June 15, 1996. The graduation party at the Valdez Street house. (#87)

March 14, 2021December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 23 Comments

Back in the 1990s, all of the hottest names in alternative rock played the Lollapalooza festival. The festival toured major cities around the United States every summer, bringing live music along with other performances and attractions. Critics called Lollapalooza an event that changed the history of music forever.

I never attended a Lollapalooza show. I did not go to big concerts back then, and I felt a little scared to do so, knowing the kind of people that an event like Lollapalooza attracted. In my life, the legacy of Lollapalooza was all of the advertising campaigns, small local events, and the like with names ending in “-palooza.” This was similar to the excessive use of the suffix “-gate” to name political scandals, after the burglary at the Watergate Building in Washington, D.C. in 1972, which led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. If something had a name ending in “-palooza,” everyone knew that it was going to be life-changing… or at least the person organizing and naming the event believed that it would be life-changing.

A little over a week ago, I had been at the final meeting of Jeromeville Christian Fellowship for this school year, talking to people afterward about the upcoming finals week. Brian Burr approached me, handing out small postcard-sized flyers. He was tall and athletic, a high jumper on the University of Jeromeville’s track team, with reddish-brown hair. He was graduating this year, and next year he would be staying in Jeromeville to work with JCF part-time and apply to medical school. Brian and I were going to share an apartment next year, along with Shawn, my current Bible study leader and one of Brian’s current housemates.

“Grad-a-palooza,” Brian said in an overly dramatic and exaggerated tone as he handed me his flyer. I took the flyer and read it.

GRADAPALOOZA!
A celebration of the graduation of the gentlemen of 1640 Valdez Street
Mr. Brian Burr
Mr. Shawn Yang
Mr. Michael Kozlovsky
Mr. Daniel Conway

Saturday, June 15, 1996
6pm until whenever
1640 Valdez St., Jeromeville

“Graduation party?” I asked. “At your house?”

“Yes. Saturday, the 15th. Right after finals are done.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

In hindsight, it was not entirely necessary for me to repeat back that it was a graduation party; this was obvious from the flyer. I suppose I asked because I was surprised; I had never been invited to a college graduation party. I did not know any seniors last year.

Yesterday, Friday, was the last scheduled day for finals, but my last final had been on Thursday morning. I had spent the last two and a half days doing a fat load of nothing. I went for bike rides, I read, I worked on my novel, and I wasted a lot of time on the Internet with Usenet groups and IRC chats. It was wonderful, and so far there had not been another incident like the one a few days ago.

When I moved to Jeromeville to start school, someone gave me a camera as a going-away present. The camera then spent twenty-one months in a drawer, unused. Yesterday I remembered that I had a camera, and I bought film and batteries, so I was ready to preserve some memories from Brian and Shawn’s party tonight.

Valdez Street was in south Jeromeville, on the other side of Highway 100 from me. I drove east on Coventry Boulevard and turned right on G Street toward downtown. As I approached downtown, I drove past progressively older houses and apartment complexes; after crossing Fifth Street, G Street became a commercial corridor. It was Saturday night, and I had to drive slowly, watching for pedestrians and bicycles. At least three households of JCF students were neighbors on Valdez Street and Baron Court, and as I got to know these people more, I often wished I could be part of that community. Most of these people who were not graduating would be dispersing to other parts of Jeromeville next year, though, so a community like that may not exist next year. I at least had the new apartment with Brian and Shawn to look forward to, even if we would not be neighbors with a large group of friends.

The student population of Jeromeville was gradually emptying as students finished finals, but I still had to park farther away from Brian and Shawn’s house than usual. I could hear muffled music and conversation as I approached the house; apparently this was a big party. I walked in and looked around; music was playing, and people were talking loudly. Hopefully I would be able to hear when people talked to me.

“Greg!” Brian called out, waving, as he saw me from across the room. “Come on in!”

I had been in this house four times before, and I had never seen it this full. People were sitting on couches, in chairs, on the floor, and on the stairs. A streamer that said “CONGRATULATIONS CLASS OF 1996” hung from the wall.

“How’d your finals go?” Brian asked.

“I think I did well. What about you?”

“They weren’t great, but I passed.”

“Congratulations! Your ceremony was this morning?”

“Yeah. Mom and Dad and my sister came for the day. We went out to dinner, then they left about an hour ago.”

“Nice!”

“Thanks! Enjoy the party!”

Someone I did not recognize got up and walked toward the bathroom; I sat in his vacated seat. I knew about half the people here from JCF, and I recognized some other JCF people whom I did not know well. I assumed that the guys who lived here probably had other friends, so not everyone here would be from JCF. I pulled out my camera and took a few candid shots of people sitting around talking.

Kristina, a sophomore who lived around the corner on Baron Court, walked past me. “Greg!” she said. “What’s up?”

“Not much. How were finals?”

“Hard! But they’re over now! How were yours?”

“I think I did fine,” I said. “Is–” I caught myself before finishing my question, Is Haley here? Six years ago, in eighth grade, Paul Dickinson had figured out that I liked Rachelle Benedetti, and within a few days the whole school knew. Ever since then, any time I had any sort of romantic interest or crush, I treated it like a closely guarded secret which no one must ever find out. “Are any of your roommates here?” I asked instead. That way, my question would get answered without Kristina suspecting that I liked Haley.

“Kelly and Jeanette are here somewhere. Haley went home on Thursday after her last final.”

“Oh, ok.” I was a little disappointed that I would not see Haley for the next three months, but also relieved that, with Haley not here, I would have no opportunities to embarrass myself in front of her. “What are you up to this summer?” I asked.

“Taking classes. You?”

“Same. Well, one class first session. Probably just hanging out here second session. I’m going to my parents’ house next week.”

“Nice. I’ll probably see you around campus.”

“Yeah.”

I walked around, making small talk and asking people their plans for the summer. Most of the people here were not going to be in Jeromeville. That did not bode well for my hope of having a social life this summer. I knew that JCF was running one small group Bible study this summer, so that was something. And I would still be singing at church; I knew some people from church who would be around this summer.

I got up to use the bathroom. A decoration on the bathroom wall above the toilet said “We aim to please, you aim too please.” At first, my mind parsed that as “we aim to please, you aim to please” with a word misspelled. I did not understand why the phrase needed to be repeated. I did not get the joke until I flushed the toilet; the second part was supposed to say “you aim too, please,” as in “please don’t pee on the floor.” I laughed out loud at my sudden realization. Hopefully no one found it strange that someone was laughing in the bathroom.

I returned to the living room, realizing that I had not talked to Shawn Yang yet, although I probably knew him the best of all the guys who lived at this house. I saw Shawn on the couch with a middle-aged Asian couple. I approached him, and he said, “Hey, Greg. Have you met my parents yet?”

“No,” I said. “I’m Greg.”

“I’m John,” Mr. Yang said, shaking my hand. “And this is Judy.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Greg is going to be my roommate next year,” Shawn explained. “And he’s a math major too.”

“Oh you are?” Mr. Yang asked. “You gonna be a teacher too?”

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” I said. “I don’t really see myself as a teacher.”

“You’re not graduating this year?”

“No. I’m a sophomore.”

“Oh, ok.”

“You guys are from Ashwood? Is that right?”

“Yeah. What about you? Where are you from?”

“Plumdale.” Without thinking, I added, “Near Gabilan and Santa Lucia.” Most people have no idea where Plumdale is.

“It’s nice out there!”

“Yeah. I’ll be in Jeromeville most of the summer, but I’m going home next week.”

After a lull in the conversation, Mr. Yang said, “It was nice meeting you!”

“You too!”

I was ready for another break from socializing, so I walked outside. It was a little before eight o’clock, and it was still light out; in Jeromeville, the sun does not set until close to nine this time of year. Two guys were throwing a Frisbee back and forth in the street, moving out of the way whenever a car approached. Eddie, Xander, Lars, and a guy I had met a couple times named Moises sat on a couch, which had been placed on the lawn for some reason.

