the picture?” Taylor asked.

Eddie and Tabitha walked past a minute later.  “Eddie? Tabitha?” Sarah asked.  “Can you take our picture?  We were going to get a group picture of all of us who came from Building C freshman year.”

“That’s a great idea!” Tabitha said.  “Six of you from Building C, all on this retreat?”  

“Seven,” Pete corrected.  “Caroline went to find Liz and Ramon, but they found us first.”

“There’s Caroline,” Eddie said, waving her over as all of us who brought cameras handed them to Eddie and Tabitha.

“I’m back,” Caroline announced.  “How are we doing this?”  She and Pete stood in front of the flagpole.  Taylor got behind Pete, with Sarah to Pete and Caroline’s left.  I stood behind Taylor and Pete, being significantly taller than each of them, and Ramon stood behind Sarah.  Liz climbed onto the pedestal at the bottom of the flagpole and held the pole with one hand.  Just as Eddie and Tabitha began to take the pictures, Taylor awkwardly tied his arms around Pete’s head, causing both of them to start laughing.  We held our smiles and poses as Eddie and Tabitha took photographs with all of our cameras.

“Perfect,” Taylor said.

“This is going to be a great picture,” Liz mused, smiling.  “All of us still together after four years at Jeromeville.”

“We’re almost done!” Sarah exclaimed.  “We’re graduating soon! We did it!”

“Some of us not as soon as others,” Taylor replied, laughing.

“I need to hurry up and finish this roll of film,” I said.  “I really want to see this picture.”

As I drove home, with the rest of my car napping and the group picture fresh in my mind, I thought back to that February morning, now over four years ago, when I got up early to drive to Jeromeville with Mom and Dad to learn about the Interdisciplinary Honors Program.  At that presentation, a hippie-looking guy named Crunchy had spoken about the lasting friendships he had made as a student in the IHP.  My lasting friendships had been captured in that group photo.  These people had also shown me what it really meant to follow Jesus, and we had lasting memories that would stay with us for decades to come.

Of course, we are not as close now in our 40s as we once were.  Taylor is still a close friend, and we communicate fairly often, mostly because he is active on social media.  Pete and Caroline ended up getting married about two years after we took that group picture.  They live far away now with their two teenage children, but I see them every few years when they visit their friends and family in the western states.  I am occasionally in touch with Liz and Ramon through Facebook comments, but neither of them is on Facebook often.  Sadly, I completely lost touch with Sarah in our early 30s.  By then, she and the guy who would soon be taking her to look at rings were raising a child, and life just got in the way, as it tends to so often.

Life moves on.  Memories fade.  One cannot always return to where one was before.  I realized that in a very real way in 2014 while walking around campus at the Spring Picnic, when I saw that Building C had been torn down.  A new building with a completely different name, appearance, and floor plan was under construction in its place.  But the people and events in these memories have lasting effects in the present and the future, and maybe my memories can become stories that inspire others.

Readers: Do you have anyone whom you’ve been friends with for a very long time? Tell me about them in the comments.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

April 18-22, 1998. Another disappointing Spring Picnic, and upcoming changes. (#170)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 4 Comments

Author’s note: My birthday is this week in real life :)

“Greg!” I heard an enthusiastic male voice say as I stood outside the sanctuary at Jeromeville Covenant Church, looking for someone to talk to after church got out.  The voice belonged to Darius Curtis, who was quickly becoming a familiar face in my social circles.

Unlike most of the regulars at the college-age group at J-Cov, Darius was not a student at the University of Jeromeville.  He was not taking classes at all right now.  Until a couple months ago, Darius was living with his parents in a rural area outside of San Diego.  He had recently found Jesus and wanted to get away from his old lifestyle of excessive drinking and partying, so he started looking at options for new surroundings.  He moved to Jeromeville, five hundred miles from where he was before, because his older sister Krista lived here and was well-connected at her church.

Krista was not much older than Darius; the two were only seventeen months apart.  I had been friends with Krista for three and a half years, since we were in the same dorm as freshmen at UJ, and her church was my church, so I was becoming friends with Darius as well.  Darius was one of those friendly people who naturally drew others to himself, and being involved with church was the perfect environment for Darius to build a new, more positive social circle.

“Hey, Darius, what’s up?” I asked, turning to face him.

“Krista brought me to the Spring Picnic yesterday.  It was so much fun!  Were you there?”

“I was.  My parents came up for it too.”

“That’s awesome!  Did they like it?”

“Hard to tell.  Nothing against them, but it was kind of stressful having them around.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” Darius said.  “Family can be stressful.”

“I just like wandering around at the Spring Picnic,” I explained.  “And I felt like they were getting bored with that.  And I wasn’t sure what to show them.”

“Did you see the dachshund races?  That was so cool!  I think that was my favorite part.”

“We didn’t.  We spent two hours at the track waiting to watch my cousin; he’s on the track team for North Coast State.  My aunt and uncle have a dachshund, and they said it would be fun to enter him in the races next year.  If you ask me, though, I don’t see their old, slow dog as the type to win a competition.”  Darius laughed as I continued.  “I wish I had known exactly what time my cousin’s races were, so I could have just watched him instead of spending two hours being bored watching people I didn’t know race.”

“Yeah.  That makes sense.  Good that you got to see family, though.”

“That’s true.”

“What are you doing today?” Darius asked.

“I have homework and studying to catch up on.  I didn’t get to do anything this weekend yet.”

“Yeah.  Good luck with that.  I’ll see you next week?”

“Definitely.”


The Spring Picnic was an annual festival on campus at the University of Jeromeville, an open house for the university featuring exhibits, performances, activities, and much more.  Apparently it was a big deal in the Capital Valley region, but its popularity did not extend south as far as Santa Lucia County, where I grew up, because I had never heard of it until I came to Jeromeville.  Some of my friends had their parents come up for the Spring Picnic, and when I would walk around Spring Picnic and see people  with their parents, everyone seemed to be having a good time.  So this year I invited my parents to come, and I realized fairly early on that this would make Spring Picnic significantly less enjoyable for me.

My parents and my sixteen-year-old brother Mark arrived yesterday morning around 9:30, after leaving their house before 7:00.  We got to campus before the parking lots all filled up, and I started walking toward the Quad, past where the parade participants had lined up, with the other three following me.  I stopped across the street from the Memorial Union, and the others stopped too.

“Here we are,” I said.

“Okay,” Mom replied.  All of us just kind of stared at each other, until Mom finally said, “So, what do you want to show us?”

“I don’t know.  What do you want to see?  I usually just wander around.”

“What all is there?”

“The parade will be starting soon right here,” I said.  “Let me go get a program.  There’s an information booth right there.”

I walked to the information booth and brought Mom a program.  She began looking through it as Dad and Mark found room on the curb for the four of us to sit among others who had started gathering for the parade.  “Wow, you weren’t kidding when you said there was a lot going on,” Mom said, flipping through the program.  Academic exhibits, agricultural exhibits, animal exhibits… There’s even a petting zoo.”

“An evil petting zoo?” Mark asked sarcastically, impersonating and quoting Dr. Evil from the movie Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.  I laughed and high-fived Mark; Mom and Dad, who had not seen the movie, looked confused.

About half an hour into the parade, Mark started complaining that he was bored.  We went to the math department exhibit next, since we were close to where the exhibit was set up.  Students from the Math Club were leading the same mathematical activities that they did every year.  I walked up to the display of the Monty Hall problem and explained that, when guessing which of three doors has a prize behind it, it is more advantageous to switch guesses after being shown one of the wrong doors.  The students running the exhibit kept track of whether or not people switched their guess and whether or not they won. I switched my guess but still lost. I also explained the Towers of Hanoi, the recursive algorithm to move a stack of discs from one of three towers to another without placing a larger disc on a smaller disc.  None of Mom, Dad, or Mark seemed particularly interested.

After a couple hours of wandering around aimlessly and not finding anything that the others found interesting, we had burritos from the Memorial Union Coffee House for lunch.  Mark did not like them and complained several times.  After that, we walked over to the track.  Some of the Jeromeville Colts interscholastic athletic teams have games on campus during the Spring Picnic, as part of the event. The track and field team held a meet with several other schools during the Spring Picnic.  My cousin Rick ran for North Coast State, and their team was at our meet today.  Mom had never seen Rick run, and I had only seen him run once, at this meet last year.

We had to wait at the track for over two hours in order to see Rick’s two events.  Rick’s mother, Aunt Jane, was my mother’s sister, and the two of them did a lot of their usual thing, talking about people I didn’t know.  Rick’s father, Uncle Darrell, occasionally chimed in with a sarcastic comment, and my father mostly stood quietly.  Mark complained that he was bored, and this time, I completely agreed with Mark’s complaints.

By the time Rick was done running, most of the events at the rest of the Spring Picnic had closed for the day.  The rest of the family followed me down to the grassy area in the Arboretum near Marks Hall.  The University of Jeromeville Marching Band and five other university marching bands from across the state held a Battle of the Bands here, beginning in mid-afternoon and lasting into the night.  The bands mostly played marching band arrangements of popular and contemporary songs, and Mom and I, being trivia buffs, tried to identify each song.  Mark complained a few more times about being bored.  By the time my family left Jeromeville at six o’clock, I realized that, for the second time in a row, I had been disappointed with this Spring Picnic.  This sounds mean, but I discovered that day that I would enjoy future Spring Picnics much more without my family, just wandering around campus looking at whatever I found interesting.  Others do not find this campus so inherently interesting and fascinating like I do.


The next few days were relatively routine.  I watched The X-Files with my friends at the De Anza house Sunday night.  I went to class.  I did homework.  And Wednesday night, I walked the short distance to church for The Edge, the junior high school youth group for which I was a volunteer leader.

Courtney, Brody, 3, Marlene, Taylor, Martin, and Noah were already there, and the youth pastor, Adam, was talking about a recent activity that he had chaperoned for Next Generation, the preteen youth group.  “We’re gonna get those kids in The Edge next year,” Adam said.

“Well, you will,” Marlene said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not gonna do The Edge next year.  I’m going to lead a Bible study on campus with JCF,” Marlene explained.

“Oh,” Adam replied, sounding surprised, as if this was the first he had heard of this.

“Me too,” 3 added.

“And I’m doing one off campus,” Courtney said.  I knew this, because Courtney and her co-leader, Colin Bowman, had already asked me to be in their Bible study next year.  Judging from Adam’s reaction, though, this was the first he had heard of any of this.

“Wow.  I just lost three of my leaders for next year,” Adam said.  “And Martin is moving up to do high school group instead.  We’re really going to need new leaders.  Let’s pray that God will raise up new leaders.”

Something about this whole discussion rubbed me the wrong way.  I like Marlene and 3, I was enjoying having them on the Edge staff with me, and I thought of Courtney as one of my best friends by now.  And none of them would not be around next year.  Of course, I would still see them next year at Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, and around campus, and at church on Sundays.  But I felt a little bit closer to most of the Edge staff, since we were a small and relatively tight-knit group, and I wanted our group to stay together.

A couple hours later, after youth group ended, the leaders were putting things away, and all of this was still on my mind.  The three leaders who were leaving would be leading Bible studies with JCF next year, and although I had been part of JCF for two years now, I did not always approve of the way they did things.  I was not questioning their Biblical foundation, but too many of their ministries operated around cliques and fads.  All the cool kids who were currently freshmen would be leading Bible studies sophomore year, so Marlene and 3 had to be cool and lead a Bible study too… at least this latest turn of events came across that way to me.  It was nice that JCF would not be doing Kairos groups any more next year; those were Bible studies that were set up in a way that supposedly prepared students for leadership, but in reality perpetuated cliques.  But that also made the Kairos ministry feel like another fad that all of the JCF leaders had run to a few years ago, and were now abandoning.

“Hey, Greg,” Adam asked me.  “What’s up?”

“Not much,” I said.  “I was just thinking about everyone leaving.  I knew about Courtney, because she asked me to be in her small group next year, but I didn’t know Marlene and 3 were leaving too.  I like our staff group this year, and I wish we could stay together for next year.”

“I know what you mean.  On one hand, maybe you’ll end up getting along great with next year’s leaders too.  But Marlene and 3 and Courtney are already involved in ministry with us, and JCF should be encouraging students who aren’t doing anything to get involved, instead of taking students away from other ministries.  I might have to talk to the McAllens about that.”

“Exactly,” I said.  “That’s a good way to put it.  And just know that I’m probably going to be sticking with the Edge staff for as long as I’m in Jeromeville.”

“Thanks,” Adam replied.  “I appreciate having you here.”


After I got home from The Edge, I went to my room and checked my email.  Sean was not home, so I was alone in the room.  I had a message from Melody, a girl in Texas whom I had met on Internet Relay Chat a couple weeks earlier.

From: “Melody Medlin” <mlm016@ueasttexas.edu>
To: “Gregory Dennison” <gjdennison@jeromeville.edu>
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 20:44 -0500
Subject: Re: hi

Hi Greg!  How was youth group?  That’s so cool that you’re a youth group leader!  I went to a church youth group when I was in high school.  It was so much fun!  I haven’t really done stuff like that since I started college, but last year when I was home for the summer, I went with my home church to a camp in Colorado for a week.  I’d never been to Colorado before, it was so beautiful!  The camp was way up in the mountains.  One day we climbed this mountain, there was a beautiful view from the top, and one of the camp counselors started singing this old hymn of praise, and when we got back to the camp, someone told the camp director about that, and he said that many years ago, the first guy who ever climbed that mountain sang that exact same song!  And none of us knew about that… weird!

What else did you do today?  How were your classes?  I still don’t understand that quarter schedule you were telling me about where you have midterms coming up, and you don’t graduate until June.  We’re starting to get ready for finals already, and school gets out in a few weeks.  Hope you had a great day!

-Mel

I chuckled at Melody’s inability to understand the quarter system, even though I thought I had explained it clearly.  But the part about the mountain climbing intrigued me more, because I had heard the exact same story before.  Could it be that Melody was at that same camp last year?  Might I know someone else who knows Melody?  That would be a bizarre coincidence.  I clicked Reply and began typing.

To: mlm016@ueasttexas.edu
From: gjdennison@jeromeville.edu
Subject: Re: hi

Okay, this is going to sound weird, but by any chance, was there a camp counselor there in Colorado named Adam White?  Tall skinny guy with a big toothy grin?  He’s the youth pastor at my church here in Jeromeville, and he spent last summer as a camp counselor in Colorado, and he told that exact same story about climbing the mountain and singing the same hymn as the guy who first climbed the mountain years earlier.  It was the Doxology, the one that starts “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.”  Was that the song?  Maybe the same kind of thing happened in two different places in Colorado, it’s a big state, but it sounds like you might have been at the same camp where Adam was.