“We’re done with another school year,” Eddie said. “Two down, two to go.”

“I know,” I replied. “I think I did pretty well on finals. How were yours?”

“It was a lot of work, but I passed.”

“Dude, mine were really tough,” Lars said.

“What are you doing this summer?” Xander asked me.

“I’m staying here. I have one class first session. When do you leave for India?”

“Two weeks. I’m a little nervous, but mostly excited! God is going to move!”

“I can’t wait to hear about it,” I said.

“Greg?” Eddie asked. “Have you decided yet if you’re going to Urbana?”

I had not decided, and now that Eddie was asking, I felt like I had dropped the ball. Intervarsity, the parent organization of Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, puts on a convention every three years, in Urbana, Illinois, for young adults to learn about missions and service opportunities around the world. The convention was the last week of the year, after Christmas. “I haven’t decided,” I said. “But I’d like to if I can make it work. I don’t know if I’m ready to go on a mission trip myself, but now that I have a lot of friends doing stuff like that, I think it would help me understand what they’re doing. Xander’s trip to India, and Melinda’s trip to Russia, and Taylor and Pete and Charlie going to Morocco with Jeromeville Covenant Church.”

“Then what are you still thinking about? If it’s money, you can apply for a scholarship through JCF. Talk to Dave and Janet.”

“It’s more just the fact that it’s overwhelming. I don’t know how to book a flight or a hotel room or anything like that. And it is a lot of money, too.”

“I know a lot of people have been wanting to travel in groups and share hotel rooms,” Eddie said. “If I hear of someone who might be able to include you, I’ll have them contact you.”

“Thanks. That would be awesome.”

“Heads up!” shouted Alex McCann, a housemate of some of the guys on the couch, as a Frisbee sailed toward us. Lars stood up and caught the Frisbee in time; then, walking away from the couch, he shouted at Alex and threw the Frisbee back at him. Eddie and Xander stood up, and Eddie said to me, “We’re gonna go throw the Frisbee. Wanna come?”

“I might later,” I said. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Moises stayed on the couch with me. “I think you should go to Urbana,” he said. “God is going to do great things through you.”

“Thanks,” I said, curious how he knew about God’s plan for my life when I pretty much just knew this guy to say hi to.

“Have you ever taken a spiritual gift assessment?” Moises asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“They handed one out at my church a few weeks ago. You answer questions about what skills you have and what you’re good at, and it tells you, like, if God has equipped you to preach or worship or pray or do administrative work. You can ask your pastor if he has one. What church do you go to?”

“Newman Center.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the student-led Catholic church.”

“My family is Catholic,” Moises said. “My family came here from Mexico; everyone is Catholic there. But then when I became a Christian, I realized just how much Catholics have wrong. Like, Jesus died on the cross for your sins already. You don’t have to confess to a pope.” I just nodded, not wanting to argue. Moises‘ knowledge of the inner workings of the Catohlic Church must have had some shortcomings if he believed that the average Catholic confessed to His Holiness Pope John Paul II on a regular basis. Also, although I did not think about it at age 19, I have also come to learn over the years that being a busybody like Moises is not the best way to share one’s faith with others. After studying the Bible more this year, though, I had come to agree with his point that salvation came from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, not through following the rituals of Catholicism alone.

By this time, it was getting dark, so I went back inside, making more small talk and helping myself to snacks on the kitchen counter. Later that night, in the living room, Eddie, Kristina, Brian, and a few others were doing some kind of silly dance. I saw Tabitha, one of the first people I knew from JCF because she was in the dorm next to mine last year, sitting on the couch with an empty seat next to her. “May I sit here?” I asked Tabitha.

“Sure,” she said. “Actually, I was looking for you. Eddie told me a few minutes ago that if you go to Urbana, you’d be interested in going in together with someone on a flight and hotel room.”

“Definitely.”

“I was going to put something together later this summer. I’ll keep you posted.”

“I’m not going for sure yet, but I know the price goes up July 1, so I want to decide for sure by then. I’ll let you know, and you keep me posted on your plans.”

“Great! Sounds good!”

I stayed at the party until after midnight. By then, much of the crowd had gone home, the music had stopped, and I was getting tired. I said my final goodnights and congratulations to Brian and Shawn, as well as to their other graduating housemates, Mike Kozlovsky and Dan Conway. These four and all the other seniors here tonight were done with college, at least done with their bachelor’s degrees. And now I was halfway there, if I finished on schedule. It was hard to believe that it had already been almost two years since Mom and Dad helped me unpack in my tiny dorm room in Building C.

As I drove home through the dark but warm Jeromeville night, I kept thinking about how my life had changed so much, not only in the time since I came to Jeromeville, but just in this school year. I had a great time at this party, and unlike my few other experiences with college parties, people here were not getting drunk. At the beginning of this school year, I did not even know that any of these people existed, except for Tabitha, and she was not in my close circle of friends yet at the time. So much had changed for the better.

I lived alone in a small studio apartment this year because I was unable to find roommates among people I knew. Early in the year, I worried that living alone would be excessively boring and lonely, but indirectly, living alone ended up being the best thing for me. It prompted me to make more of an effort to stay connected with my friends from freshman year, which led to me finally accepting Liz Williams’ invitation to come to Jeromeville Christian Fellowship. At JCF, I made so many new friends, including the people at this party, and my future roommates for junior year. And, more importantly, I learned what it really meant to follow Jesus, and how only his death on the cross brought eternal life, and hope, and inner peace.

I went straight to bed when I got home; I was tired. I would have time to pack a suitcase in the morning, and after church I would make the two and a half hour drive to my parents’ house in Plumdale. But unlike a year ago, the drive to my parents’ house would not mean the start of three months away from my friends. I was only staying there for a week this time, and I would go for another week in August after my summer class ended. For the rest of the summer, I would be here in Jeromeville. Plumdale was home, but Jeromeville was also home now.

As I drifted off to sleep, still thinking about how much life had changed during my sophomore year at UJ, I wondered what changes were in store for me in the next school year. Maybe I would find other new things to get involved with, as I had gotten involved with JCF this year. Maybe I would end up going to that Urbana convention and deciding to become a missionary. The possibilities were endless. At the time, I had no idea that the next school year would bring challenges to my faith and questions about my future. I would have to make difficult decisions. I would find myself getting involved in two new activities, one of which was not at all anything I expected to do until it happened, and the other of which I was only beginning to think about at that point. But I knew that, no matter what, with God on my side everything would work out just fine.

April 3-5, 1996. I look like a deranged serial killer. (#76)

December 27, 2020December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 6 Comments

Back in 1996, only rich people had mobile phones, because they were large and expensive. If I wanted to call someone in another city, I had to make a long distance call from my landline telephone, and I would get billed for the call by the minute. The University of Jeromeville got some kind of deal with MCI, a major company in the telephone industry at the time until they were acquired by Verizon in the early 2000s. MCI provided new state-of-the-art student identification cards to all of us students, and in exchange, we got to use MCI to make long distance calls at a slightly discounted rate. I had no plans to use this service; I already had long distance service on my phone with another company, and I did not make long distance calls very often except to my parents. But because we were getting new ID cards, all students had to get our pictures taken again at some point during the first week of spring quarter.

“You said it looked bad!” Danielle was saying as I walked into the Newman Center chapel Wednesday night for choir practice. I looked up to see what was going on; Danielle was holding one of the new student ID cards. “I think this is a good picture.”

“No I don’t!” Danielle’s sister Carly exclaimed, trying to take the card away as Danielle held it away from her.

“Greg!” Danielle called out as I approached the others. “Isn’t this a good picture of Carly?” Danielle asked as she tossed Carly’s ID card to me.

I caught the card and looked at it as Carly said, “Eww! Give it back!” In the picture, Carly was smiling, and her straight brown hair looked neatly groomed.

“Here,” I said, handing the card back to Carly. “I think you look just fine.”

“I should have taken my glasses off,” Carly said. “But, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” I smiled.

“Can I see your new picture?” Danielle asked me. “Did you get it yet?”

“I didn’t. I’m probably going to go tomorrow.”

Phil Gallo turned toward us. “I heard that people are upset because apparently MCI has all of our personal information now.”

“Hmm,” I replied. That sounded a bit unsettling, but there was not much I could do about it at this point, except possibly boycott MCI and not use their service.

“How’d your week go, Greg? What classes are you taking this quarter?” Danielle asked.

“Two math classes, Computer Science 30, and Anthro 2.”

“Is that the same Anthro class that Claire’s taking?”

“Yes. I saw her in class today.”

“What?” Claire said, turning toward us. “I heard my name.” Claire Seaver was a junior with a background in music, and although there was no formal leadership structure in our church choir, she performed many leader-like activities for the group.

“You’re in my Anthro 2 class,” I said.

“Yeah! And we have to miss it on Friday because we’re singing here for the Good Friday Mass.”

“I know. I hope we don’t miss too much.”

“Do either of you guys know someone who you can ask to take notes?” Danielle asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “Tabitha Sasaki is in that class too; I already asked her today if I could copy her notes for Friday. I’ll ask her if I can make an extra copy for Claire. Danielle, do you know Tabitha? She goes to JCF, and she lived in Building B last year?”

“Oh yeah. I remember her.”

“Okay, everyone, we need to get started,” Claire called out. “We have a lot of new music to practice this week, because we have Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter.”

Choir practice that week took much longer than usual, over two hours. We had more music to practice for the upcoming Holy Week services, as well as songs specific to Easter Sunday. By the time I got home, it was nine-thirty, and I was too tired to do any more homework.

Fortunately, the next day was Thursday, my lightest day of the week that quarter. I was done with lower division mathematics, so for this quarter I signed up for Combinatorics and Linear Algebra Applications, two upper-division classes for which I had taken the prerequisites. The mathematics major also required one of two possible lower division computer science courses, and being one who liked to play around with computers, I was excited for that class, Introduction to Programming. I completed my academic schedule with Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. This would satisfy a general education requirement, and I already knew the professor, Dr. Dick Small. He taught a class I took last year for the Interdisciplinary Honors Program that I was in, about the literature and culture of South Africa. I always thought that Dr. Dick Small was one of the most hilariously unfortunate names that one could possibly have.

When I was signing up for classes this quarter, I noticed that all four classes that I took were only offered Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And, without realizing it, I noticed after the fact that I had left my Tuesdays and Thursdays completely empty, having chosen an anthro discussion on Wednesday and a computer science discussion on Monday. Since I had also decided to take the quarter off from my part-time job tutoring at the Learning Skills Center, I had no reason to get out of bed on a Tuesday until Bible study in the evening, and no reason to get out of bed on a Thursday at all. Some of my friends had told me that they would be perfectly happy with a schedule like that, but I did not think it would be good to be that lazy and antisocial. The UJ physical education department offered a number of half-unit classes twice a week, and I decided to take weight training this quarter just to give me something healthy to do on these days. I had taken bowling in the fall, for a similar reason.

The sky was mostly blue with a few clouds that Thursday morning, so I rode my bike to campus instead of taking the bus. I parked outside of the Recreation Pavilion, where the weight room was. Those first few classes the first couple weeks of the quarter, we learned a little bit about technique, and the rest of the hour we just lifted weights. After class, I changed into normal clothes. I also put on the jacket I had bought a couple months ago when a theft in the laundry room had forced me to buy new clothes; I had worn the jacket on my bike but taken it off for weight training. This jacket had a black torso made from the same material as athletic wear and lined with something warm, but the sleeves were gray, made out of the same material as sweatshirts. The jacket also had a dark green hood, but I did not put the hood on that morning.

I got back on my bike and decided to try something new today. I rode east across campus, past the Memorial Union and the Death Star building, on the path that became Third Street. I crossed A Street, which marked the border between the university and the city, and parked my bike about a hundred feet past A Street. Next to this bike rack was a coffee shop called Espresso Roma. I walked in and continued to the counter, where one person was in line in front of me.

I did not drink coffee, but at that time I had a bit of a curious fascination with coffee shops. It seemed like hanging out in coffee shops was the cool thing to do, and I wished I could experience that, despite the fact that I did not like coffee. The Coffee House on campus at the Memorial Union was more like a student union than an actual coffee shop. I had seen Espresso Roma before, to my knowledge it was the closest coffee shop to campus, so I figured I would give it a try.

“May I help you?” the cashier asked.

“Hot chocolate, please,” I said.

“Whipped cream?”

“Yes.” The hot chocolate at the Coffee House on campus did not come with whipped cream, so this place was better in that sense. I found a table and took off my jacket, placing it on the back of the chair. I got out my backpack and combinatorics textbook, and looked around. Last week, I was back home in Santa Lucia County on spring break, and I went to a coffee shop in Gabilan called the Red Bean with my friend Melissa. Espresso Roma did not look much like the Red Bean. Although in an old neighborhood like the Red Bean, Espresso Roma was in a much more modern-looking building. The interior had a concrete floor with electrical conduits and air ducts visible in the ceiling above. Floor-to-ceiling windows, with wood borders around the glass making them look more like doors, faced Third Street; one of them actually was a door, leading to outdoor tables.

I got my hot chocolate a couple minutes later and sat back down. I had plenty more to do after I finished my combinatorics homework, since I got nothing done after choir practice last night. I spent almost two hours in Espresso Roma reading and studying and doing homework. I went back there several more times over the next couple years for hot chocolate and a different place to study other than the Coffee House in the Memorial Union and the library.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays that quarter, my only class was the weight training class. I could go back home any time I wanted. But today, I had one more important thing to do before I left campus: I had not yet taken my photo for the new student ID card. The photographers had set up in the Recreation Pavilion on the basketball court; I had seen them on the way to weight class this morning. When I unlocked my bike, I noticed that the sky had turned gray; it had mostly been blue when I arrived at Espresso Roma two hours ago. I felt what seemed to be raindrops on my head; that was not a good sign. By the time I rode past the Death Star building a minute later, the rain had become much more steady. I pulled my hood on, hoping that wearing my hood would not make my hair look funny for my picture.

It only took five minutes to get to the Recreation Pavilion by bicycle, but in that five minutes the rain quickly became a heavy downpour. By the time I walked into the building, I was drenched. My jacket had kept my torso sufficiently dry, but the sleeves, not being waterproof, had soaked through to the long sleeves I was wearing underneath

“Your old card, please?” a woman asked as I walked inside. I handed over my old card, and the woman who took my card pointed at a line for me to stand in. I could have come back tomorrow when it might be dry, but by giving her my old card, I had made my decision. I would be looking a little bit wet in my new student ID photo. It was no big deal.

A few minutes later, I set my jacket and backpack down when I got to the front of the line to get my picture taken. “Looks like you got a little wet today,” the photographer asked. “Is it raining?”

No, I thought, I was wading in the creek and I dropped something, so I had to reach in with both arms and get it. But somehow my torso stayed miraculously dry. “Yeah,” I said out loud. “It just started coming down hard all of a sudden while I was on my way here.”

“You sure you want to take your picture like that?” he asked.

“It’s ok. It won’t really show.”

I stood and looked where he told me to. In every ID card and school picture I had taken, I always tried my best to smile, and I hated the way I looked in every one of these pictures. So I deliberately did not smile. I kept my face in as much as a natural position as possible, and not smiling was natural for me. I stared at the spot that the photographer had told me to until I heard the click and saw the flash. “Thank you,” the photographer said. “Go over there, and they’ll have your card ready in about ten minutes.”

A while later, I heard someone call my name from the table with the card printer on it. A guy sitting there handed me my new card, along with a sticker to put on it to show that I was registered as a student this quarter. Whatever look I was going for, being wet and disheveled and not smiling, it did not work at all. My face appeared angry and unstable, my hair was messy, and my wet arms were visible on the sides of the picture. Smiling for school pictures did not work, and apparently not smiling did not work either. The photos on ID cards just did not look good, and this was something I would have to come to accept. And as if to drive home the point that I was just cursed with bad luck when it came to ID card photos, the weather was dry by the time I left the Recreation Pavilion, and it stayed dry for the rest of the night.