The quarter schedule… the year is divided into three terms instead of two.  Late September until winter break, January through mid-March, and end of March through June.  So it really should be called trimesters instead.  Some classes last for one term, some last two, and some last the whole year.  You take finals at the end of each quarter, in December, March, and June.  The year starts and ends later so that the break for Christmas and the New Year still comes at a quarter break, but since there are three terms, that has to come at the 1/3 point of the year instead of the halfway point.  Does that help?

Youth group was fun tonight.  But I did find out that three of the leaders aren’t coming back next year.  That was a little disappointing.  I like them, and we’re a pretty close group, and I don’t want to grow apart.  I’m sticking around next year.  I’ll still be in Jeromeville; in this state, you have to do a fifth year to get a teaching certificate.  What are you up to the rest of the week?

-gjd

I never did find out if Melody was at the same camp as Adam last year.  That would certainly be strange if she was.  We stayed in touch for several months, but she ignored that part of my email in her reply; she just talked about how the quarter system was weird and told me about her plans for the week.

I kept my informal promise to Adam and continued to work with the Edge as long as I was in Jeromeville.  However, I started to scale back my involvement in the spring of 2001.  I had already made plans to move out of Jeromeville that following summer when the Edge switched from being a weekly large group to only meeting twice a month, with leaders and students meeting in small groups on the other weeks.  Since I already knew that my time in Jeromeville would be ending soon, I asked Adam if I could only help out with the twice-monthly large groups and not take a small group, and he agreed to this.  I have never formally worked as a youth leader since then; life has just kept me busy, and I spend enough time around youth as a teacher.

I did stay close with Courtney for quite a while.  I stayed friends with Marlene and 3 for as long as we were all in Jeromeville, but I did not stay in touch with them after that.  I wondered if we would have been closer had they continued working with the Edge.  I do not know if Adam ever had a talk with the McAllens, the leaders of Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, about not taking away student leaders from other ministries, but I do not remember this being a problem in any other year.  I still have some issues with the way JCF runs things in general, to this day, but those are stories for another time.

Readers: Have you ever been part of a group but disagreed with the way they did things sometimes? Tell me about it in the comments.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

April 14-17, 1998. Proud of myself for speaking up. (#169)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 3 Comments

The warmer-than-average spring in Jeromeville in 1998 continued through the first few weeks of April.  I wore shorts to class pretty much every day.  I only had one class on Tuesdays, Fiction Writing, but after that class got out, I wanted to stay on campus for a while longer, to get work done with fewer distractions than I would have at home.  I had not packed my lunch that day; I woke up that morning wanting to treat myself to something at the Coffee House in the Memorial Union.  Despite the name, the student-run Coffee House had many food options besides just coffee.

I got two slices of pepperoni pizza and walked outside toward the Quad.  As soon as I stepped outside, I paused to take one bite, beginning with the crust at an outer corner instead of at the center like most people usually did with pizza.  Coffee House pizza was surprisingly good, especially the fresh baked crust.  I let the hot bread, with the small amount of sauce and cheese that my bite also included, sit in my mouth, taking in the flavor as I began walking across the Quad, looking for a place to sit.

I saw some familiar faces on the Quad about halfway between the Memorial Union and Shelley Library.  Ben Lawton and Alaina Penn sat in a circle with about five others, some of whom I recognized.  These people attended University Life, the college group run by First Baptist Church of Jeromeville.  I attended Jeromeville Christian Fellowship and Jeromeville Covenant Church, but I had met a number of people from U-Life over the years.  The different Christian clubs on campus typically got together about once a year for a multi-denominational worship night.  Also, sometimes students new to Jeromeville tried out multiple Christian groups before deciding on one, and some who became more involved with one group would continue to visit other groups sporadically.  I also had friends from U-Life whom I met in classes, or through mutual friends. And I had attended U-Life myself a few times last year, when I was frustrated with the way things were going at JCF.

Ben waved as I approached their circle; Alaina looked up after she saw Ben waving and started waving too.  “Hey, guys,” I said.  “May I join you?”

“Sure,” Ben replied.

“Hey, Greg,” I heard another familiar voice say.  I looked and saw Jed Wallace sitting among the U-Life people.  I knew Jed from JCF, so I did not expect to see him with this group.  Jed was a freshman with bushy blond hair.  He wore a gray collared shirt and blue slacks.  Jed had a very unique style of dress; I had known him for a few months now, and I had never seen him wear a t-shirt or jeans.  He often also wore a fedora or a flat driver’s cap, but today he was not wearing any hat.

“Hey,” I said to Jed.  “How do you know these guys?  Do you go to U-Life too?”

“Yeah.  I go to both U-Life and JCF.  Ben was one of the first friends I made in Jeromeville.  How about you?”

“I knew Ben to say hi to because he’s been to JCF occasionally.  I used to see him around campus a lot last year, and sometimes I’d hang out with these guys between classes.  And I went to this awesome party at Alaina’s house.”

“The coffee house party!” Alaina said.  “We need to do something like that again this year.  We’ve all been so busy, though.”

“We better do it soon,” a girl in the circle whom I did not know said.  “You and Corinne are both graduating.”

“Maybe,” Alaina said.

“Did you still have an opening at your house for next year?” Ben asked Alaina.  

“We found someone.  Heather is gonna take that spot.”

“Oh, good.  I know she was looking for a place, but wasn’t sure how much she could afford.  I’m glad it worked out.”

“What about your house?” Alaina asked.

“I’ll still be in Jeromeville next year.  Jason is graduating, and Phil is living with Dave and those guys next year.  Matt and Jonathan are moving in.”

I did not know most of the people that Ben and Alaina and the others were currently talking about, so I tuned out of the conversation for a while.  With the U-Life friends discussing their housing plans for next year, my mind turned to the fact that I had none.  The rental market in Jeromeville was extremely tight, because of the juxtaposition of the large, growing university next to a city of only fifty thousand, combined with the anti-development snobbery of the local politicians running Jeromeville.  Virtually every rental in Jeromeville went on the market every March 1 for the following school year, six months in advance, and virtually all of those were booked within a few weeks.

I had experienced struggles in the past making housing plans.  When I was a freshman, all of my friends made their plans for sophomore year before I knew what was going on.  I ended up living alone in a studio apartment, paying more than I wanted to, but my parents were okay with helping me.  The following year, I had some friends tell me they had an opening in an apartment they would be getting, and I told them I would think about it and get back to them in a couple days.  When I went to tell them that I wanted to move in with them, they had given my spot to someone else minutes earlier.  I was fortunate to find people to live with for junior year eventually, and one of them, Josh McGraw, brought me along to the new house he moved into this year.  Now, I was staying in Jeromeville next year for my teacher training, but Josh was getting married, and one of our other housemates, Sam Hoffman, was moving in with some other people, so Sean Richards and I had two openings in our house.

My attention snapped back to the conversation in front of me when I heard Jed ask Ben, “Do you know of anyone who still has an opening in their house next year?”

“I don’t think so,” Ben replied, “but I’ll let you know if I hear of anyone.”

This was it, I thought.  It was now or never.  I liked to have time to think about major decisions like housing and roommate plans, but I learned two years ago that waiting leads to missed opportunities.  So I leaped out of my comfort zone and spoke up.  “Wait.  Jed?  You’re looking for a place to live for next year?” I asked

“Yeah,” Jed replied.  “Why?  Are you looking too?”

“Sean Richards and I were hoping to stay in our house, but the other two guys moved out.  Our landlord hasn’t formally asked yet if we’re renewing, but if we do, we’ll need two more people.  Are you interested?  I’d have to check with Sean first, make sure he’s okay with it and doesn’t already have people lined up.”

“Sure!” Jed replied.  “Where is the house?  Is it far from campus?”

“About a mile from the edge of campus.  Right behind J-Cov.  And easy access to two different bus routes.”

“That sounds perfect.  Keep me posted.”

“Definitely.  And,” I continued, addressing the rest of the group, “if any of you know of a guy who might want the fourth spot, let me know.”

“Yeah,” Jed said.

“We will,” Ben added.

I turned to Jed and added, “I’ll let you know.”  This felt like a huge weight off my shoulders.  My struggles to find a place to live in the past had been almost traumatizing.  I was also proud of myself for speaking up.  This was a major accomplishment for me.


By Wednesday evening, I had checked with Sean, and he was okay with Jed joining us at the house at 902 Acacia Drive next year.  He had not asked anyone else about moving in, so we still had one spot open for next year.

I made the short walk from my house to Jeromeville Covenant Church, where I was a volunteer with the junior high school youth group.  The leaders would meet an hour early, at six o’clock, to go over the schedule for the night, as well as prayer requests and any other relevant concerns.  I was running behind that night, and most of the other leaders were already there when I arrived at 6:14: Noah Snyder, Taylor Santiago, my roommate Josh McGraw and his fiancée Abby Bartlett, Hannah Gifford, Erica Foster, Cambria Hawley, Martin Rhodes, Marlene Fallon, 3 Silver, and Adam White, the youth pastor.  Courtney Kohl and Brody Parker were missing, which did not surprise me.  Brody was frequently unshaven with unkempt hair, giving off a disorganized feeling, and Courtney, although well meaning and a good friend, was just a little ditzy sometimes.

Adam called the group to order and began going over the activities for the night.  Brody and Courtney walked in at 6:22, giggling and sipping drinks from In-N-Out Burger, which caught my eye because of my recently discovered love for In-N-Out Burger.  I waved at them as Adam continued.

Later in our meeting, Adam asked if there were any prayer requests.  I raised my hand.  “I have both a praise and a prayer request,” I explained.  “With Josh getting married, and Sam moving out, Sean and I have two open spots in our house.  I found someone to take one of the spots today.”

“Oh, yeah?” Taylor asked.  “Who’s that?”

“Jed Wallace.”

“I don’t think I know him.”

“I know Jed,” 3 said.  “Nice guy.”

“He’s a freshman this year,” I explained.  “He goes to JCF, and to church here.  Bushy blond hair, usually well-dressed, and he wears hats a lot.”

“Oh, okay,” Taylor said.

“I think I know who you’re talking about,” Courtney added.  “But I don’t really know him.”

“So praise God for that,” I said, “and pray that we’ll find someone else.”

“Okay,” Adam said, writing down a short note about what I said.  “Anyone else?”

“I’ll move in with you guys,” Brody said.

“Really?” I asked, turning to face Brody.  Here we go again, I thought.  Things were happening suddenly, and if I hesitated, I might miss an opportunity.

“Yeah,” Brody answered.  “I know your house, I’ve been there before, and it’s right across the street from my apartment now so I won’t have to change how I get to campus or anything.”

“Sounds good,” I said.  “I’ll have to run it by Sean and Jed, but I don’t see them objecting.”

“We should all get together sometime soon and talk about expectations, and who will be in what room, and stuff.  That way, there won’t be any surprises.  And I don’t really know Jed that well, so it would be nice to all hang out sometime.”

“Yeah,” I replied.  “I’ll talk to everyone and let you know.”

“Sounds like a prayer was just answered,” Cambria noticed out loud.

“Definitely,” I said.  “Praise God.”


After talking to Sean, Jed, and Brody, it became apparent that the four of us were all free on Friday afternoon, and we wanted to get together sooner than later.  Sean and I were home when Jed arrived first.  I started by showing Jed around the inside of the house.  Since Brody had been here before, I figured I could begin Jed’s tour without him.  Sam was home, and he let Jed see the inside of his room.  I also opened the door to Josh’s room, hoping that he would not mind the invasion of his privacy.

After Brody got here, the four of us sat and talked for about fifteen minutes, sharing about ourselves.  Jed was from the opposite side of the state, and he entered the University of Jeromeville as a mechanical engineering major, but he was not sure he was going to stick with that major.  Brody was majoring in computer science, and as I knew, his family had lived in Jeromeville.  They moved here from the rural north part of the state when Brody was twelve years old, and Brody had graduated from Jeromeville High School in 1996.

“Who is going to have what room?” Brody asked.  This was probably the most important question on everyone’s mind, since the bedrooms were different sizes, and two of us would have to share a room.  I knew that Sean wanted his own room next year.  I was really hoping that Brody and Jed would be okay with sharing a room.

“I want my own room,” Sean said.  “I’ve had to share a room for four years in a row.”

“I want my own room too,” Brody added.  Well, I thought, so much for getting my own room.

“I was hoping to share a room, to keep the rent down,” Jed said.  “Greg?”

“I share the big room with Sean right now,” I explained.  “So it sounds like I’ll stay in the same place, and you can take Sean’s spot.”

“That sounds good,” Jed replied.

“I don’t need a ton of space,” Brody said.  “I can take the small room, and Sean can take the big room.”

“Okay.  We got that worked out.”

“I was thinking,” Brody said, “as Christian roommates, we should have some kind of community building.  Like make dinner together once a week.”

“That makes sense,” Jed said.  “I like to cook.”

“Sure,” Sean agreed.

“Yeah,” I added.  “I just hope you guys don’t get sick of spaghetti, cheeseburgers, and baked chicken with Stove Top stuffing, because I don’t really know how to make a whole lot of things.”

“Don’t feel pressured to be a great cook,” Brody said reassuringly.  “It’s more about just hanging out and spending time together.”

“That makes sense.”

“How do you guys handle chores?” Jed asked.

“We mostly take turns,” Sean explained.  “The two people in the front room take turns cleaning the front bathroom, and the two of us in the big bedroom clean the back bathroom.  We rotate everything else that needs to be done in any given week.”  Sean pointed to the chore wheel on the bulletin board, which he had made out of two paper plates at the start of the school year.  Each week, we rotated the wheel, moving a different name to each of the four sets of chores.  “We’ll just replace Sam and Josh with your names.”

“Works for me,” Brody said, shrugging.

We sat around making small talk for a while, until Jed said that he needed to get back to his dorm and get something to eat before JCF that night, and Brody said that he had things to do too.  “That went well, I thought,” I told Sean.

“Yeah,” Sean agreed.

“One less thing to worry about for next year.”  I told Sean that I would contact the landlord, a professor at UJ named Dr. Wong, and tell him that we would be staying in the house for next year.  I called Dr. Wong over the weekend, and with his permission, I passed on his contact information to Jed and Brody if they had any questions.

So far, the roommate and housing plans for next year had come together more smoothly than any of the others I had made in Jeromeville.  I felt relieved.  Brody and Jed and I ended up together at that house at 902 Acacia for three years, until the summer of 2001, still to this day the longest period of time I have ever lived with the same people other than my family.

For the first few years after we moved out of that house, Jed was within day trip distance, and I still saw him off and on until he moved to a different state.  I am still friends with him today on Facebook, although he does not post often.  Brody stayed in Jeromeville for several more years, then moved across the Causeway to Capital City.  I saw Brody a couple times a year for most of our twenties, and today we still hang out every once in a while.