(Author’s note: This is a reconstruction, made with the help of Bitmoji. I still have the original card, but the photo is smeared and scratched after having been put in and taken out of my pocket for years, and the original card has personal information on it that I do not wish to copy here.)

The rest of the week went as planned. I sang at both the Holy Thursday and Good Friday Masses. Friday night I went to Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, hoping that Tabitha would be there and that she had remembered to bring her notes from anthropology class. I noticed a few of the regulars were missing, probably because it was the weekend of Easter and some people had gone home to be with their families for the weekend. Tabitha was there, and after the last worship song, I walked over toward her. She was talking with Eddie, Haley, Kristina, and a guy whom I had seen around but had not met yet. I walked up, not saying anything, not wanting to interrupt.

Eddie acknowledged me first. “Hey, Greg,” he said. “Did you get your new student ID yet? We were just talking about that.”

I pulled my new ID card out of my pocket. “I look like a deranged serial killer,” I said sheepishly as I handed Eddie the card.

“Why is there a shadow on your arms?” he asked.

“My arms were wet,” I said, explaining the sudden downpour and my jacket.

“I want to see the deranged serial killer!” Kristina shouted.

“Is it ok to show the others?” Eddie asked me.

“Sure,” I replied. Eddie passed the card to Kristina; Haley and Tabitha also looked at the card.

“You’re not smiling,” Haley pointed out. “How come?”

“I smiled for my driver’s license, and all my high school yearbook pictures, and my old student ID, and I never liked the way those looked,” I explained. “So I tried something different. That didn’t work either, apparently.”

“It’s not bad. But I think you would look better if you smiled.”

“Thanks,” I said, making my best attempt at a smile. Then, turning to Tabitha, I asked, “Tabitha? Do you have your notes from anthro today?”

“Yeah,” she said, reaching down under her chair and picking up a notebook, which she handed to me. “I think I got all the important things Dr. Small said.”

“Can I give this back to you Monday in class? Or do you need it sooner?”

“Monday is fine.”

“Greg,” Eddie said. “I was going to ask you tonight. Are you busy next weekend?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“We’re planning a sophomore class trip. We’re going to go to Bay City on Friday night, eat at the Hard Rock Cafe, then find a place to sleep on the beach. We’ll be home Saturday night so everyone can go to church Sunday.”

This invitation came as a surprise to me, I had never done anything like this, but I was intrigued. “Who all is going?” I asked.

“All of us,” Eddie said, gesturing at himself and the others I had been talking to. “I’m going to invite a few more people, but I don’t know yet who is going for sure.”

This was not my usual reality. I had never been to a Hard Rock Cafe, I had never slept outdoors, and taking a trip like this was not something I normally would do on short notice. But I learned the hard way recently that hesitating on a big decision had consequences. Also, this trip would be a chance to spend time with friends; my 19-year-old boy mind was specifically excited about the thought of spending time with Haley. “Sure, I’m in,” I replied. “I should bring a sleeping bag?”

“Yeah. I’ll call you in a few days with more details.”

“Sounds good! May I have my ID card back?”

“Oh yeah,” Kristina said, handing me the card.

I really was okay with the fact that I was stuck with this horrible picture on my ID card for the next few years. Everyone seemed to have a bad student ID or driver’s license picture at some point in their lives, and now I had one with a good story behind it. I had learned two important lessons that day. First, my jacket was not completely waterproof, and second, I may as well smile in pictures because I did not look better not smiling. Smiling still did not feel natural to me, but maybe I could just make myself think happy thoughts when I was posing for a picture. And now Eddie had included me in this upcoming trip, and Haley was going to be on the trip too, and all of that certainly gave me a reason to smile.

October 11, 1995. A busy day. (#55)

July 14, 2020December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 21 Comments

I locked my bike outside Wellington Hall and walked down the hall, joining about five other people waiting outside room 109 for the 9:00 Math 22A class. Another class met in this room at 8:00, and I always arrived early enough that the other class had not been dismissed yet. I learned the hard way on the first day of class not to open the door this early.

“Hey, Greg,” Jack Chalmers said. I knew Jack from last year; we had had two classes together, and we lived in nearby dorms and ate at the same dining commons.

“Hi,” I said.

“Finding inverses of matrices is hard!” Jack exclaimed, speaking quickly and eliding syllables here and there, as he normally did, but I understood what he was saying. “The homework took me forever!”

“I know. It seems like there should be an easier way. Maybe we’ll learn one later.”

As Jack continued, I became aware of the classroom emptying. “I just hope every assignment in this class isn’t gonna be that long. I’m already pretty busy this quarter. Hey, Lizzie.”

“Hey, what happened last night?” a girl leaving the classroom asked Jack. I recognized Lizzie, because I had seen Jack say hi to her before as we waited for her class to finish and ours to start. Lizzie was fairly short, with brown eyes and dark brown hair pulled into a ponytail.

“I had so much homework!” Jack told Lizzie.

“That’s too bad,” Lizzie replied. “Hopefully I’ll see you this weekend?”

“Yeah.”

Lizzie looked at me for a second before she turned to walk away. “Bye,” I said, waving, even though I did not know Lizzie at all beyond always seeing her leave this class, and I had no idea what plans Jack had missed out on.

“Bye,” she replied, smiling.

I walked into the room along with Jack and the others waiting for our math class. I spent the next hour listening to the instructor, a curly-haired man named Anton, explain properties of matrices and their inverses. Anton demonstrated how to prove the invertibility of a matrix, in his usual broken English. He told us to call him Anton; I was not sure if this was because his last name was difficult for English-speakers, or because calling professors by first name was the norm in his home country. I never did figure out exactly which country this was.

As soon as math class finished, I crossed West Quad Avenue and walked to the far end of the Memorial Union building, near the campus bookstore, to a stairway leading down. The basement of this building contained a game room with 16 lanes of bowling, along with pool tables, pinball machines, and coin-operated video games. Here at the University of Jeromeville, students got two appointments to register for classes, three weeks apart, using an automated telephone system. On the first appointment, students may only register for up to thirteen and one-half units, enough to be classified as a full time student, but limited so that not all classes fill up before everyone has had a chance to register. I registered for bowling and weight training just to make sure I had enough classes, intending to drop these once I added chemistry on the second pass, but I ended up keeping bowling and only dropping weight training.

Today, the bowling coach, Frank White, demonstrated the proper release of the ball, with a flick of the wrist giving the ball a bit of spin. We began learning this last time, on Monday, and I was terrible at it. My mind began to wander, and I spent a few minutes starting at a plaque on the wall with names of everyone who bowled a perfect game on these lanes. So far, there were eight perfect games. This was the fourth time bowling class had met this year, and I had been bowling down here a few times last year, but today one of those names jumped out at me that I had never noticed before.

FRANK WHITE
4/29/89

Frank White was my instructor, the man standing here in front of me explaining how to release the ball. Apparently he bowled a perfect game here six years ago. That was quite an accomplishment. I watched carefully, paying close attention to what he was doing. By the end of class, though, it seemed like my technique was worse than ever. I had not bowled this many gutter balls since I was a child.

I had an hour between bowling and chemistry lecture, which I used to work on the new math assignment due Friday. After chemistry, I had another hour before physics lecture; I spent it sitting on the Quad, eating the lunch I packed and reading the campus newspaper, the Daily Colt. After physics, I returned to Wellington, where my math class had been in the morning. Room 102 was a large study room, with a row of comfortable chairs, and six cubicles each containing a table and a small chalkboard. A few students sat quietly in the chairs, and two students worked together in one of the cubicles. I noticed the cubicles had signs with numbers on them. Four other signs placed in prominent places around the room announced that These cubicles may be reserved by the Learning Skills Center.