As these plans came together in the spring of 1998, I felt especially proud of myself for speaking up.  Asserting myself in a situation like that, opening my home to a roommate who I might end up not getting along with, was not easy for me, but I managed to do it.  I easily could have talked myself out of it, getting a reason stuck in my head that Jed or Brody would not make a good roommate and letting the moment pass.  Of course, there were inconveniences and conflicts during those years; none of us was the perfect roommate all the time.  But we stayed away from the major drama that some of my friends had in their living situations..  And had I not said something, the moment may have passed, Jed and Brody never would have lived at 902 Acacia, and parts of my life would have turned out completely different.

Readers: What has been your best experience living with someone? Or your worst? Tell me about it in the comments.

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Early April, 1998. Trash. (#168)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 7 Comments

I wore shorts to class on the Thursday of the first week of spring quarter.  I had read in the newspaper this morning about an arriving heat wave, with the warmest days of 1998 so far coming this weekend.  Today was supposed to reach 87 degrees, with temperatures in the 90s possible for the weekend.  In most years, the Fake Spring of early March gives way to cooler temperatures for much of the rest of March and April, but that had not happened this year.  March stayed mostly warm, and April was looking to begin warm as well.

I had two classes on Thursday, Fiction Writing and the discussion section for Christian Theology, with a break for lunch in between.  I arrived on my bike early and sat in the Memorial Union, reading the Daily Colt and studying until it was time to go to class.  I got up and walked south across the Quad.  I saw a girl with straight brown hair and glasses approaching me; I instinctively got ready to wave and say hi, but as she got closer, I realized that this was not Sasha.  Sasha wore those glasses with the lenses that automatically get darker in sunlight, and it was bright enough outside that her glasses would have been dark by now.  This girl’s glasses were not.

I looked around to see if Sasha was anywhere nearby; I did not see her.  That made sense, though.  My schedule had me walking from the Quad to Orton Hall every day this quarter, but it was on Monday and Wednesday when I had seen her walking the other direction, and not on Tuesday.  Sasha was a friend from church.  She was a senior at Jeromeville High School, but in a special program for high-achieving students where she took classes here at the University of Jeromeville while still in high school.  My schedule on Tuesdays and Thusdays was different from my schedule on the other days, and hers probably was too.

Yesterday, when I saw her, she was wearing this black hat that kind of looked like a beret.  I normally did not like that kind of hat, but on her it looked cute.  “Nice hat,” I blurted out as she approached.

“Thanks!” Sasha replied, smiling.  We proceeded to make small talk for several minutes, and I was almost late to class because of that.

Fiction Writing met on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so today was the second day of class.  I had gone into the first day not entirely sure what to expect.  It was a small class, meeting in the smallest-sized classroom.  The instructor was a Ph.D. student in the English department named Serena Chang.  Students working on advanced degrees at the University of Jeromeville often worked part-time as teaching assistants, graders, and laboratory assistants, but some departments actually allowed graduate students to teach lower-level undergraduate classes.  I had not had a class taught by a graduate student since the first two mathematics classes I took freshman year.

Serena said to call her Serena, not Ms. Chang, probably because she was used to teaching freshmen, who in turn were used to calling their teachers Mr. and Ms. in high school.  Serena was short, slim, and of Asian descent.  I was expecting the class not to be too difficult, since it was an introductory class and I was a senior, but Serena seemed to want to set the tone early that this would not be the case.  “Don’t expect this class to be an easy A,” she said.  “I taught this same class last quarter, and I only gave one A in a class of twenty-five.”  I’m in trouble, I thought.  English was not my strong point.

I recognized one familiar face in the class, Tim Walton, a freshman whom I knew from church and Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, with dark curly hair and glasses that reminded me of pictures I had seen of Buddy Holly.  Today, there was an empty seat next to Tim. “May I sit here?” I asked, motioning to the empty seat.

“Hey, Greg,” Tim replied.  “Sure.”

Today’s class was all about setting.  The textbook for the class was an anthology of short stories compiled specifically for use in creative writing classes.  Serena lectured on the importance of setting to a story, then assigned us a story to read from the textbook and a worksheet with writing exercises on establishing setting.  By the time I left class, I was already thinking about my responses to the exercises, what I could write in order to establish a setting for a story.


I said hi to Sasha again on the way to class on Friday, but I did not see her in the usual place on Monday.  Saying hi to Sasha on the way to Dr. Hurt’s Christian Theology class had already felt like part of my routine this quarter, and although it should not have been a big deal, it kept bugging me all day that I had not seen her today.  I hoped that she was all right, and that she was not sick.  I also hoped her schedule had not changed, and that I would be seeing her around campus regularly again.

That night, my roommate Sean was on the couch in the living room watching television, and I was sitting alone in the bedroom that we shared, at the desk under my lofted bed.  I worked on mathematics homework while listening to music, and the computer was on although I was not doing anything with it at the moment.  After finishing a particularly long problem, I stood up to take a study break, stretched, and got an idea.

I knew Sasha’s email address.  I could write to her and just say hi, and say something about not seeing her on campus.  I could try to make it sound humorous that talking to her had become part of my routine.  It would be another several years before I realized that some women would find such an unsolicited email creepy, especially since Sasha had never explicitly given me her email address.  I emailed Internet friends to see how they were doing all the time, and I occasionally did so with real life friends as well, especially if I had seen them recently and remembered something I forgot to say to them.  So I saw no problem with emailing Sasha just to say hi since I did not see her in person today.  And I did not consider it creepy that I knew Sasha’s email address.  I had a contact list of all the youth staff from church, since I was a volunteer with The Edge, the group for junior high school students, and Sasha was on the list as a volunteer with Next Generation, the preteen youth group.  Sasha’s email also appeared in the To: field of group emails that I had received from Erica Foster.

I opened a new email window and began typing.

To: sdtravis@jeromeville.edu
From: gjdennison@jeromeville.edu
Subject: hi

Hey!  How are you?  I just wanted to say hi since didn’t see you on the way to class today.  Saying hi to you feels like part of my routine now.  Everything ok?  How was your weekend?  I’ll talk to you soon!

-gjd

I went back and deleted the sentence about part of my routine, since that sounded a little awkward.  I clicked Send.


When I got home from class the following afternoon, I checked my email, and felt the adrenaline rush through my body when I saw that Sasha had written me back.  I had experienced that feeling before when I got a message from someone I was nervous about hearing from.

From: “Sasha Travis” <sdtravis@jeromeville.edu>
To: “Gregory Dennison” <gjdennison@jeromeville.edu>
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1998 12:07 -0700
Subject: Re: hi

Hi Greg! Yeah, I was at class yesterday morning, but I didn’t have to hurry back to Jeromeville High because they’re on spring break this week. So after class I went down to the Arboretum to read for a while.  It’s so pretty there!  It’s kind of annoying having two different spring breaks that don’t line up, but at least I don’t have class all day.

Last night was Next Gen.  Do you know Mariah Foreman?  We were playing a game called Human Foosball, where it’s like soccer but everyone is holding hands so you can only move side to side like the people on a foosball table, and Mariah was lined up right in front of the goal, but she tried to kick the ball and ended up tripping on it… I felt so bad for her, but it was hilarious!

How are your classes? I’m going to go run errands with my mom now.  Thanks for writing! I’ll see you soon!

Zee,
Sasha

That made sense about the different spring breaks.  Jeromeville’s spring break falls a certain number of weeks after the start of winter quarter, which always puts it in late March.  Most of the public school districts in this area, however, tie their spring breaks to Easter, typically the week before Easter, even though they cannot legally refer to it as the Easter holiday since Easter is a religious observance.  Easter was this coming Sunday, April 12, so most of the public schools would be off this week.

As I read Sasha’s email, and read it again, and thought about my encounters with Sasha over the last week, I came to a horrifying realization: I liked Sasha.  No.  This could not happen.  Sasha was too young for me, and that just felt wrong.  She was only seventeen years old, and still in high school.  She was born in 1980.  I was born in the ’70s, and that was a whole other decade.  We lived in completely different worlds.  Yet I enjoyed talking to her.  She was funny, and friendly, and the kind of talkative person that I needed to draw my introverted self out of my shell to a reasonable degree.  And I seemed to be seeing more and more of her around these days.

I went back to my math homework, but I kept thinking of Sasha, wanting to write her back and tell her about my day, and wanting to ask her what “zee” meant at the end of her message.  I decided to focus on homework and write her back at the end of the day, just before I went to bed.

I took a nap on the bed after I finished math, with my mind still full of thoughts about Sasha.  Could this work?  Could we be together?  Or did I need to stop thinking about this?  I was about to finish my bachelor’s degree, and she was in high school.  We lived in two different worlds.  I live on Earth, but not in her world.

I repeated that thought to myself, but slightly reworded: I live on Earth, but not within her world.

Iambic pentameter.

I may have been taking Fiction Writing that quarter, but I felt a poem forming in my mind, a poem about Sasha, and so far it was taking the form of a Shakespearean sonnet.  I jumped back down off the bed and grabbed a pen and paper and wrote that line down.  I climbed back up to the lofted bed and lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, occasionally rolling over to write more Sasha-related lines of iambic pentameter when they came to mind.

I know I’ve had some crazy thoughts before

Your half-dark glasses and that stupid hat

No, I thought, not stupid hat. I crossed this out and wrote “dumb beret,” but I did not like this either.  It would have looked dumb on anyone else, but it looked cute on her.  “Black beret,” that was better, and emotionally neutral.  Calling her fashion sense dumb would definitely be out of place in this poem.


Later that night, just before I went to bed, I opened Sasha’s email from earlier and clicked Reply:

From: “Gregory Dennison” <gjdennison@jeromeville.edu>
To: “Sasha Travis” <sdtravis@jeromeville.edu>
Subject: Re: hi

What exactly does “zee” mean at the end of your message?

That totally makes sense about the two schools having different spring breaks.  I forgot about that.  I might have to deal with that next year when I have student teaching.  The school where I end up will probably have a different break than Jeromeville.  I’m supposed to find out before the end of the year where I’ll be next year.  I’ve heard we usually don’t place student teachers at Jeromeville High, because Jeromeville isn’t representative of what public schools in most of the state are like.  More kids from educated backgrounds in Jeromeville, I would think.

That’s hilarious about Human Foosball… I hope Mariah is ok.  I don’t know her, but she’s Shawna and Cory’s sister, right?  My classes are okay.  This math class isn’t too hard.  Christian Theology is really interesting; a lot of historical stuff that’s deeper than what comes up at church or Bible study.  I really like the Fiction Writing class.  We’re going to have to write two stories later in the quarter and share them with people in the class.  I’m a little nervous about that, but curious to see what kinds of things other people write.

I’m going to bed now… have a great day tomorrow!

-gjd

Sasha explained “zee” the next day in her next email to me.  Apparently, none of the traditional endings to letters like “love” or “sincerely” or “your friend” ever seemed to work for her, so she just made up “Z” to represent the end, because Z was at the end of the alphabet.  But she spelled it “zee” so it looked like an actual work.  I liked that.  Maybe I would start using that.  (I did not, except for in a few other emails to Sasha.)

With my routine for the quarter becoming established, I was now trying to get back into the routine of reading my Bible every day between classes.  I was now in my sixteenth month of a plan I was following to read the Bible in a year, since I was not reading every day, but I was nearing the end: I was just now beginning the readings for December.  I also started praying for wisdom, to know whether being romantically interested in Sasha was a good idea, and if so, what to do about it.  I had heard many talks in those days about letting God guide my love life and not forcing things, so maybe I just needed to leave it in God’s hands and not do anything.

Over the course of the next few days, I carried around the paper with the poem on it, writing words and lines and rhymes as I thought of them.  By the weekend, I had this:

I live on Earth, but not within her world,
Our paths cross now, but may not cross again;
I looked, I spoke, and somehow she was hurled
Into the inmost reaches of my brain.
I know I’ve had some crazy thoughts before,
But certainly it ranks among the worst
To think that she’s the one I’m searching for
Whom, after God, I’ll give my life to first.
I can’t! For I know not what lies behind
Those tinted glasses and that black beret;
So far removed, not yet among my kind,
She’s just an extra in this tragic play.
For God, Who’s kept us far apart, knows best;
I’ll  lift this up to Him, and not Him test.

“Half-dark glasses” became “tinted glasses” at one point in the thought process.  That just flowed better.  I liked the way this poem turned out.  I liked Sasha, but it probably would not work out, since she was only seventeen.  I needed to trust God with my relationship status.

Now the poem needed a title.  I often took the titles of poems from words in the poem itself, usually something in the beginning so that the title would not give away the ending.  I was about to write “Not Within Her World” at the top of the page when suddenly I stopped, remembering something that Sasha had said a few weeks ago after church when I was standing around talking to her and some others.

I had said something about other kids being mean to me in elementary school and calling me every sort of name imaginable, and the others nearby began sharing ways they had been teased in childhood.  “I got called ‘Sasha Trash’ sometimes,” Sasha said.  “It’s so dumb.  These stupid people think they’re being so clever, just because my last name starts with the same letters as ‘trash.’  Like I’ve never heard that before.”

Trash.

The poem would be called Trash.

I wrote the title at the top of the page.  It was cryptic and mysterious on the surface, but that just made it better.  I often put hidden references and messages in poems, and the title of this one would be just another one of these hidden references.  Plus, by titling the poem after something negative associated with Sasha, maybe I would start to form a negative association with Sasha in my mind and talk myself out of this crush, since it  probably would never work.

I put the poem in the folder in my file cabinet where I kept physical copies of my writing.  I was not sure if I would ever share it with anyone.

For as much as I enjoyed talking with Sasha, I knew that I needed to put away all of those thoughts of ever being more than friends with her.  The rational side of my mind was convinced that it would not work, even though the romantic side enjoyed being with her.  I just hoped that these thoughts would go away eventually.  I had no immediate plans to act on these feelings; I would just wait and see what the next few months brought.  Unfortunately, now that I had actually taken the time to write a poem, that forever established that I did have feelings for Sasha.  To that, I now would never be able to say zee.

Readers: Have you ever been interested in someone who just seemed wrong for you on the surface, but you couldn’t get that person out of your head? How’d that work out for you? Tell me about it in the comments.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

March 30, 1998.  My last first day of class as an undergraduate. (#167)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 4 Comments

I opened the door of 105 Wellington and sat down.  After four years here at the University of Jeromeville, so much was familiar about everything I was doing this morning.  I rode my bike to campus on the usual route.  Wellington Hall had two floors above ground and a basement, full of nothing but classrooms of all sizes, and I had had many classes in Wellington before.  I was pretty sure I had even had a class in room 105 at some point, although I did not remember for sure which one.  Most of the people taking this class were juniors and seniors majoring in mathematics, with a few computer scientists and engineers in the class too.  I recognized many familiar faces from other math classes.  Jack Chalmers.  Katy Hadley.  Silas Penfield, whom I also knew from church and Jeromeville Christian Fellowship.  A guy named Alan, who bore a striking resemblance to the actor and comedian Norm MacDonald.

“Greg!” Jack whispered loudly, waving.  He motioned to an empty seat next to him.  I waved and nodded, walking toward the empty seat and waving to Silas on the way.  Katy was not looking at me.

What was unfamiliar was the subject itself.  The class was called Linear Programming, Mathematics 168.  I needed one more upper-division math class to finish my Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics, and the only prerequisites for this one were lower-division calculus and linear algebra, both of which I enjoyed and found relatively easy.  But I knew very little about what linear programming actually meant.  The word “programming” made me think of computers and writing code, but the description in the course catalog did not seem to mention computers.  It said something about solving optimization problems, which I assumed meant determining the best way to do something.

The professor, Dr. Wu, was also unfamiliar to me.  I had not taken a class from him before.  He began the class by giving an example of the kinds of problems we would be studying.  “Suppose you’re planning meals with two different foods,” he said.  “Each serving of food A contains 2 grams of fat, 1 gram of carbohydrates, and 5 grams of protein, and each serving of food B contains 3 grams of fat, 4 grams of carbohydrates, and 4 grams of protein.”  Dr. Wu paused to write these measurements on the board.  “And let’s say you know that the meal has to have at least 15 grams of fat, 20 grams of carbs, and 30 grams of protein.  And you know that each serving of food A costs, say, 35 cents, and each serving of food B costs 50 cents.”  After writing the rest of the problem on the board, he continued, “How many servings of each food should you buy to minimize the cost, but still have the required amount of protein, fat, and carbohydrates?  That is a basic example of a linear programming problem.  We have something we need to maximize or minimize, but it is subject to constraints.”  I nodded, writing an abbreviated version of all of this in my notebook.  Linear programming seemed fairly straightforward as a concept, something I could visualize in the real world and express symbolically using the language of mathematics that I already knew.

The rest of that first day of class was even more straightforward.  Dr. Wu quickly reviewed some key topics of linear algebra that would be important this quarter.  I remembered all of them well, but I still took notes anyway, because of my tendency to be overly cautious when it came to studying.

After that class, I had a two hour gap before my next class.  I walked across the street to the Memorial Union and read today’s Daily Colt, completing the crossword puzzle successfully. I tore out the completed crossword puzzle to hang on my wall at home with all the other crosswords I had completed this year.  With nothing else to do for two hours after finishing the crossword puzzle, I got an early start on math homework, reading the beginning of the book and working on the first homework assignment.  I found the same example about nutrition that the professor used; he took it directly from the textbook.

When it came time for my next class, I walked south across the Quad toward Orton Hall, the other major classroom building here on the older side of campus.  As I headed across the Quad, I saw a slim, bespectacled girl with straight brown hair walking toward me.  I noticed that this girl kind of looked like Sasha Travis from church, which made me realize sadly that I would not get to say hi to her every day this quarter.  Last quarter, I did an internship every morning helping out in a math class at Jeromeville High School, where Sasha was a student, finishing her last year.  I would always see Sasha in the hallway, or at her locker, as I headed to where my bike was parked after my class was done.  Even though Sasha was still in high school, I felt like she and I had gotten to be friends, through those conversations in the hallway, and the fact that she was Erica Foster’s best friend.  Erica, a freshman at UJ, was part of my social circle already, since we were both youth group leaders at church.

As I approached this girl who looked like Sasha, I kept looking at her, realizing more and more that it was not just a resemblance; I was pretty sure this actually was Sasha.  But what was she doing on the UJ campus during the school day?  She smiled at me and waved.  Yes, definitely Sasha.

“Sasha?” I asked.

“Hi, Greg!” Sasha replied.  “How are you?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Jeromeville High has a program for high-achieving seniors to take classes at UJ during the day,” Sasha explained.  “I just got out of English 10.”

“That’s cool!” I said.  “I’m pretty good.  Three classes today.  I’m on my way to Christian Theology, with Hurt.”

“I’ve heard such good things about Dr. Hurt!  Erica took one of his classes last quarter.  I didn’t see you this morning.  Are you still TAing with Mr. Gibson?”

“No.  That was just for a quarter.”

“I have to get back to the high school,” Sasha said.  “I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah.  Have a good one!”  As I continued walking to my class, I felt a little jealous that Sasha grew up in a university town where high-achieving students had opportunities like that.  Taking university classes as a high school senior was even better than taking AP classes for college credit.  Growing up in working-class Plumdale, I was discouraged from taking too many AP classes, and the nearest university was in Mount Lorenzo, forty miles away.

I continued walking toward Orton Hall.  Dr. Hurt’s class was in one of the larger classrooms of Orton Hall, with about sixty seats, and the class was about two-thirds full by the time I got there.  I expected a lot of my friends from church and from Jeromeville Christian Fellowship to be in this class, and while a few of them were, it was not as many as I had expected.  I sat down against the wall, on the opposite side of the room from the outdoors-facing windows, and looked around as Dr. Hurt prepared to begin his lecture.  My eyes moved toward a corner of the room I had not seen as I was walking in, where I saw Carrie Valentine sitting with a notebook on her desk.  She looked up and made eye contact and waved at me.  I did my best to smile, nervously, and waved back.  Dr. Hurt began speaking just at that moment, saving me from having to decide whether or not to go talk to Carrie.

Last year, Carrie was always friendly to me, but things seemed a little tense the last few months ever since she turned me down for a date.  She had said that everything was okay, that I had done nothing wrong, but I was not sure if she really was treating me differently, or if it was mostly in my head and I was avoiding her.  I felt relieved that Dr. Hurt had started class before I could talk to her, which I guess meant that I ultimately did not want to talk to Carrie right now.  I wondered if things would ever feel normal with us.

Dr. Hurt explained an overview of the class.  We would be studying the development of Christian theology from the period of the early Church through modern times.  Our study would include different schools of thought for subjects in which different branches of Christianity had slightly different beliefs, as well as some rejected schools of thoughts that had been deemed to be heresy over the years.  We would learn about the natures of God, Jesus Christ, and the Trinity; salvation, sin, and grace; and the role of the Church, among other topics.

I was still fairly new to practicing my Christian faith, and while this class did not satisfy any specific requirements other than giving me enough units to be classified as a full-time student, it was definitely something I wanted to learn.  Jeromeville was a secular public university, but our Religious Studies faculty included Dr. Hurt, a renowned New Testament scholar.  It was nice that I could still learn about Christianity in this context, even though secular public education did not include things like prayer and worship time.

When class ended, I looked up; Carrie was talking to someone I did not know, absorbed in conversation.  I got up and left before she saw me, avoiding the question of what to say to her and whether or not things would be awkward.  My next and final class on that Monday was in an hour, back in Wellington, on the other side of the Quad from Orton.  I began walking back toward the Memorial Union looking for a place to sit, but decided to just sit on the grass of the Quad instead.

The Quad was a square lawn about five hundred feet on each side.  The University of Jeromeville was founded in 1905 as an agricultural campus, with crops growing on the area that later became the Quad.  After becoming surrounded by buildings over the first three decades of the campus’ growth, the Quad was converted to a permanent lawn.  It was ringed by tall, mature European cork oaks, with other trees scattered across it at irregular intervals.  To the east were the oldest surviving buildings on campus, Old North and Old South Halls.  The Quad also bordered the Memorial Union building on the north, Wellington Hall and one other building on the west, and the library on the south, with Orton Hall on the southeast corner.

The weather was pleasant, on the warmer side but not uncomfortably hot, mostly sunny with blue skies dotted with a few clouds.  People sat on the Quad, reading, talking, napping, and eating.  I sat cross-legged and took the lunch I had packed out of my backpack, and I ate as I watched people walk past.

About ten minutes before class was scheduled to start, I walked across the street to the west to Wellington Hall, then took the stairs down to the basement.  The class was in room 6, which was a small lecture hall with around a hundred fixed seats, sloping toward the front of the room as in a theater, with an aisle down the middle.  Physical Education 43, Healthful Living, was not a class that would have been on my radar to take.  My lifestyle would not exactly be considered healthful, but the class was required for the teacher training program that I would be in next year.  And it was only two units, meeting for one hour twice a week, so it would not be as much work as most classes.

I sat in a row that was still mostly empty, one seat in from the aisle.  As the room gradually filled over the next few minutes, I looked around to see if anyone I recognized was in the class.  I saw two or three faces that I recognized from various places, but no one I knew in particular.  Then my eyes reached the door in the back of the room.

You have got to be kidding me, I thought.

Carrie Valentine walked through the door.  She saw me and immediately made eye contact, smiling and waving, noticing the empty seat next to me.  I waved back.

“Hey, Greg!” Carrie said, sitting in the seat next to me.  “Looks like we have two classes together!”

“I know,” I replied.  “What did you think of Hurt’s class so far?”

“Looks like it’ll be interesting.  There’s a lot of that kind of stuff I don’t really know.”

“Yeah.  Same.  I grew up Catholic, and going to Jeromeville Covenant now, I’m always interested to know about differences between Catholics and other Christians.”

“How was your spring break?”

“It was good.  I went to see my family for most of it.  We had an 80th birthday party for my grandpa.”

“Oh, how nice!  Are you and your grandpa close?”

“Yeah.  This is Mom’s dad, and they always lived just a mile away growing up, so we saw them all the time.  I got to see some relatives I don’t see often.  Some came all the way from Oregon.  A lot of Grandpa’s friends were there too.  What did you do over break?”

“Really nothing.  Just relaxed at home.  Hung out with my parents and my sister, and saw one of my friends from high school.”

“That’s nice.”

The professor, Dr. Payton, began speaking, introducing herself first, and telling us to make sure that we were all in the right class, PE 43, Healthful Living.  “The class is always around this size every quarter,” Dr. Payton explained, “so I am not going to get to know every one of you personally.  But if you ever see me around campus, feel free to wave at me and just say, ‘Forty-three!’  That way, I will know that you were a student of mine in this class.  I’ve been doing this class for twenty years, and you wouldn’t believe some of the places I’ve run into people who recognized me.  I’ve had strangers on airplanes come up to me and say, ‘Forty-three.’  My husband and I went to an opera in Bay City, and one of the ushers at the theater remembered me.  The strangest one of all was when we were on vacation in France, and we toured a historic monastery.  Some actual monks walked past the tour group, and one of the monks leaned over to me and whispered, ‘Quarante-trois.’”  A few in the room chuckled.

As Dr. Payton continued outlining the class, it became apparent that I was not sure what I was expecting from this class, but what she was describing was not exactly it.  I expected somewhat of a rehash of what I had learned in high school health class: nutrition, exercise, hygiene, and of course sexuality.  But in addition to that, this class would cover other topics, including stress management, relationships, and alternative medicine.  “Please be respectful if there is anything you don’t agree with in this class,” Dr. Payton said.  “One year, I was reading the teacher evaluations at the end of the year, and in regards to the homeopathic medicine presentation, someone wrote, ‘I don’t believe in voodoo.’  Homeopathic medicine is not voodoo.  It is a type of medicine with theories and methods practiced by people around the world.”

Since UJ was a secular public university, and I was a Christian, I expected that I would probably have disagreements with some of the material in the chapters on relationships and sexuality.  But Dr. Payton’s request to be respectful certainly seemed reasonable.  And while I generally associated homeopathic medicine with New Age hippie nonsense, I would even approach that with an open mind when we got to that chapter, since I knew little about it.

I stood and stretched when class was over.  “Do you have any more classes today?” Carrie asked me.

“No.  I’m done.  I’m headed home now.”

“Nice!  I have a discussion now on Mondays, but I’m done after this class on Wednesdays.”

“Enjoy your class,” I said.  “I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah!  Have a great afternoon!”

I walked back to my bike, unlocked it, and rode north to the end of West Quad Avenue, where I turned left onto a road heading generally northwest.  I passed more classroom and lab buildings, then rode through the North Residential Area to the intersection of Fifth Street and Andrews Road.  I continued north on Andrews Road for almost a mile, then turned left and zigzagged through the neighborhood to my house at 902 Acacia Drive.  The house was quiet; I was the first one home today.  I connected to the dialup Internet and got on Internet Relay Chat.  A nineteen-year-old girl from Texas named Melody, whom I had met in this same chat channel a few days earlier, was on; I messaged with her for about half an hour, telling her all about my day, about my new classes and the uncomfortable situation of having two classes with a girl who said no to going out with me a couple months ago.  Melody told me about a party she and her friends went to over the weekend.  I heard someone else get home and told Melody that I needed to go, but I would email her later.  I did not want to tie up the telephone line during the day with other people in the house. 

I had finished my last first day of class as an undergraduate.  So far, this quarter did not seem too difficult.  I had one more class that did not meet today, Fiction Writing, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:30.  That class sounded like fun, and hopefully it would not be too tough, especially since I liked writing fiction to begin with.  This would be a good way to finish off my bachelor’s degree.

About a month later, we reached the lesson in health class about homeopathy, and we had a guest speaker that week.  About five minutes into that lecture, I completely understood why the anonymous former student had called homeopathy voodoo.  Nothing about the presentation made any sense from a scientific perspective.  I questioned why this belonged in a serious class at a prestigious university, but Jeromeville was enough of a hippie town and school that I was not entirely surprised either.

Although none of these classes had assigned seats, it was human nature for most people to sit in or near the same seat each time class met.  Because of this, Carrie and I typically sat on opposite sides of the room in Dr. Hurt’s class, but we almost always sat next to each other in health class.  By the second week of the quarter, I genuinely felt that whatever awkwardness might be lingering between Carrie and me was gone.  We did not talk about my failed attempt to ask her out; I just did my best to put that in the past and move on, and Carrie never did anything to make me feel bad about what happened.  That incident did come up in conversation once, three years later, in a respectful and productive way that gave me a lot of closure regarding why she said no.  That mutual respect is part of the reason why Carrie is the only one of my many unrequited crushes from my Jeromeville years with whom I am on speaking terms today.

Readers: Have you ever had an experience where you were in close proximity to someone with whom you had issues in the past? How did that go? Tell me about it in the comments.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

March 6-21, 1998.  The end of a memorable basketball season. (#166)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 2 Comments

My sixteen-year-old brother Mark got all the athletic talent in the Dennison family, playing baseball and basketball for pretty much his entire life up to now.  I played tee-ball for one year, when I was six, and I remembered very little about it, except that I thought it was dumb that we did not keep score.  I also had a brief high school football career that lasted one day.  I worked out with the football team the summer after ninth grade, because a lot of people encouraged me to play football because of my large build, and I saw football players as the cool kids who got all the girls.  I also took time that summer to learn more about football.  I read books about football rules, strategies, plays, and the history of football.  I quit after the first full day of practice, because I was so out of shape, but that experience of learning about the game gave me a greater appreciation for watching football.