That was me. This was my first day on the job for the Learning Skills Center. I walked to table 3, where two students named Yesenia Fonseca and Kevin Dunnigan were assigned to meet me. A short girl with olive skin and long brown hair most of the way down her back sat at the table. I wondered if she was waiting for me, or if she just sat there not knowing that the table was reserved.

“Are you Yesenia?” I asked.

The girl’s face lit up. “Yeah!” she exclaimed enthusiastically. “You’re my tutor?”

“Yes. I’m Greg. Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too! Is it just us or will there be a group?”

“There’s one other person signed up, a guy named Kevin Dunnigan. Do you know him?”

“No,” she said. “But he might be in my class. It’s a huge class.”

“I think usually they put students together from the same class, so he probably is,” I explained. Yesenia and Kevin were taking Math 21A, the beginning quarter of calculus. Students who begin calculus fall quarter get a large lecture hall class.. I skipped a quarter since I had taken the Advanced Placement test in high school, so I started fall of my freshman year in 21B, and since fewer students take 21B in the fall compared to 21A, my classes were smaller.

“We can wait a few minutes to get started, see if Kevin comes,” I said. “It’s early.”

“How does this work?”

“Honestly, I’m not really sure,” I said. “This is my first time tutoring, ever. I think I just answer any questions you have about anything you’ve been going over in class. Or we can work on stuff from your homework. You can do it while I’m here, so you can ask for help if you need to.”

“That sounds good. So what year are you?”

“I’m a sophomore,” I said.

“I’m a freshman.” Yesenia smiled apologetically, as if to say that she knew that freshmen were traditionally on the bottom rung of the social ladder. I did not care that she was a freshman.

“How do you like Jeromeville so far?” I asked.

“I love it! I’ve already made a lot of great friends in my dorm.”

“Good. Which dorm?”

“South Area. Building C.”

“Building C!” I exclaimed. “I was in Building C last year!”

“The IHP!”

“Yes! I loved it too! I felt like the IHP gave me a smaller community within the large university.”

“That’s a great way of describing it.”

A boy with dark hair and an athletic build approached our table, looking at a sheet of paper on which he had written something. “Are you Greg?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “Kevin?”

“Yeah. You’re my tutor.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said. Kevin Dunnigan did not look like what I expected of someone with an Irish-sounding name; I wondered from his appearance if his mother was Asian. “Do you two know each other?”

“No,” Kevin said.

“I’m Yesenia,” Yesenia said, extending her hand. “I think I’ve seen you in class. 10:00 with Dr. Hong?”

“Yeah.”

I spent the next fifty minutes working with Yesenia and Kevin, talking about limits of functions and how to calculate them. This was the class that I had skipped; I had not technically taken it before. I was familiar with most of what they were doing, of course, but one question on their assignment involved the epsilon-delta proof of finding the limit of a function. My calculus class at Plumdale High did not go that in depth. However, I was able to figure it out; I had done enough similar problems in other classes since then.

“It’s about time to wrap up,” I said at the end of the session. “Any other questions before we leave?”

“I’m starting to understand this a lot better,” Kevin replied.

“Me too,” Yesenia added. “Thank you!”

“You’re welcome,” I replied. “See you guys next week?”

“Yeah!

It was almost 4:30 by the time I finally got home. I spent some time on the computer catching up on emails, and I put a frozen pot pie in the oven for dinner. I still had to do my pre-lab for physics tomorrow. But my night was not over yet, because it was Wednesday, and I had choir practice at church. Last week was the first time I had ever sung at church, and one of the others in the group, Heather Escamilla, had mentioned carpooling since we were neighbors in the same apartment complex. At 6:40 that night, after eating the pot pie and writing my pre-lab, I walked to Heather’s apartment and knocked on the door.

“Hey, Greg,” Heather said, opening the door. I could see a guy with long brown hair inside the apartment, sitting at a computer typing; he looked up at me. “This is my boyfriend, Gary,” Heather said.

“Hi,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” Gary replied.

“You ready?” Heather asked.

“Yes. Let’s go.”

Heather locked the door behind her, and I followed her to her car, a Jeep Cherokee. The way Gary sat at the computer made me wonder if he and Heather lived together. Being Catholic, there was all that stuff about fornication and adultery and things like that which suggested that it was wrong for boyfriends and girlfriends to live together. Maybe they lived together in separate bedrooms. It was none of my business, so I did not ask. On the way to the church, I told Heather about my first day of tutoring, and she told me about the midterm she had in the morning that she would be up late studying for.

When we arrived, I noticed that Danielle was there with her sister, Carly, a freshman. I had met Carly twice before, once at church this year and once last year when Danielle’s family came to visit her in the dorm. I thought it was interesting that Carly was singing too. Danielle had told me over the summer that Carly was coming to Jeromeville, and Danielle was a little bit upset that Carly had chosen the same major and was in one of the same classes as her. And now Carly was following her big sister to choir at the Newman Center. I hoped that there was no drama going on with them.

“Hi, Greg,” Danielle said. “You remember my sister, Carly?”

“Yeah. Good to see you again.”

“You too,” Carly replied. Carly was a few inches taller and somewhat thinner than Danielle, with straight brown hair. They did not look very much alike, but considering that my brother Mark does not look like me, I no longer found it surprising when siblings did not look alike. For as much as Danielle was a good friend, I had to admit that Carly was better looking. I wondered if, growing up, Carly got more attention from boys, and if this had been part of the reason Danielle felt uneasy about Carly being in the same major and one of Danielle’s classes.

A few minutes later, Claire, a junior who seemed somewhat to be in charge of things, gave us all a stack of papers. It was an address and phone list of all of us doing music at 11:00 Mass. I scanned the list to make sure that my information was correct; it was. I read through the other names. I recognized some of the names. Danielle Coronado. Carly Coronado. Matt Jones. Heather Escamilla. Some of the last names were unfamiliar to me, because I had only met these people by first name last week. Claire Seaver. Sabrina Murpy. That was an unusual last name; I wondered if it was a typo and her name was actually Murphy. (It was, I would learn later.) I continued reading. Phil Gallo. Ryan Gambrell.

A jolt of adrenaline shot through my body, and I did a double take and read the name again. My brain made a flurry of connections between things said a year ago and things said last week. Matt said last week that Ryan was his friend from high school. Matt went to St. Luke’s High School in Gabilan, so Ryan also went to St. Luke’s. Right near where I grew up. I looked at Ryan, now seeing his mysteriously familiar toothy smile with new eyes.

“Ryan Gambrell,” I said.

“Yeah?” Ryan replied.

“You’re Annie’s brother.”

Ryan looked confused for a second, then surprised; clearly he was not expecting me to say that. “Yes,” he said. “How do you know my sister?”

“I went to Plumdale High. A class I was in and a class she was in did a project together my senior year, her sophomore year. And now I remember I told her I was going to Jeromeville, and she said her brother goes there.”

“How funny. Small world.”

“Tell her I said hi.” I wanted to tell Annie so much more than hi. I wanted to tell her all about how I was doing here. I wanted to know where she was applying to school, since she was a senior this year. I wondered what to make of the fact that she was always so nice to me when I was a senior, and she wrote something really nice in the back of my yearbook, but she had not stayed in touch at all. I wanted to tell her to come visit me if she ever came up here to visit Ryan or to tour the campus. And I was curious if she and her boyfriend were still together, because as long as they were, all these feelings I had felt wrong and forbidden.

“I will,” Ryan said.

Choir practice continued uneventfully for the rest of the night. One song I did not know well, but I figured it out fairly quickly and felt that I would be able to sing it with everyone else in front of the congregation on Sunday morning. On the way home, in Heather’s Jeep, I mentioned to her about knowing Ryan’s sister from high school.

“Whoa,” Heather said. “It’s weird how that kind of thing happens.”

“I know.”

“Gary told me once he was in Capital City, and he ran into this guy he knew from when he used to live in Arizona as a kid.”

“Wow. That’s even crazier.”

I got home and listened to music while I opened an IRC chat on the computer; although I was messaging a girl on there, I could not stop thinking about Annie Gambrell. I wondered if I would ever see her again. Even though she had not written to me, I had a connection with her again, in that I knew her brother. But I also felt that this crush was one I needed to keep secret, because the entire time I knew her in person, she had a boyfriend. Annie’s boyfriend was one of the popular guys from the class a year older than her and a year younger than me.

In the time that I knew Ryan, I ended up not talking to him much about Annie. Annie was off limits. Most of the best girls were off limits. It was not my place in life to be romantically involved with the popular girls. The concept of high school popularity does not carry over to the culture of a large university, but still felt, deep down inside, that I probably did not have much of a shot with friendly and attractive girls here either.

October 3-8, 1995. Trying something new. (#54)

July 8, 2020December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 28 Comments

Every once in a while, an event leaves such an impression on the mind of those living through it that everyone remembers exactly where they were when it happened. My first chemistry lab of fall quarter was one of those moments. It was a Tuesday morning. About an hour after class started, while we were busy measuring aqueous solutions in graduated cylinders and pouring them into Erlenmeyer flasks, Deb, the TA in charge of the lab section, announced that it was time to turn on the radio, because of the big announcement that was expected today. A hush slowly settled over the twenty-four students in the lab as Deb turned on an AM news station broadcasting out of Capital City. Reception was not great in the basement of the chemistry building, but it was audible. After a few minutes of analysis and speculation, the broadcast switched to a live feed on location.

My class became even more hushed as a new voice began reciting the words that nearly everyone in the nation had been waiting sixteen months to hear: “We, the jury, in the above entitled action, find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder…”

A few of my classmates gasped. This was not what they expected to hear, nor was it what I expected. O.J. Simpson was a retired football player, actor, and television personality who had been accused of murdering his second ex-wife and her male friend. For well over a year, news related to the murder and trial had dominated the media, both as serious journalism and source material for comedy. All the evidence suggested that O.J. was guilty, but apparently his team of celebrity lawyers created doubt in the minds of the jurors to get him acquitted. To this day, no one else has ever been charged with the murders.

When my lab finished, I rode my bike north on Colt Avenue, turned right on Shelley Avenue, left on East Quad Avenue, and parked my bike by the campus bookstore, across from the Death Star building. A meme from the 2010s depicted a man sitting at a table with a sign reading “I WILL ARGUE WITH ANYONE ABOUT ANYTHING,” and the first time I saw that meme, I recognized right away that the photograph was taken right here on the University of Jeromeville Quad. A wide pedestrian sidewalk ran between the north edge of the Quad and the Memorial Union building, which contained the bookstore. A series of tables, resembling picnic tables made of plastic coated metal mesh but with benches only on one side, lined this sidewalk. Typically, student clubs and organizations would use these tables for information and recruiting; someone from the organization would sit on the bench, facing the Memorial Union and the walkway, with a sign advertising the group to students who walk by.

Unlike the man from the meme, I was not at this table to argue with anyone about anything. Sister Mary Rose was sitting at the table, with the sign for the Newman Center, a stack of pamphlets, and a clipboard. “Hi, Greg,” she said. “Thanks for signing up to work today.”

“No problem,” I said. “So what do I do? Just tell people who we are and hand these out?”

“Yes. Give these out to interested students,” she said, gesturing toward a stack of pamphlets. “And have them write their contact information on this clipboard if they want us to contact them.”

“I can do that,” I said. I looked through one of the pamphlets. It explained briefly about the concept of the Newman Center’s ministry to Catholic students at secular universities, along with a three-sentence biography of our namesake, 19th-century British theologian and priest John Henry Newman. The pamphlet listed the times of our Sunday Masses and other weekly activities.

A male student with bushy brown hair and a backpack walked past the table, slowing down and looking at the sign. “Hi,” Sister Mary Rose said. “Can I help you?”

“I was just wondering what this was,” he replied.

“We are the Newman Center. We are a Catholic student community. We have Mass every Sunday, and we have social activities too.”

I handed the student a flyer, and he looked through it. I was curious what made him stop at our table. Does he come from a Catholic background? Is he just interested in Catholicism? Was he just being friendly? I did not ask. I did not feel comfortable asking a personal question like that.

“Thanks,” the student said as he walked away.

“Is there anything I should be saying to people who come to the table?” I asked after the student was out of earshot.

“Not really,” Sister Mary Rose explained. “Just be friendly, and answer any questions they might have, if you can.”

“Sounds good.”

“So are you done with class today?

“No. I have physics lab at 2. I had chemistry lab this morning.”

“Two labs on the same day.”

“Yeah. That’s all I have today. This morning in chem the TA stopped the class so we could all listen to the O.J. verdict. I thought that was kind of funny.”

“I heard he was found not guilty.”

“Yeah. I wasn’t expecting that. Of course, I haven’t been following the trial too closely. I’m just sick of hearing about it.”

“I know what you mean.”

Another student walked up to our table, a girl with dark hair. “Hi,” I said, holding a pamphlet. “Would you like information about the Newman Center?”

“Sure,” the girl replied, taking the pamphlet from me and flipping through the pages. “Are you the only Catholic church in Jeromeville?”

“There is also St. John’s. They are a more traditional Catholic parish. The Newman Center is specifically geared toward students, although there are some adults who attend our Masses as well.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Would you like to sign up for our contact list? We can send you more information.”

“Sure,” she said, writing her name, phone number, and email on the clipboard.

“Thanks,” I said. “Have a great day.”

“You too!”

“That was good,” Sister Mary Rose told me as the girl walked off. “Are you looking at getting more involved with the Newman Center in any other ways this year?”

“Well,” I said, “Danielle keeps trying to get me to sing. I’m going to come to choir practice tomorrow and see what happens.”

“Good for you! I think you’ll love it.”

“I’m kind of self-conscious about singing in front of people. But a choir seems less difficult than singing solo. And I need to get more involved in things. I don’t see my friends as often now that I live alone.”

“Danielle Coronado invited you to practice? You two know each other besides just church, right?”

“Yes. She lived right down the hall from me in the dorm last year.”

“I think you’ll like it. I’ve noticed you have a pretty good voice.”

“Thank you.”

The next evening, after I finished my Hungry-Man Salisbury steak frozen dinner, I got in the car and drove south on Andrews Road. I turned left on 15th Street and right on B Street toward downtown, then zigzagged the grid streets to the Newman Center, located in an old brick building on C Street between 5th and 6th. I walked into the chapel, where a group of about ten people stood on the stage that had once been the altar before the chapel had been remodeled at some point.

“Greg!” Danielle called out. “You made it!”

“I did,” I said.

“Welcome,” a girl with light brown hair said, in a strong voice that she projected in a way that made me think she probably had a background in music or theater. I knew her to say hi to, her name was Claire, but I did not know her well. “Danielle told me you would be coming. We were just picking out what songs we’re going to sing this week. Grab a songbook.”

I looked around the room as I picked up a copy of the same songbook we used in Mass. I recognized a few faces here besides Danielle and Claire, but the only one I knew by name was Matt Jones. He was a tall boy of mixed white and Asian heritage, and we had met before because our families knew each other back home. He had graduated from St. Luke’s High School in Gabilan, the medium-sized city next to the rural community of Plumdale where I lived.

There was one other new person that night, a freshman named Phil with messy hair and stubble. The others introduced themselves to Phil and me. There was a cute little redhead girl whom I had noticed before; her name was Sabrina. An olive-skinned girl named Heather. A guy with dark hair and a toothy smile named Ryan; Matt said that he and Ryan went to high school together. And a lot of other people who I did not remember at first, including two who looked too old to be students. Something looked vaguely familiar about Ryan; I was not sure what it was, but if Ryan and Matt were friends in high school, then Ryan and I grew up near each other, so we may have crossed paths in the past. Or maybe he just looked familiar because I had seen him around church last year.