Since I was tall, almost six feet four inches, many well-intentioned but ill-informed people told me that I would make a good basketball player.  I was not fast, I was not coordinated, and I was not disciplined enough to be in good shape.  But even with no experience as a player, I watched University of Jeromeville Colts football and basketball games frequently during my time as a student there.  These were the most popular collegiate sports in the United States.  UJ did not play at the highest level of competition, and few UJ Colts went on to play professionally, but the players were good enough to make the games fun to watch.  A student-run cheering section called the Colt Crew created a lively, energetic environment full of loud chants and cheers, silly skits, and free prizes tossed into the crowd.

The UJ football team had consistently won more games than they lost each season for well over a decade now.  They made the national playoffs for their division of play in two of the four years that I had been there, advancing to the semifinals in the most recent season.  The basketball team had also been winning in recent years, but this year, the team was having one of their best seasons in school history.  They were undefeated against conference opponents, only losing two games all year early in the season.

That record earned UJ the right to host a regional tournament in Jeromeville.  The playoff schedule had them playing back-to-back nights, Friday and Saturday, March 6 and 7.  That was the week of Fake Spring, the brief spell of unseasonably pleasant days that typically appeared that time of year, followed by another storm or period of cloudy weather.  On that Friday, the day after my final long conversation with Sadie Rowland, I decided to eat the lunch I had packed outside.  As I walked around the Quad, looking for a place to sit, I noticed a commotion forming around a guy holding a large sign, about three feet high, on a pole above him.  He periodically blew a whistle and pointed and yelled at someone.  I knew what was going on here; I approached the mob closely enough to observe, but far enough to not get involved.

About once a year, I would see a shouting man like this show up on the Quad, physically brandishing a Bible and pointing at it, but never actually opening or reading it.  I did not know if this was the same guy I had seen before, nor did I know if all of these people were part of the same organized group.  The large sign he held said:

LIARS, HYPOCRITES, SLUGGARDS, DRUNKS, STONERS, FORNICATORS, PERVERTS, EVOLUTIONISTS, CATHOLICS, JEWS, AND MORMONS… REPENT! OR BURN IN HELL!

“If God gave us pot, why can’t we smoke it?” one random person from the crowd screamed.  The shouting Bible man pointed at the student asking the question and blew a whistle loudly, then began ranting about temptations from the Devil.

This pattern continued as I ate my lunch, with students saying things to get a reaction from this man, and the man blowing his whistle and shouting things that sounded somewhat Biblical in nature but were certainly not spoken with Godly love.  No one in this crowd was actually interested in a relationship with Jesus Christ.  The students asking the man questions just wanted to make fun of him; they were not curious about Christianity.  And the man with the answers did not want to meet these students where they were and show them God’s love through the way he lived his life.  He just wanted to yell at people and get attention.  People like this give real Christians a bad name in the eyes of students like these.

After watching this for half an hour or so, I noticed out of the corner of my eye two more people approaching, also holding large signs like the one the shouting man had.  At first I wondered if the shouting man had sidekicks, but as one of the signs came into clear view, I could see that it was different from the shouting man’s sign.  It was hastily made of cardboard and duct tape, not painted on wood.  The sign said:

GOD WANTS YOU TO WATCH COLT BASKETBALL
7PM REC PAVILION
WEAR YOUR COLT CREW SHIRT

I laughed out loud when I realized what had happened.  The Colt Crew had seen the angry Bible man with his sign, and they made their own signs to stir up school spirit for the basketball playoffs.  The Colt Crew students mingled among the mob of students surrounding the shouting Bible man, and students from the mob cheered when they saw the Colt Crew signs.

About five minutes later, I was done with lunch.  I got up and walked past one of the Colt Crew sign holders, and told him, “Great sign.  That’s brilliant.”

“Thanks,” he replied.  “Are you coming to the game tonight?”

“I can’t make it tonight.  But if we win, I’ll definitely be at tomorrow’s game.”

“We’ll win.  Think positive.”

“Yeah.”


Jeromeville Christian Fellowship met that night, so I could not make it to the basketball game.  People at JCF do not blow whistles and shout judgmental slogans; if they did, I probably would not have learned through them two years earlier what it really meant to follow Jesus.

UJ won their game that Friday, so they played again on Saturday, against Northwest Methodist University from Washington state.  I did not go with anyone to the game; I just showed up that night, since I had no other plans.

As much as I hated to do so, I paid the three dollars to park in the lot next to the Recreation Pavilion.  I thought about riding my bike to the game, it had been a nice day, but by the time I left, the sun was setting, the temperature had cooled down, and it would be cold and dark for the bike ride back home.  Also, I needed to get batteries for my bike headlight.

As I approached the building, I noticed that there was no Colt Crew line for students; instead, a sign said that students must purchase a ticket.  I remembered reading in the Daily Colt that, because this was a playoff game, the ticket office was required to sell tickets at prices set by the league administrators.  Normally students could watch all home athletic events free, but that did not apply for playoff games.  I overheard some students standing in line who were upset and surprised about this; apparently they did not read the Daily Colt every day like I did.

The Recreation Pavilion had an expandable upper level.  Areas normally used for things like student weightlifting classes and gymnastics team practice were cleared out to add another level of retractable bleachers for certain events, such as basketball games expected to draw large crowds and graduation ceremonies.  The Colt Crew student section was in the same place as usual, but tickets had to be sold at the general admission price.  I sat in the Colt Crew section and looked around me; I did not know any of these people, but I said hi to them anyway.  One guy said hi back.  I could tell right away that this would be no ordinary game as crowds walked in and filled the seats on all levels.

The students who led the cheers and skits for the Colt Crew, one of whom was the guy whose sign I complimented yesterday, led us in booing the Northwest Methodist team as they took the court for warmups.  The Colts ran out onto the court a few minutes later, and the entire Colt Crew section, along with the rest of the Pavilion, cheered loudly.  I saw five guys who looked like fraternity brothers in the section next to me who had taken off their shirts, revealing painted chests spelling out C-O-L-T-S in the school colors of navy blue and gold, but they were standing out of order, so their chests said CLOTS.  I laughed.

The Eagles of Northwest Methodist University were one of the only two teams to beat Jeromeville in the regular season.  That was back in December, in a non-conference game, and I did not remember this until I read it in the Daily Colt earlier this week.  Despite that early setback, though, the Colts had a much better overall record for the season, 26 wins to the Eagles’ 17.  That storyline alone made this game interesting, especially since the winner would advance to the national tournament with the winners of seven other regional tournaments like this one, and the loser’s season would be over.

For much of the first half, the game was close.  Neither team was able to stay very far ahead.  It seemed like one team would score, and then the other would score right away, and if one team missed, the other team would usually miss also.  Eight minutes before halftime, the game stopped for a media timeout, to run commercials on the radio broadcast.  The Colt Crew announcer shouted, “It’s time for Tube Sock Madness!” He and the other students leading the Colt Crew cheers began throwing rolled-up tube socks into the crowd.  I was still not clear on how this tradition began, but it was always fun to try to catch them, even though I had yet to wear the one pair I had caught in the past, at a football game freshman year.

When play started again, the Colts were a few points behind, but they proceeded to go on a tear, scoring ten unanswered points and blocking NWMU’s shot attempts.  I was not sure if this was because of what the coach told them during the timeout, or the excitement generated by the crowd during Tube Sock Madness, or something else, but I liked it.  The crowd did too, becoming more lively every time the Colts scored or made a big defensive move.  Jeremy Fox of the Colts made a three-point shot late in the half.  As was usually the case, everyone in the Colt Crew stuck both hands in the air as the ball was in the air, and we all put our hands down and said “Whoosh!” as the ball sailed through the net.

I turned to the guy next to me, the one who had said hi when I arrived in my seat.  “YEAAAH!!!” I shouted, raising my hand to give a high five.  He shouted back and high-fived back.  While I was turned, I noticed that the CLOTS guys had rearranged themselves into the correct spelling of COLTS.

The Colts now led by nine with a minute to go until halftime, and after a few more scores on each side, the Colts led 38-31 at halftime.  During halftime, the marching band played a few songs, and the Colt Crew students, after a costume change, did a silly lip-synching skit that involved girls dressed as the high-voiced young boys from the band Hanson, and guys dressed as the Spice Girls.  I laughed.

The Colts were even more dominant in the second half than they were in the first.  Jeremy Fox’s three-point shooting heated up in the second half; he made another four successful three-point shots, in addition to a number of two-point shots.  Jeremy Fox finished the game with twenty-six points, and the Colts won by a score of 82-58.  Cheers erupted from all over the Pavilion, especially from the Colt Crew section.

The Colts had beaten a team that had beaten them earlier in the season in order to advance to the national championship for this division, with seven other teams.  Three more wins, and we would be national champions.  I extended both arms and gave a high ten to the guy sitting next to me, and we continued shouting cheers as we followed the rest of the crowd outside.  Sports victories have a way of bringing strangers together. 


The national tournament, held over two thousand miles away in Louisville, did not begin until a week and a half after the eight regional tournaments.  This led to the odd situation that the Jeromeville Colts players had games during the week that they should have been taking finals.  Most of the schools competing were on a semester schedule, with no such thing as winter quarter finals in March, so this issue did not affect most of the tournament participants. I was not sure how or when these players would take their final exams, but I imagined that exceptions could be made in this extraordinary circumstance. 

I tried to arrange my study breaks so that I could listen to the games on the radio while I was not studying, or while I was doing things that did not require intense concentration, like practicing math problems.  UJ won the first two games of the tournament decisively, setting up a showdown with the Lions of Central Kentucky Christian College.  CKCC was a six-time champion who also had only lost two games all year. Also, the school was located less than a hundred miles from Louisville, so there would be many more Lions fans in the crowd, a possible disadvantage for the Colts.

The final game was on national television, on Saturday morning right after my finals week ended.  The schools that played in the top level of competition of college basketball had games on television often, but this one championship game was the only nationally televised game for this division. It was the first time in history that a UJ Colts sporting event was on national television.  The game began at 1:00 in Louisville, which was 10:00 in the morning in Jeromeville’s time zone.  Yesterday was the last day of finals, and tomorrow after church I would head to my parents’ house in Plumdale for a few days.

“Hey,” said my roommate Sean, emerging from the shower during the pre-game show.  “Is this the Colts basketball championship?”

“Yeah!” I said.  Sean sat on the couch next to me to watch the game.

The announcers told the story of the Jeromeville Colts, how they breezed through the season and the regional tournament with only two losses, qualifying for the national tournament for the first time.  Then they pointed out that Central Kentucky Christian was a perennial champion in their conference and, although none of the current players had won a championship, the coach and program in general were no strangers to winning.  The Colts certainly had an uphill climb ahead of them.

“It’s kind of weird to see Jeromeville on TV,” Sean said.

“I know.”

The game was close for most of the first half, much like the game I went to against Northwest Methodist.  My ears always perked up when I heard the national broadcasters talking about Jeromeville.  The University of Jeromeville was not very well known beyond the far western states, and I liked hearing what outsiders had to say about my school.

“Jeromeville is in between Capital City and Bay City,” they said.  Technically true, although it was so much closer to Capital City that this seemed like a misleading description.  “The University of Jeromeville has been a football power in recent years, and it is also known as an academic powerhouse.”  Very true; I felt like part of that academic culture.  “This game really is a contrast between two different kinds of universities, with UJ being a large public school, and CKCC being a small private liberal arts college.”  I had never been to CKCC, but that sounds right.  “Jeromeville is on a quarter schedule, so these students had to take their winter quarter finals from the hotel room here in Louisville earlier this week.  They brought a proctor on the trip with them.”  That answered one of my questions.

UJ made a strong showing in the first half and led 42-35 at halftime.  But, although CKCC’s last championship was eight years earlier, many of their players had played in high-stakes playoff games before.  They used this experience to fight back, taking a one-point lead with a little over a minute left in the game.

“I don’t like this,” I said, my teeth slightly clenched as I looked at the television.

“I know,” Sean replied.

A player from CKCC missed a shot.  Jason Simmons rebounded the ball for the Colts and passed it to Jeremy Fox.  Fox dribbled up to the three-point line and shot; the ball swished through the hoop.  Three points for the Colts, who now led 76-74 with 37 seconds left.

“YESSS!!!!!” I shouted, jumping up and motioning to give Sean a high-five, even though he was still sitting on the couch.  Sean raised his hand and slapped mine.

I then sat nervously to watch what CKCC would do on their possession.  They passed the ball around, trying to get away from Jeromeville’s pressure defense.  The Lions’ tall center, who was so far had led all players in scoring, took a shot from somewhere near the free throw line, unable to get the ball any closer because of Jeromeville’s defense.  He missed, and the rebound shot out directly to Jeremy Fox.  I breathed deeply, finally feeling better about the outcome of this game.  Twenty-eight seconds remained on the clock, a shorter time than the 35-second shot clock, meaning that the Colts could theoretically hold on to the ball and run out the clock. The only way the Lions could get the ball back was by intentionally fouling the player with the ball and forcing him to shoot free throws.   A Lion player did just that, intentionally fouling Fox, but Fox made both free throws, giving Jeromeville a four-point lead.  CKCC missed a shot on their next possession, and then intentionally fouled once more.  After Jason Simmons made his two free throws, CKCC missed a desperation shot as time expired.  Jeromeville had won, by a score of 80 to 74.

“WOOOOOO!!!” I shouted, standing up and attempting again to high-five Sean, who stayed on the couch despite also being visibly excited.  It was more like a medium-five.

The banner proclaiming UJ national champions of their division still hangs in the rafters of the Recreation Pavilion to this day.  Jeromeville moved to the top division in 2008, and since then, UJ has made that division’s national tournament only once.  They were promptly eliminated by one of the major basketball powerhouses, to the surprise of exactly no one.

One major change happened on campus after the national championship that lasted for a while.  When the athletics department had to send information to the national media, they realized that the campus sports teams did not use a consistent logo.  The official logo, appearing occasionally around campus but not on any jerseys or uniforms, was a letter “A” with a horse’s head on one side and ears of wheat on the other.  The A stood for Agriculture, presumably; the university had originally been the College of Agriculture affiliated with the University of the Bay, sixty miles away.  This was the logo that appeared on the television broadcast, and it seemed strange and confusing as the logo of a large, modern university with a sports program.

After the television broadcast used that logo, the UJ administration hired a professional design firm to make with a new logo, and soon, the university had a much better-looking head of a colt to use as their logo.  I bought numerous t-shirts and hats with that logo on it.  But then, for no apparent reason, in 2019 the Colts reverted to an updated version of the old “A” logo.  I never understood this, since neither “Jeromeville” nor “Colts” started with A.  I recognized the value of connecting to campus history and traditions, but I still preferred the colt head logo.  UJ is not well-known enough nationally to be recognized by a logo with a different letter on it.  But I supposed that, if I were to wear something with this confusing “A” logo on it, it could become a conversation starter if someone asked me what the logo meant.