Each week, we had to choose four songs: one for the opening, one during the offering, one during Communion, and one for the end of Mass. Claire passed around a list of songs to choose from, songs that would go well with that week’s Scripture readings. In addition to these four songs, we also sang a responsorial based on one of the Psalms, in which we would sing the verse and the congregation would sing the chorus together. The Catholic Mass also included a number of other songs used for specific parts of the service. When I was growing up, these would typically be the same from week to week, but twice a year or so the songs would change to a different set of music saying basically the same lyrics. The Newman Center seemed to do things the same way.

The songs we chose for this coming week were all mostly familiar to me, as were the songs for the other Mass parts. For the ones I did not know well, I could read music well enough that the tune and rhythm came back to me as we were singing. Some of these songs I knew before I started attending Mass at Newman. “I know this one really well,” I said to Danielle, who was next to me, when we started singing “Cry of the Poor.” “We used to sing it at my church back home.”

“Mine too,” Danielle replied. “We use a lot of the same music here as my family’s church.”

After we practiced all the songs, as practice was winding down, the girl who had earlier introduced herself as Heather approached me. “Hey, Greg?” she asked. “Danielle told me you live at Las Casas. Is that right?”

“Yeah,” I said, not entirely sure where she was going with this. Was she stalking me? Did she know someone who needed a roommate, and she knew I lived alone, and now I was going to have to make a big decision?

“I do too. Might you be interested in carpooling?”

“Sure,” I said, relieved that her proposal was nothing to be afraid of. Driving to church with a neighbor was not scary.

“Let me find a piece of paper, and I’ll write down my phone number. And my apartment number.”

“Is this just for choir practice on Wednesdays? Or do you want to carpool Sundays too?”

“Sure. We can do Sundays too.” Heather found a piece of paper, wrote her information, and gave it to me. Her full name was Heather Escamilla, and she was in apartment number 239. I tore off enough of the paper to write my own contact information, which I gave it to her.

“Can you carpool this Sunday?” I asked. “Want me to drive?”

“Sure!”

The following Sunday morning, Heather knocked on my door a little after 10:30, in plenty of time to get to the church for 11:00 Mass. I had to get there on time now, since I was actually part of the service, although I was not usually one to arrive late in the first place.

“Hey,” I said after opening the door. “You ready?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Which car is yours?”

“That one,” I said as I gestured to the red Ford Bronco parked outside my apartment. “Well, technically not mine. My parents own it. You know.”

“Yeah.” As we pulled out of the parking lot, Heather asked, “So where are you from? Are your parents around here?”

“No. Plumdale. Near Gabilan and Santa Lucia.”

“Oh, okay. How far is that from here?”

“I can get home in less than three hours if traffic is good.”

“That’s not bad. I’m from down south, near San Angelo. On a good day it takes six hours.”

“Sounds right. What year are you, and what are you studying?”

“I’m a junior. Psych major. And you’re a sophomore? Danielle said you and her were in the same dorm last year?”

“Yeah. She lived one door down across the hall from me. And I’m a math major.”

“Eww. Math and I don’t get along.”

“That’s what a lot of people say.”

“I’m sure they do. Did you have a good weekend?”

“Yeah, but it was boring. Went for a bike ride yesterday.” I did not tell her that I had almost cried Friday night because I was so lonely.

“That sounds nice,” Heather said. “Mel and I were at a party on Friday. It was, well, interesting. You know.”

“Mel?”

“Melanie. From choir. You met her on Wednesday.”

“Oh, okay. I still don’t know everyone.”

When we arrived at church, the building was mostly empty. The early service had left already. We walked to the other musicians; the guitarists were turning their guitars, the pianist was practicing, and the singers were looking through pages of sheet music. Heather started talking to a thin girl with medium brown hair whom I remembered seeing on Wednesday; I thought this was probably Melanie.

“Hey, Greg,” Danielle said, noticing that I had arrived. “You ready?”

“I guess. I’m a little nervous.”

“There’s no reason to be. Just sing like you do when you’re at your seat. You’ll be fine.”

Danielle was right. I just sang, and it was fine. We sounded good. There were enough of us on stage that my voice did not stand out, so even though I was a little self-conscious, I had no need to be. The entire Mass went over smoothly from the perspective of the choir: the opening song, the Kyrie and Gloria, the Alleluia before the Gospel reading, the song for the offering (this was Cry of the Poor), the short songs between the priest’s prayers while preparing the bread and wine, the Lamb of God, a song during Communion, and a closing song. Even in my state of near-perpetual self-consciousness, I thought I sounded good, and all of us as a group sounded good as well.

“So are you going to keep coming back to choir?” Claire asked after Mass was over.

“I think so,” I replied.

“Great! I’ll see you Wednesday then.”

“Sounds good!” Turning to Heather, I asked, “Are you ready?”

“Yeah. Just a minute.”

I said goodbye to Danielle, Matt, Phil, Ryan, and the others while I waited for Heather. She was talking to Melanie. After a minute, Heather and I walked back to the car, and I drove us back to our apartment complex.

I was definitely planning to keep coming to choir practice indefinitely. With me living alone this year, I would need to work harder to make friends and keep the friends I made last year. That meant it was time to get involved in more activities. With choir at Newman, I was already making new friends after just one week, in addition to staying in touch a good friend from last year.

After I got home, Heather walked back to her apartment, and I lay on my bed, humming Cry of the Poor. Songs get stuck in my head easily. The Lord hears the cry of the poor, the song says. Although I knew many others had lives worse than mine, sometimes I felt poor, crying out to the Lord. Maybe he finally heard me. Maybe he gave me this opportunity to sing at church so I would be more connected both to the church community and to a group of friends. And in the process, I was serving my community. Maybe this was what I needed to get out of my lonely funk.

December 2-4, 1994. Jeromeville Christian Fellowship and the Newman Center. (#15)

April 14, 2019December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 36 Comments

I walked around the dining hall with my tray of food, looking for a place to sit. I saw some people I recognized at a round table that did not look full, so I sat with them. Rebekah was to my left, then Rebekah’s roommate Tracy, Mike, Ian, David, Gina, and an empty seat.

“What’s everyone up to this weekend?” Mike asked

“I have to study,” Gina said. “I’m so behind in all my classes.”

“I’m going home,” David said. “I’m leaving tonight.”

“I’m going to a party tonight,” Tracy said. I took a big bite of my hamburger and began chewing just as she asked, “What about you, Greg?”

“I hmmf turr-rahhh a vay-vah urr Rye mm Faah,” I said, chewing.

“What?” Tracy asked.

“He has to write a paper for Rise and Fall,” Rebekah said without missing a beat.

I swallowed and looked at Rebekah. “How did you understand that?”

“I don’t know,” she said, smiling. “I just did.”

“You’re good. I’m impressed.”

“Thanks! It’s one of my many talents.”

“I can’t believe we only have one week of classes left before finals,” Gina said. “This first quarter seemed to go by fast.”

“We survived!” Mike shouted. “We survived one quarter of college!”

“I’m nervous,” I said.

“Why?” Rebekah asked.

“Because of finals. What if I fail? I’ve never taken a college final before.”

“Relax. You’ll do fine.”

The next few hours were uneventful. I read for a while. I checked a few online newsgroups I was following. I had a good talk on IRC chat with a girl from Florida. She signed off around 9:30, because it was after midnight where she lived and she had to go to bed, but she gave me her email so we could keep in touch. After she left, I decided to walk around and see if anything exciting was happening.

On the first floor, I noticed that the door to room 116, the big four-person suite, was open, and I heard voices inside. I poked my head in the door. “Hi, Greg!” Sarah said. “Want to come in? We’re just hanging out.”

“Sure,” I said, sitting on the floor against a wall. Sarah, Krista, Pete, Taylor, Caroline, Liz, and Ramon were all squeezed into the room; four of them sat on chairs, and the rest on the floor. Two other people I did not recognize were also there, a tall guy with wavy sandy-colored hair and a dark-haired Asian girl with a name tag that said “Tabitha.” I knew everyone in Building C by name and face by now, and I knew that these two did not live in Building C.