Readers: What is your best memory of watching sports? Tell me about it in the comments.

Disclaimer: Northwest Methodist University and Central Kentucky Christian College are, like the University of Jeromeville, fictional.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

March 5, 1998.  My heart will not go on. (#165)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 6 Comments

Disclaimer: I had this episode planned and partially written before the news broke about the missing tourists trying to explore the wreck of the Titanic. I am not trying to capitalize on a tragedy.

As finals approached for the 1998 winter quarter, Titanic was the biggest movie in the world.  The movie, a fictional love story set against the backdrop of the historical 1912 sinking of the British ship Titanic, had been the highest-grossing film of 1997 despite having been released just two weeks before the end of the year.  It won many major awards, and it was still the number one movie in theaters now, almost three months after its release.  As is often the case with major successful movies like that, the soundtrack spawned a hit pop song, “My Heart Will Go On” by Céline Dion.  Like the movie, the song went on to become one of the most commercially successful songs of all time.

I had never seen the movie.  Nor had I ever heard the song; I did not listen to that crap.

I never thought of myself as much of a moviegoer.  Going to movies was something people did with friends, and I had never had much of a social life until recently.  Something did not feel right about going to a movie by myself, so if I wanted to see a movie, and plans never came up to see it, I just did not watch it.  

However, although love stories were not my preferred movie genre, I was intrigued by Titanic.  I wanted to see it for the special effects; the filmmakers built and sank an actual replica of the Titanic.  That was impressive in its own right.  But I had no plans to do so.

One Thursday, I had a bit of free time on campus, so I walked into the Memorial Union building, looking for a place to sit and do math homework for the next two hours.  I walked through the doors of the east entrance, near the bookstore, and began heading toward the Coffee House at the other end of the building, where I planned to look for a place to sit.  But before I even got to the Coffee House, I found something more interesting to me, something about five foot five with straight brown hair halfway down her back and smiling blue eyes.

“Hey, Sadie,” I said, waving.

“Greg!” Sadie replied.  “What’s up?”

“Just looking for a place to sit and hang out until my next class.”

“Me too!  Come on!”  Sadie walked in the same direction I was about to go, and I followed her.  It was a relatively nice Fake Spring day outside, sunny and pleasant, typical of the week or two of nice weather that Jeromeville always got around this time of year before it turned cold and dreary again.  The indoor tables were not excessively crowded, as they would be on a rainy day.  “How about here?” Sadie said, gesturing to a table near the far end of the Coffee House.

“Looks good,” I said.  Sadie sat facing south, toward the window looking out at the Quad, and I sat across from her.  “How are you?”

“I had a midterm this morning.  It was kind of hard.  I don’t think I did very well.”

“What class?”

“History.  I didn’t study as much as I could have.  I’m pretty good at BS’ing essay questions, though, so I might have done okay.”

“Nice,” I replied.  “I’m not good at BS’ing.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  Like, if I have a paper to write, I have to start planning it at least a week or two in advance.  I need time to go to the library and do research, and usually half of what I’m looking for is already checked out.  And I need to think things through.”

“Wow.”

“And with essay questions on tests, I have to do a lot of studying in advance, to the point that I’m ready for whatever they might ask.  Believe me, I wish I could BS a paper like you can.”

“You probably have a better GPA than those of us who BS papers, though.”

“That’s true.  And, as a math major, I don’t have to write papers as often.”

“Yeah.  That too.  When do you write papers, anyway?”

“Classes for general ed requirements.  And the English classes that everyone has to take,” I explained, “although I took AP English in high school, so I only had to take Advanced Comp.  And this quarter I have Ed Psych, as a prerequisite for the teaching program next year.”

“Yeah, I guess you would still have to write papers.”

“Next quarter I’m taking Fiction Writing.  For the teaching program, I need to have a certain number of units in English, no matter what subject I’ll be teaching, and I’m one class short.  It can be anything, and Fiction Writing looks like the most fun option.”

“That does sound fun!  Have you written fiction before?”

“I write stories for fun sometimes.”

“That’s really cool!” Sadie exclaimed.

“Would you ever want to read some of my stories?”

“Sure!  I mean, I don’t know how much time I’ll have now with finals coming up, but maybe once that’s out of the way.”

“I’ll send you something sometime after finals, then.”

“Thanks!”

“Anyway, I was saying, Ed Psych is the only final I have to write for this year.  I have two math classes with regular math finals, and no final for my internship at Jeromeville High.”

“How’s that going, by the way?” Sadie asked

“It’s good, but it’s been eye-opening,” I explained.  “When I did this last year, it was with a class of pretty much all college-bound kids.  These kids aren’t all like that.  A lot of them aren’t motivated to work as hard, and they don’t pay attention in class.”

“That makes sense.  But you’ll probably get a lot of that when you’re an actual teacher someday.”

“Yeah.  Speaking of internships, you’re leaving for Washington, D.C., soon, right?”

“Yes!  I leave the week after spring break.  I’m so excited!”

“And what will you be doing exactly?  Something in the House of Representatives, was it?”

“Yeah!  Working for the Congressman who represents our district back home.  My parents have helped out on his campaign before.  He’s great.”

“Good!” I said.  I knew enough about Sadie’s political leanings to know that if she liked this guy, he must be good, and I probably would agree with the way he voted most of the time.

“Mostly just office work,” Sadie explained, “but I’ll get to learn a lot about how the process works.”

“That’s really cool.  I’m excited for you.”

“Thanks!”

“Keep in touch after you leave.”

“Yeah!  I will!”  Sadie replied.

We continued talking as time passed, about everything from classes to future plans to high school friends back home, of which Sadie still had many.  “I don’t hear from any of my high school friends anymore,” I said.  “I guess I wasn’t super close to them to begin with.  I didn’t really do anything with friends until I was a senior, old enough to drive.  Plumdale is spread out, and I lived kind of far from everyone.”

“That makes sense.  I lived near a lot of my friends from high school.  They all went off to school after we graduated, but we still try to get together when we’re home on break.”

“That’s good.  I wish I had that.  I made some new friends senior year too, and then all of a sudden they were gone after we all moved away.”

“That’s too bad, but it happens,” Sadie said.

“One of those new friends I made senior year, I saw her here once, walking across the MU.  It was the weirdest thing.  She was younger, she was still a senior in high school at the time, but her boyfriend and her brother both went to Jeromeville, and Plumdale High had a day off, so she and her friend came up to visit.”

“And you just bumped into each other?  That’s weird.”

“That was the last time I ever heard from her,” I said, nostalgically and wistfully.  I had not thought about Annie Gambrell for a long time, until now.  “But, I don’t know, maybe it’s for the best.”  I lowered my voice, leaned in a little closer to Sadie, and explained, barely above a whisper, “I had a big crush on her, and she had a boyfriend.”

“Oh yeah,” Sadie replied with a slight chuckle.  “That’s rough.”

“Story of my life.”

“Aww.”  Sadie yawned, and continued, “Sorry!  I’m tired.  I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“I hate that.”

“My roommate and her boyfriend got home late from the movie theater last night.  They went to see Titanic, because I guess he had never seen it.  And then they came home and woke me up, and they stayed up in the living room talking.”

“That’s annoying,” I said.  “I’ve never seen Titanic either.  I want to.”

“It was so good!  I saw it once when I was home for Christmas.  I want to see it again.”

Every once in a while, an opportunity would drop into my lap perfectly.  And some of those times I would actually get brave and take the opportunity.  “Do you want to see it with me sometime?” I asked.  “Will you have time before you leave for D.C.?”

“Yeah!” Sadie exclaimed.  “I have a lot to do before I leave, and finals are coming up, but I should be able to work something out.  I’ll figure out my schedule and get back to you.”

“Perfect!” I said.

“Oh crap,” Sadie said, looking at her watch.  “I need to get going.  I have class.”

“What time is it?” I wondered aloud, while looking at my watch.  Almost two hours had passed since Sadie and I had sat down in the Memorial Union.  “Wow.  It doesn’t feel like it’s this late.”

“I know!”

“It was really good hanging out,” I said.  “Hope your class goes well.  And keep me posted about the movie.”

“Yeah!  I will!  It was good talking to you.”

“You too!”

As I watched Sadie walk away, I thought about how this was not the first time this had happened to us, getting lost in conversation and losing track of the time.  Sadie was one of those rare people whom I could talk to for hours, all while feeling that no time had passed at all.


By the middle of the following week, I still had not heard back from Sadie about going to see Titanic.  I wrote her an email one night during a study break:

To: srrowland@jeromeville.edu
From: gjdennison@jeromeville.edu
Subject: movie

Hey!  How is studying going?  Are you ready for finals?  I think mine will be ok.  Ed Psych is the one I’m most worried about, mostly just because it’s not math, and I’m going to have to write an essay, and you know I don’t BS essays very well. :)

What’s your schedule like?  Are we still going to see Titanic?  How is all of the preparation for your internship going?  Good luck with finals, and I’ll see you soon!

gjd

The next day, I checked my email frequently during study breaks for the whole time I was home.  I got excited when I saw that I had a message from Sadie, but I became considerably less excited as I read the message:

From: “Sadie Rowland” <srrowland@jeromeville.edu>
To: “Gregory Dennison” <gjdennison@jeromeville.edu>
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 13:46 -0800
Subject: Re: movie

Hi Greg!  Unfortunately, I don’t think I can.  I just have too much to do this week, getting ready for finals and packing for DC.  Sorry!  I hope you have a great finals week!  Good luck!

I wrote back later, just making small talk about life and finals and stuff, and asking Sadie about her upcoming internship back east.  Finals came and went, I went home for spring break without my computer or access to email, and I returned to Jeromeville a few days before classes started.  A couple days into spring quarter, almost three weeks after my last message, Sadie finally wrote back. 

From: “Sadie Rowland” <srrowland@jeromeville.edu>
To: “Gregory Dennison” <gjdennison@jeromeville.edu>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 19:34 -0500
Subject: Re: movie

Hey!  Sorry it took me so long to write back!  I’ve had so much going on.  The trip here went well, and I’ve gotten situated here.  Today was my second actual day of work for the internship.  It’s been great so far!  I love it!

I had to pack in a lot during my spring break, trying to get everything ready and seeing all my friends and family here before I left.  It was good, but mostly just hanging out and catching up with people.  The weekend before I left, I went to the beach with a bunch of my friends, and we had a great time.  Oh yeah, this one guy I dated off and on for part of high school, he and I reconnected while we were here, and we got back together! We’re doing long distance now, obviously, but it works out perfectly because he’s busy with school, and he’s going to come stay with me in DC for three weeks in the summer because he’s never seen the East Coast.  And he’s moving to Jeromeville in the fall for grad school, so then we’ll be together!

How was your spring break?  Did you do anything exciting?
-Sadie

Of course it had to end this way.  It always ended like that, I liked someone and she met someone else.  But at least Sadie was still a good friend, and she had access to email in Washington, so we could stay in touch while she was doing her internship with the House of Representatives.

Or so I thought.

I replied to Sadie’s message and told her about my spring break, but Sadie never wrote another email to me that entire spring or summer.  When school started again in the fall, Sadie was no longer going to Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, and I never saw her hanging out in the Memorial Union anymore.  I did see her once, in November, while I was walking across campus on the way to class.  She was walking in the opposite direction, with a guy who appeared to be the boyfriend she had told me about in March.  They looked like she had somewhere to be.  I waved, and she said, “Hey,” and kept on walking.

And that was the last time I ever saw her or spoke to her.

I never saw Titanic, with Sadie or with anyone else.  It was for many years the highest-grossing film of all time, yet I have never seen it.  For a while, the thought of seeing Titanic brought back sad memories of not being friends with Sadie anymore.  Then, several months after that happened, I heard my friend Jed Wallace give his opinion about how Titanic was a terrible movie, and everything he said made sense to me.  Jed’s thoughts, combined with stories I heard over the course of that year about creepy old ladies going to see Titanic ten times on the big screen because they thought 23-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio was so hot, turned me against the idea of seeing the movie.  By the end of 1998, never having seen Titanic had become a badge of honor for me.

I also never did get around to sending Sadie any of the stories I had written.  In light of  the emotional shock of being turned down from seeing the movie and learning about Sadie’s new boyfriend, I just never brought that up again.

I have learned over the years that sometimes friends naturally grow apart, and that it does not necessarily represent failure on my part.  But I still find it discouraging.  I remembered what it was like to not have friends, when I was younger, so every friendship felt exceptionally valuable to me.  It especially hurt to grow apart from someone like Sadie, since I always felt like we clicked so well.  Of course, she came back to Jeromeville with a boyfriend, and he may have had a problem with her having a lot of guy friends.  It is natural that Sadie’s friendships with guys would change when a boyfriend came along.  But I still did not like it.  I wanted my close friends to stay close, and while I thought Sadie was a great girl, I had no intention of trying to steal her away from her boyfriend.  I could do nothing about it when people grew apart from me like this, except to do everything in my power to make sure I did not grow apart from the people I cared about when my own circumstances changed.

Readers: Have you ever abruptly lost touch with someone you thought was a close friend? I’m sorry… tell me about it in the comments, if it’s not too painful to talk about.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

February 26, 1998.  Learning things about my roommate and the Apostle Paul’s friends, and a hot redhead. (#164)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 3 Comments

I got off the bus in the afternoon on Andrews Road across the street from Jeromeville Covenant Church.  This was the church I attended on Sunday mornings, and I was there Wednesday nights as a volunteer with The Edge, the junior high school youth group, but now, on a Thursday afternoon, I was not headed to church.  I crossed the street and walked past the apartments just north of the church.  At the far end of that apartment complex, I turned, walking across their parking lot.  This apartment complex backed up to another apartment complex on another street, built separately but owned by the same company, with an opening in the fence between the two, three parking places wide.  Metal poles three feet high across this opening prevented cars from passing through, but one could easily walk from one parking lot to the other, as I did now.

This other apartment complex was across the street from my house.  I walked to the street, crossed it, and continued walking to my front door.  My roommate Sean was home; his compact pickup truck was parked in the driveway.  His license plate frame caught my eye: MY OTHER CAR IS A ZAMBONI, it said.  I had seen this on his truck many times, it was not new, and Zamboni machines were just inherently awesome for some reason.  But that day, reading those words brought me to a puzzling realization I had never had before.  I had known Sean for well over two years at this point, and we had both lived in this house for almost six months.  Yet I had never heard him talk about hockey, watch hockey, or perform any activity related to ice hockey in any way.  Why would Sean have a Zamboni license plate frame?  Hockey was not popular in Jeromeville; the nearest professional hockey team played a hundred miles away in San Tomas, whereas basketball, which was played during the same time of year, had a team nearby in Capital City.  Maybe Sean was a hockey fan, but without many hockey fans in Jeromeville, did not talk about it much.  Or maybe someone in Sean’s family liked hockey and put the license plate frame on the truck; I knew nothing about Sean’s family beyond that he had two brothers.