It seemed that these people had come from some event where people wore name tags, because Tabitha was not the only one who hadn’t taken hers off. Taylor wore one that said “Taylor,” and Krista wore one that said “Christa.” I pointed at Krista’s name tag and said, “There’s a typo on your name tag.”

Krista looked down at the name tag. “Yeah,” she said. “I noticed that earlier.”

“Is it really a typo if you’re not typing, though?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t think so,” the tall guy said.

“So there’s a writo on my name tag,” Krista said, laughing. “Is that a word?”

“Writo,” Tabitha repeated. “Nice.”

“Greg? Have you met them?” Krista asked, gesturing toward Tabitha and the guy I didn’t know.

“No.”

“This is Tabitha. And this is Mike. Tabitha lives in Building B, and Mike lives in J.”

“Hi,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

Mike, or more specifically its full form Michael, was the most popular name for males around my age. There were already two Michaels in Building C, Mike Adams whom I saw at dinner and Mike Potts from the second floor. And now I had a third one to remember, Mike From Building J. Sometimes I think that if I ever forget a guy’s name, I should just guess that his name is Mike, because there’s a pretty good chance I’d be right. And I could do the same thing for girls by guessing Jennifer; there were two Jennifers in Building C. I didn’t know either of them very well, though.

“How do you guys know Tabitha and Mike?” I asked the group, not directing the question at anyone in particular.

“From JCF,” Sarah explained. “Jeromeville Christian Fellowship.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s like a church group?”

“Yeah.”

“What church do you go to?”

“I go to Jeromeville Covenant, but the people at JCF come from different churches. We have a large group meeting on Friday nights, where we sing worship songs, and someone gives a talk.”

“That sounds nice.”

“And we have a small group Bible study one night a week,” Taylor added. “They have a couple of groups in each dorm area, and a bunch of them off campus too.”

“You should come to JCF large group sometime,” Krista suggested. “Do you think you would want to?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

“You’re Catholic, right?” Caroline asked in her mild Australian accent. “Didn’t Danielle say you go to church with her?”

“Yeah.”

“Let us know if you ever want to come,” Krista said. “Everyone is welcome.”

“I will.”

The group in Sarah’s room stayed there for almost another hour, just talking about life and school and the upcoming end of the quarter. After that, I went to bed, thinking about tonight. Mike From Building J and Tabitha both seemed nice. But I really didn’t know what to expect from this JCF group. I remember learning at some point that there were other churches that followed Jesus besides the Catholic Church; Mom probably mentioned that at some point when she was talking about someone we knew who was Christian and not Catholic. In 10th grade world history class, I remember learning about the historical reasons behind this. I should be glad that I learned anything in that class, because Kim Jensen was in that class and I spent a lot of time daydreaming about her and ignoring the fact that she was dating an older jock.

I wasn’t the type to go out and say that one church is more right than others. But I didn’t really know what other churches were like. Is JCF the kind of group where people dance around and clap their hands? Do they convulse on the floor and speak in tongues? Are they going to recruit me to go door to door and try to convert people? Were they a cult, where I would have to leave everything I knew and isolate myself and pledge myself to them for life? I didn’t know. But I did know that all of my friends who were in Sarah’s room tonight didn’t seem like cultist types, at least not on the outside.

After an uneventful and damp Saturday spent studying and doing homework, Sunday morning was dry, although still mostly cloudy. Back in September, Mom told me that once I got to Jeromeville, I should look for the Newman Center. A Newman Center, named for the 19th-century priest and theologian John Henry Newman, is an organization for Catholic students at non-Catholic universities, although there was no standard for exactly what each Newman Center at each university was like. It didn’t take me long to find the Newman Center in Jeromeville, because they had a table in the Quad during the first week of school. I took their flyer and found that, in addition to being a student club-like organization, they also had a priest who gave regular Mass services twice every Sunday morning and once more in the evening.

Back home, Plumdale does not have a Catholic Church. Gabilan has three, and my family went to the one in Old Town, called Our Lady of Peace. I should rephrase that to say that Mom went every week, but I went maybe once a month, and Dad and Mark even less often. I grew up going to Catechism through about sixth grade; the other kids were really mean to me, just like at school, and Mom eventually let me stop going because I wasn’t really getting much out of it. By the last half of high school, though, I had started going to Mass more often, although not every week, and there were two reasons for this.

First of all, Catholic Masses are pretty boring when you’re a little kid and you have no idea what is going on. I thought about how much more difficult it would have been for my parents’ and grandparents’ generations to attend Mass as children, because Catholic Masses were said entirely in Latin until the 1960s. By my mid-teens, however, I had a little bit more of an idea of what all the words and prayers and songs meant. I got more of a sense of peace of being there, like it just felt like something that was right to do. But also, Melissa Holmes from school, who was my next major crush after I had moved on from Kim Jensen, started going there, and I wanted to see her. Most Catholics from Plumdale went to Good Shepherd on the north side of Gabilan, because it was closer, but Melissa and her mom liked Our Lady of Peace better. I remember mentioning all of this once in front of one of the JCF people, I think it was Sarah, and she said that this was God knowing exactly what would get me interested in going to church. She was probably right, because I didn’t stop going to church once Melissa moved to San Angelo and I moved in the opposite direction to Jeromeville.

I had been to Mass at the Newman Center pretty much every week since taking their flyer at the table in September. The Newman Center met three blocks from campus in downtown Jeromeville, on East 5th Street, in a beautiful old brick chapel-like building. I would learn later that this building was the original building of St. John’s Church, the main Catholic church in Jeromeville. At some point, St. John’s had built a new, larger building and an elementary school half a mile away, and the old building became the Newman Center.

Danielle, who lived right down the hall from me in 216 in the same four-person suite as Caroline, was the only other student from Building C who attended the late morning Mass at Newman. She was already there when I got there, but Mass had not started yet. I sat next to her.

“Hey, Greg,” she said. “Guess what?”

“What?”

“Next week I’m going to start singing in the choir at Mass.”

“That’ll be fun.”

“Claire, you know Claire?” Danielle gestured toward an older student setting up music stands. I knew Claire by face, but I didn’t really know her. “We’re both in the school chorus, and she’s been encouraging me to do this all year.”

“Nice.”

“I’ve heard you sing. Have you ever thought about singing in the choir here?”

“I can’t sing in front of people,” I said. “I only sing in the car.”

“I think you sing well. Don’t sell yourself short.”

“I don’t know.”

“Think about it. It looks like they need more strong male voices.”

“We’ll see.”

I had a good ear for music. I played piano for a few years in elementary school. I don’t remember exactly why I quit; Mom said it was because I wanted to be cool and I thought piano was for nerds. That sounds exactly like something that ten-year-old Greg would have said. But I also think that part of the reason I gave up music was because Mom would never leave me alone about it. We had an old out-of-tune piano in our house; it had belonged to Dad’s mother, who moved out of state after all her children were grown and whom I had only met twice before she passed away a year ago. Every time we had company over, Mom would make me perform for them. She would record me playing on tape and send it to relatives sometimes. And I really wasn’t that good compared to musical child prodigies. I just wanted to be left alone to play without an audience and without Mom having to make a big deal of it.

I thought about this as the choir began singing for Mass. Here, they sang some of the same songs that I grew up with at Our Lady of Peace; today’s opening song, “Here I Am, Lord,” was one I was very familiar with. They sounded nice, but singing in the choir just wasn’t for me.

I kept thinking about this as I rode my bike back to Building C after the service. I went to Mass. I prayed about passing my classes and any sick relatives I knew about, and I asked God to help me meet a girl. But I wasn’t the type to get super-involved in church stuff. There was nothing wrong with it, I didn’t have a problem with people who did, but that just wasn’t my style.

And looking back now, it’s amazing to think about my thoughts on that afternoon all those years ago, and how unaware I was of the direction my life would take over the next few years.