I walked in the house.  Sean was at the dining room table, studying a textbook about birds.  He was majoring in wildlife biology.  “Hey, Greg,” he said.  Pointing to a picture in his book, he continued, “Name that bird.”

I had no idea what kind of bird it was.  “I name it ‘Bob,’” I said.  Sean laughed, then I asked him, “I was just wondering.  What’s the story behind your ‘My Other Car Is A Zamboni’ license plate frame?”

As if it were the most ordinary, mundane fact in the world, Sean explained, “Frank Zamboni was my great-grandfather.  My relatives own the company.”

I stopped what I was doing and stared wide-eyed.  “Wow.  That is the coolest thing ever.”

“I guess,” Sean said.  “What are you up to tonight?”

How did I go all these years not knowing the important fact that my friend was a direct descendant of the inventor of the ice resurfacer?  I suppose that for Sean, though, it was less of a big deal, since he had grown up always knowing this about his family.  “I have Bible study at Joe Fox’s place,” I said, answering his question.

“Is that the group that you were telling me is really big?”

“Yeah.  I think it kind of serves them right for having all these specialized groups for different categories of people, and only one group for people who don’t fit those categories.  It means that JCF will have to acknowledge that there are some issues with how they’re doing small groups.  But Joe and Lydia found a way to make it work, even as big as it is.  I like it.”

“That’s good.”


After talking with Sean, I went to my room to check email and study for a while.  I lost track of time and left for Bible study about ten minutes later than I had wanted to.  I did not have far to go, Joe’s apartment was only about a mile away, but I knew I was getting there later than I wanted to.

I had felt a little frustrated with the way Jeromeville Christian Fellowship did small groups this year.  They always had some groups specifically meeting on campus in freshman dorms; I had no problem with that.  They also had Bible studies specifically for training students for leadership in ministry; these groups were hand-picked by their leaders, and from my perspective on the outside, they formalized and perpetuated cliques within the groups.  Many other students were leading Bible studies for specific purposes: two only for women, but none for men; one for transfer students; and groups for other categories I was not part of.  Joe Fox and Lydia Tyler, both fifth-year students, led the only group without a special focus, and all of the students who did not fit into those cliques or subgroups ended up in this one group.  With over twenty students on an average week, it could hardly be called a small group.

I could tell before I got inside that the living room was full, because I could hear voices from the other side of the front door.  I opened the door without knocking, since I was here every week, and stepped inside.  I waved at everyone who said hi to me, then carefully walked to an open spot on the floor.  With over twenty people attending each week, Joe’s living room got quite crowded, and this week I did not get a spot on the couch or in a chair.  A blond sophomore guy named Colin Bowman sat next to me.  “Hey,” I said.

“What’s up?” Colin asked.

“Not much.  I have a lot of work to catch up on, but I don’t think I’ll get anything more done tonight.  It can wait until the weekend.”

The only other open spot on the floor was all the way on the other side of the room next to Kendra Burns, a junior girl whom I had known for a while.  I would have rather had the other open spot near me, because two minutes after I arrived, an attractive, physically fit girl walked in and sat in the other open spot.  She had dark red hair, and she wore tight jeans and a tight-fitting shirt exposing her midriff.  She started talking to Kendra; apparently they knew each other.  She carried a Bible, and it appeared to be somewhat worn from reading; apparently this other girl was a Christian, not just checking out the group.  She turned her head slightly in my direction, and I looked down so she would not notice I was staring.  That was not exactly appropriate behavior for a Bible study.

Joe got everyone’s attention, and the group got quiet.  “Welcome,” he said.  “Before we start, we have announcements, and we also have a new person.”  Joe looked in the attractive redhead’s direction.

“Hi,” she said.  “I’m Rachael.  Kendra invited me.  We had a class together last quarter.  I used to go to U-Life and First Baptist, but I wanted to try out something new.”

“Welcome, Rachael,” Joe replied.  “Hopefully you enjoy the study.”

Lydia took over speaking next, making announcements about an upcoming spring retreat and a fundraiser for people from JCF who would be on summer mission trips.  Joe got out a guitar, and we sang two worship songs.

“Tonight we’re finally going to finish our study of Romans that we’ve been doing all year,” Joe explained.  “Then we have something else planned for the next two weeks, and when we come back from break, we have another study planned for the spring quarter.  So, tonight we’re reading both chapters 15 and 16.  You’ll do that after you break into your groups.”

Since this Bible study was so big, we had developed a routine of doing announcements and worship together as a large group, then dividing into three smaller groups for the actual Scripture reading and discussion.  If this group had to be so big, this was the best compromise, the best way to deal with it so that everyone got to participate in discussions.  The three groups were not fixed; one of the leaders would split the groups at the spur of the moment depending on where we sat during worship and announcements.  One group usually stayed in the living room, one went in Joe’s room, and one went in Scott’s room.  Scott was never home during our Bible study, because he led a Bible study for freshmen on campus at the same time.

This week, I was assigned to Scott’s room.  I sat on the floor against his bed as the rest of my group walked in: Evan Lundgren, Courtney Kohl, Colin Bowman, Silas Penfield, Anna Lam, and Alyssa Kramer.  Alyssa was Joe’s girlfriend, and she had become a de facto third leader for the group; each week, Lydia took one of the three smaller groups, Joe another, and Alyssa the third.  I was a little disappointed that Rachael and Kendra were not in my group.  Maybe I would get a chance to talk to Rachael afterward.

“So we’re gonna start by reading Romans 15 and 16,” Alyssa announced.  “Just read it to yourselves, and we’ll discuss any impressions you have first before we get to the discussion questions.”  I opened my Bible and began reading, starting in chapter 15.  There was a lot in the chapter, including one verse which had become very familiar to me recently.  Earlier this month, I spent a long weekend at Winter Camp with the kids from church.  The youth pastor always makes a mix tape of Christian music, called the Edge Mix, to give to the kids.  Edge Mix ’98 included audio clips of students from the youth group sharing testimonies, and one girl quoted from Romans 15 in her testimony: “May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

No one had mentioned why we were doing two chapters tonight.  We always had only read one chapter per week in the past, and some of the longer chapters with more theological depth, like chapter 8, we had further split into two weeks.  We were not pressed for time, since we had two weeks left of the quarter to do something else before starting our study for the spring quarter.  My guess was that chapter 16 was not the kind of Scripture that gets taught or preached about often in terms of being practical for Christians living in 1998, so Joe and Lydia expected us to have little to discuss from chapter 16.  Most of the chapter consisted of the Apostle Paul telling the Romans to greet specific people he knew.

A few months ago, I had attended the National Youth Workers’ Convention, and the free gifts for attendees included something called the Serendipity Student Bible, which included discussion questions specifically for youth groups.  I was using this Bible at the time, and the questions for Romans 16 asked what kinds of things Paul pointed out about the specific people mentioned in the chapter, and what this could mean for us.  I noticed this as I read chapter 16.

When I was about halfway through the chapter, Alyssa interrupted, announcing, “You don’t have to read all the names in 16.”  Apparently I was correct that we were not planning on studying this part of the book.  But, in light of what I had recently read in my youth group study Bible, I felt a need to speak up.

“But,” I said, “by studying who Paul wrote to, and what he said about those people, we can learn a lot about what he valued in people.”

“That’s a really good point,” Alyssa replied.  “So maybe go ahead and read 16.”

After a few more minutes, Alyssa asked if any of us had any insights about anything we read.  “Looking at the people Paul greets in chapter 16,” I said, “there’s a recurring theme of helping each other.  ‘Greet Priscilla and Aquila… they risked their lives for me.’  ‘Greet Mary, who worked very hard for you.’  ‘Tryphena and Tryphosa, those women who worked hard in the Lord.’ ‘Persis, another woman who has worked very hard in the Lord.’  Working hard for the Lord and the Church was obviously important to Paul.”

“Yeah,” Courtney added.  “Especially at that time, early in the Church’s history, facing persecution.”

“Good point,” Alyssa said.  “Anyone else?”

“Some of these people from chapter 16 appear in other parts of the Bible,” Evan said.  “Like Priscilla and Aquila, they were in Acts.  Paul met them on his travels.”

“Gaius,” Silas added.  “Gaius is mentioned somewhere else.”

“What’s this ‘I, Tertius, who wrote down this letter?’  Verse 22?” Anna asked.

“What?” Courtney said.  “Tertius?  But Paul wrote this letter.  That’s weird.”

“Tertius was the scribe,” I explained.  I remembered learning about this in Professor Hurt’s New Testament class last year.  “Paul dictated his letters to someone else who wrote them down.  In some of the other letters, at the end, there will be a verse where it says something like, ‘I, Paul, write this in my own hand,’ because the rest of the letter was written by a scribe.”

“Yes,” Alyssa said.  “That’s what I always learned too.”

“Verse 3,” Evan said.  “‘Greet also the church that meets at their house.’ Priscilla and Aquila’s house.  It’s important to remember that churches met in houses in ancient Rome.  They didn’t have church buildings like we do today.”

“Yeah,” Courtney added.  “And later he says something about Gaius’ hospitality.  Hospitality was a big deal to Paul and the early church.”

We continued discussing Romans for a total of about half an hour.  Many more discussions emerged from analyzing Paul’s greetings in chapter 16, and eventually someone brought up some of the verses in chapter 15, the part we were actually expecting to study before I made my suggestion about chapter 16.  At one point, Courtney said, “I love how we spent most of our time on the verses that you said we could skip.”  Everyone laughed.


After our Bible study, we shared prayer requests as a group, then we returned to the living room.  Lydia’s group was there, in the middle of prayers.  Joe’s group had not come back out to the living room yet.  I quietly sat on the couch, next to where Rachael was sitting on the floor, and waited for them to finish praying, praying with them when I could.  When they finished, they looked up and opened their eyes.

“Welcome back, Alyssa’s group,” Lydia said.

Rachael looked up at me and made eye contact.  “Hi,” I said.  “Rachael, was it?”

“Yeah!” she said, smiling.  “What was your name?”

“Greg.”

“Nice to meet you!”  Rachael shook my hand.

“You said you go to University Life?” I asked.

“Yeah.  I wasn’t really clicking with my small group there, so I decided to come with Kendra to her Bible study instead.”

“That works,” I said.  “I’ve been to U-Life a couple times last year, when I was having some issues with JCF.  I know a few people there.”

“I wasn’t there last year.  I just transferred to Jeromeville this year.  I’m a kinesiology major, and the kinesiology department at my other school made some changes that aren’t really the direction I want to go with my studies.”

“Are things going better for you here?”

“Definitely!”

“Where was your other school?”

“Grandvale State.  In Oregon.”

“Really!” I exclaimed, surprised.  “I was there last summer!”

“You were in Grandvale?”

“Yeah, doing the summer research internship with the Grandvale State math department.”

“That’s crazy!  I wonder if we knew any of the same people?  Did you go to a church in Grandvale?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Grandvale Baptist.”

“I went to Valley Community Church.  I don’t know anyone from Grandvale Baptist.  What was it like?”

“I went to the college and career Bible study.  It was okay, but I probably would have taken my time and looked at other churches if I’d been staying in Grandvale for longer.  And I didn’t have a car, so I needed something close by.”

“That makes sense.  But, hey, it was nice meeting you.  I need to get going, I have a midterm tomorrow to study for.”

“Good luck! I’ll see you around!”

“Thanks!”

I stuck around a little longer to make small talk, particularly with people who were not in my discussion group.  Kendra asked me about The Edge and said that she was considering youth ministry.  That would be nice, to have a new leader whom I was already friends with.  I told her that Adam White, the youth pastor at church, would be the best person to contact with questions.

Unfortunately, I never saw Rachael again.  She did not come back to Bible study, and I never saw her on campus.  That seemed to be a recurring theme in my life; I would meet someone that I wanted to get to know better, and I would never see the other person again.

On the way home, the rest of the night, I kept thinking about our extended discussion of Romans 16.  I usually thought of the Apostle Paul as some kind of great Christian leader; after all, he wrote about a third of the New Testament.  But back in his time, before there was a New Testament, he was a guy doing God’s work, and he had friends, brothers and sisters in Christ who were important to him.  Paul’s books in the New Testament were originally written as letters, personal correspondence between him and important people in his life.

I had brothers and sisters in Christ who were important to me too: my Bible study, the rest of my friends from JCF, the other leaders at The Edge, everyone else I knew at church.  Rachael may not have become part of my group of friends, but that was okay.  Wherever life took me in the future, I could always find a community of believers just by looking for a church.

At this point in my life, though, I was hoping that life would not take me very far; I was happy enough as a part of Jeromeville Covenant Church, volunteering as a leader with The Edge, that I was content to stay in Jeromeville for the rest of my life.  There was a time when I never would have expected to feel this way, given the liberal university town politics that dominate Jeromeville, and I knew that life would change once I was no longer a student.  But I was putting down roots in the community, something I never had back home in Plumdale, and Jeromeville was really starting to feel like home.  Of course, life would not turn out the way I had planned, but I had no way of fully understanding all that would happen to me at that time.

Readers: Tell me about someone you met once and never saw again, and why you wished you had met that person again.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

February 14-16, 1998. Where are you going? (#163)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 4 Comments

I turned into the parking lot for the camp, exhausted.  This trip up the mountain had taken about two hours longer than it would have taken in good weather.  A few feet of snow blanketed the ground, but the parking lot had been plowed, and it was no longer snowing.  Much of the snow from the parking lot had been piled in one spot, a little ways away from the entrance to the lodge.  I found that somewhat odd, but I thought nothing of it since I had not had much experience with snow in my lifetime.  I parked and went inside.

A student named Samantha Willis was the first one to see me.  “Greg!” she said.  “Where have you been all day?”

“I just got here,” I said.  “I had to take a test.”

“On a Saturday?”

“Yes.  It’s the test to get into the teacher training program.  It’s given all over the state, but the testing dates are always Saturdays so it doesn’t conflict with anyone’s classes.”

“Greg!” I heard Taylor’s voice from the next room.  He walked to where I was and continued, “Glad you made it.”

“It was crazy getting up here!  I guess they were only letting one car up the mountain at a time.  Is that so there aren’t as many cars on the road in the snow?”

“I think so.  Erica and the other kids who stayed back are outside, playing in the snow.  Or you can hang out here inside.  You can put your bags over there.”

“I’m gonna go outside for a bit, then I’ll come back in later.”  I put my bags where Taylor pointed, then walked outside.  About ten kids were out there with Erica Foster, who was helping a girl onto a sled as her younger brother Danny, one of the students, playfully dumped snow on her head.  Erica pushed the girl down a gently sloping hill as the others built snowmen and threw snowballs. Around thirty kids came to this camp; today was the day for skiing and snowboarding, and the rest of the kids and leaders were doing that at a resort about twenty miles away.

I would have enjoyed coming to something like this when I was of middle school age.  This camp was part of The Edge, the youth group at Jeromeville Covenant Church, and I knew that not all of the kids who came to youth events came from families at the church.  Some came from small churches with no youth groups, and some got invited by friends at school.  For some of these students, this youth group is the first they really hear about Jesus.

One of the snowballs flying across the grounds came right at me, and I jumped aside just in time.  “Hey!” I shouted at Shawna Foreman; I could tell from her arm position, and the way she was giggling, that she had thrown it.

“Did you just get here or something?” Shawna asked.

“Yes,” I said, explaining to her about the test.

I wandered over to the hill and tried sledding a few times.  Each time, the same thing happened: about halfway down the hill, the combination of my large size and the sled’s small size caused me to fall off the sled on my back.  I was not going fast enough to be hurt, though.  It was fun.

About an hour after I arrived, I had returned to the lodge to dry off, and I heard cars outside, then voices and footsteps. The skiing and snowboarding group had returned. My brain was wrapping around the significance of the numbers for the first time.  The majority of these students knew how to either ski or ride a snowboard, and most of those were experienced enough, and from wealthy enough families, that they brought their own equipment.  This was very different from where I grew up; Plumdale was a much more blue-collar community than Jeromeville, and a bit farther from anywhere with snow in the winter.

“What did they do?” Martin Rhodes asked as he walked in with the students.  “They plowed the parking lot while we were gone, and they piled all the snow on top of my car!”

“Wait!” I said, remembering what I had seen in the parking lot when I arrived.  “That pile of snow in the parking lot?  That’s your car under there?”

“Yes!” Martin replied.  “How am I supposed to get out?  Oh, hey, Greg.  You made it.”

“Yes.  But it took forever.  They were only letting one car up the mountain at a time, so we all had to take the off-ramp at Apple Canyon, stop at the stop sign, and get back on.  It took almost two hours to get from Blue Oaks to Apple Canyon.”

“Two hours?” Adam White, the youth pastor, said; he had walked up as I was talking to Martin.  “That’s only eight miles!  So you averaged four miles per hour?”

“Pretty much,” I said.  I noted in my mind that that was such a typical Adam comment.  Although he had a degree in psychology, I heard someone else at the church once describe Adam as a math guy who just didn’t study math, and as a mathematics major myself, I would definitely agree that Adam had a mathematical brain.

We had dinner about half an hour after everyone returned from the ski resort, then we gathered in the main room for Bible study.  The Bible study was led by a guy named Jonathan, not someone from our church; he was a youth pastor from a church in a different part of the state who had this side gig speaking at youth camps.  The theme for this camp was “Where Are You Going?”; a large banner with this title on it hung on the wall behind where Jonathan stood to teach.  That evening’s session was about Jesus calling the first disciples; they were fishermen, but Jesus said he would make them fishers of men.  He gave their lives a new direction.

Adam got up in front of everyone after Jonathan finished.  “Today is Valentine’s Day, as you know, and you might have noticed, on the walls here, there are hearts with each of your names on it.  For the next fifteen minutes, we are going to go around and write Valentines to each other.  Sign as many people’s hearts as you can.  Write encouraging notes to each other.  Say something nice.  Tell people what you like about them.  But keep it appropriate.”

This kind of activity made me both excited and nervous.  I was very interested in what others would say to me, but I was nervous to be honest with others, because I did not want anything I said to be taken the wrong way.  I wrote to several of the kids I knew well how much I enjoyed seeing them at youth group every week.  I added slightly more personal messages for a few of them, like the ones who helped me with my Dog Crap and Vince movie a few months ago.  I also wrote to all of the leaders: Adam, Noah, Taylor, Martin, Erica, Courtney, Brody, Marlene, and Robert A. Silver III, who went by the nickname 3.  To each of them, I wrote something along the lines of how I enjoyed having gotten to know them over the last year.  For Taylor, I added something about having been friends since Day 1 of freshman year, and about having gone to In-N-Out Burger on the day it opened.

“Okay, now,” Adam announced after a while.  “You can go look at your own Valentine and see what people wrote to you.”  I walked over to mine, half expecting it to be mostly empty, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was not.  About twenty kids had written messages to me, some of them just saying things like “hi,” but a few of them meaningfully expressing appreciation for my presence on the youth leadership, and reminiscing some of the fun memories of the last year.  All of the leaders had also written on my Valentine.  Abby, whom I had known since sophomore year and who was engaged to my housemate Josh, wrote:

Greg – I’m so glad you’ve gotten involved with The Edge! You’re great around these kids.  God has really given you a heart for youth, and it’s been good to see you discover that. You’ll make a great teacher too!  Your sister in Christ, Abby

In a corner of the Valentine was an unsigned message in Josh’s handwriting.  He had drawn a small dog with a speech bubble next to it, as if the dog were speaking, and inside the speech bubble he had written a quote from a well-known television commercial that I often laughed at and quoted around the house:

“Yo quiero Taco Bell”

I laughed at this.  It was silly, but having an inside joke of sorts is a way to know that someone really knows me and pays attention to me.  I really did feel appreciated tonight.

“Hey,” I said walking up to Abby and Josh.  “‘Yo quiero Taco Bell.’  That was funny.  And, Abby, thank you for your kind words.”

“I meant it.  You really are going to be a great teacher.”

“You are,” agreed Josh, who was currently in the teacher training program, to teach science.

“Thanks,” I said.


We sang worship songs and had another Bible study with Jonathan on Sunday morning.  He spoke about John 14, where Jesus tells Thomas, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  Thomas did not know where he was going, but following Jesus was the way, just as it is for us.

After lunch, we had the afternoon to play in the snow, or hang out in the lodge.  I hung out in the lodge for a while, then went outside.  Danny Foster, Zac Santoro, and two other boys appeared to be making a snowman, but as I walked closer to them, I realized that the object they were shaping out of snow was not a snowman.

“Hey, Greg,” Zac said.

“Wait,” I replied.  “Is that–”

“A snow toilet!” Danny exclaimed.

“I have to remember this,” I said.  I pulled out my camera and took a picture of the snow toilet, with the boys posed around it.  A couple minutes later, Danny tried to sit on the snow toilet, and it collapsed.

“Oh, no,” Zac said.

“Can you rebuild it?” I asked.

“Let’s go!” Danny exclaimed, attempting to repair the snow toilet.

I walked a little farther from the lodge.  Courtney, Brody, Marlene, and 3 had engaged several students in a playful snowball fight.  Others were riding sleds and innertubes down the hill.  Playing in the snow was so much fun.  This was only the fourth time in my life that I had ever touched snow, since I grew up somewhere where it did not snow, and my family had no concept of fun family vacations or outdoor recreation.  Almost all of our family vacations consisted of driving long distances to visit relatives, where my brother and I had to sit still as the adults talked about boring adult things.  Although I sometimes lamented all of the experiences I missed out on in childhood, it was kind of nice to still be able to enjoy simple things that were new to me, like playing in the snow.

After dinner, and another Bible message from Jonathan, someone suggested playing a giant game of Mafia.  I had learned this game recently from one of the other Edge leaders, and we had taught it to some of the kids.  Mafia was a social deduction game that inspired many other similar games over the years, including the 21st-century Ultimate Werewolf card games and Among Us smartphone game.  A master of ceremonies would secretly give each player a role by drawing cards.  Two players were the Mafia.  Each round, all the players would close their eyes, and the two Mafia would open their eyes and silently decide on someone to eliminate.  Another player, the Doctor, had to guess whom the Mafia would eliminate, and if correct, the player would be revived and not leave the game.  A fourth player, the Detective, made one guess each round as to who the Mafia was, and the master of ceremonies would silently answer yes or no.  Then, everyone would open their eyes and discuss the results, eventually voting on one suspect to eliminate.  If both Mafia members were eliminated, the citizens would win; otherwise the Mafia would win.

Almost everyone from our group decided to play. I had never played with a crowd this big; the game could take a while if the Mafia were not flushed out quickly. Brody was the MC; he dealt cards to determine roles, and I was the detective.  “Close your eyes,” I heard Brody say.  While my eyes were closed, I heard him ask the Mafia to open their eyes and choose a victim, then he asked the Doctor for a player to revive.  Continuing, he said, “Detective, open your eyes.”  I looked up at Brody, and he said, “Point to a player to find out if they are Mafia.”  I pointed at Erica Foster, just because it would be hilarious if the sweet, innocent leader was Mafia.  Brody’s eyes widened, and he shook his head yes.  Perfect.  I guessed one right on the first try.  I did not want to be too obvious during the discussion, though, because that would put a target on myself.

 “Wake up,” Brody announced.  “Adam.  You mysteriously crashed into a tree while snowboarding.  They did a good job of making it look like an accident.”

“Aww, come on, really?  First one out?” Adam said.  I mostly kept quiet during the ensuing discussion.  The group voted to eliminate Zac Santoro.

“Zac was not Mafia,” Brody announced.  “Everyone close your eyes.”

I waited until it was my turn to open my eyes as the Detective.  I pointed at Shawna Foreman, still remembering the afternoon before when she threw the snowball at me.  Brody nodded in the affirmative, with an even more surprised look on his face.  Thirty-five people were playing, not including myself, and I had picked out the two Mafia on my first two guesses.  After I closed my eyes, I was distracted from the discussion because I was trying to work out the probability that I would choose correctly on my first two guesses.  The number of combinations of 2 out of a group of 35, that would be 35 times 34, divided by 2… which simplified to 35 times 17.  I knew 35 times 10 was 350. Then add 35 times 7, which would be, umm, 5 times 7 and 30 times 7.  So, 35 plus 210, or 245, and 350 plus 245 was 595.  So the probability of picking out the Mafia on the first two tries was 1 in 595, or less than 0.2 percent.  As I was doing the math, not paying attention to the discussion, I heard that Erica Foster was eliminated.  Perfect. One of the Mafia gone already, without me having to look suspicious as the Detective.  Maybe this would be a quick game after all.

It was not a quick game.

On the next round, when it was my turn to guess, I did not need to do anything, since I already knew who the two Mafia were.  Brody had to ask for my guess, though, because the other players did not know that I knew.  I pointed at Brody; he silently laughed while shaking his head no.  On the fourth round, I pointed at myself, also obviously not Mafia.

Brody began telling more and more gruesome stories about how the people died. “Samantha, you were found decapitated in the town square.  3, you were ripped apart by wild dogs.”  Danny Foster started a campaign to get me eliminated after the Mafia took out 3, and just like that, I was out.  I had information as the detective, and I never got a chance to use it.

One by one, Shawna, as the Mafia, continued eliminating all of the players, drawing no suspicion to herself.  And one by one, the townspeople continued eliminating everyone but Shawna, drawing a collective gasp every time Brody announced that the eliminated suspect was not Mafia.  Finally, the game was down to just one leader and two students: Taylor, Shawna, and Stanley Houston, one of the boys who had built the snow toilet.  Shawna was trying to convince Stanley that Taylor was the Mafia.  In desperation, Taylor said, “This is our last chance to get this right.  If we pick the wrong person this time, then the Mafia will win, because the last townsperson will be dead after the next round.  So here goes: I’m the detective.  And Shawna is Mafia.”

“He’s lying!” Shawna replied.  “I’m the detective, and Taylor is Mafia!”  I knew they were both lying, but it was interesting to see how desperation had inspired this bold move.  When it came time to vote, everyone held their breath and looked at Stanley, since they knew Shawna and Taylor would be voting for each other.  Stanley pointed at Shawna.

“Shawna is Mafia!” Brody exclaimed.  Everyone except Erica and Shawna erupted into cheers.  The townspeople finally won the game, after the Mafia had taken out all of them except two.  We won at the last possible chance.


We had one last “Where Are You Going?” Bible study on Monday morning. We chose this weekend for Winter Camp because today was Presidents’ Day, a federal holiday, so there was no school even though it was Monday. The Bible study was about the beginning of Acts, when Jesus appeared to his disciples forty days after his resurrection.  He told them, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  Now they knew where they were going: far away to carry the Gospel to other lands.

After this, we packed up and headed home.  Since I had arrived late, no one was assigned to my car, but Zac and Danny asked if they could ride home with me.  I was fine with it; those two were a lot of fun.

In addition to our Valentines, we each got to keep two other things from the weekend.  One was an annual tradition for Winter Camp with The Edge: a mixtape with ninety minutes of Christian music of all different genres.  There were songs from some bands I was familiar with, like Jars of Clay, Five Iron Frenzy, DC Talk, and the children’s video series VeggieTales, of which I had seen two episodes.  Many artists on Edge Mix ‘98 were new to me.  Track 3 was called “What Would Jesus Do,” by a band called Big Tent Revival.

“What would Jesus do?” I said as the singer sang the same phrase, holding up my left wrist.  The other gift we all received that weekend was around my wrist, an embroidered bracelet with the letters “W.W.J.D.?,” which stood for this phrase.  These bracelets had recently become trendy among Christians, especially in youth and young adult groups, but some Christian celebrities and athletes had been seen wearing the bracelets too.

Zac and Danny fell asleep within the first half hour of the trip home, but I kept the music playing. Several tracks deep into side 2 of the mixtape, a song came on that kept asking in the chorus, “What’s your direction?”  This song seemed appropriate for a weekend with the “Where are you going?” theme.  I did not recognize the voice, so when it was safe to do so, I looked at the liner notes.  There was no song called “What’s Your Direction,” or any other phrase repeated in the song, but I analyzed the song list and discovered that this song was the oddly-titled “Ode to Chin,” by a band called Switchfoot.

In addition to being only my fourth time seeing snow, that weekend also held the distinction of being the first time I had ever heard Switchfoot.  They had another good song on Edge Mix 2001, but their major turning point in my consciousness would come in 2003, when they released the album The Beautiful Letdown.  This album was a crossover hit, one of the most successful Christian albums of all time, eventually going on to sell three million copies and spawn two mainstream top twenty hits.  Switchfoot’s music stayed true to Christian principles, but they presented these principles lyrically in a philosophical manner, without sounding preachy, gaining them fans outside the church as well.  They have been one of my favorite bands since my late 20s.

I would learn years later that Ode to Chin, as well as the album it came from, The Legend of Chin, were named after a childhood friend of the two brothers who founded Switchfoot.  I liked that song.  It made me think.  What was my direction?  Where was my life going?  I was going to be a teacher, I had that at least, but life still had many unanswered questions, and I would probably spend the rest of my life seeking the will and heart of God to figure those things out.

Readers: Does it snow where you live? Have you ever been to a winter camp? Tell me about it!

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