I thought it might be fun to share some stories from the past. I'm thinking of writing a book of my memoirs someday, and this might give me a start--who knows? I used to get requests for my stories when we were on handbell tour, and perhaps they still might serve to entertain someone.
I was thinking the other day about college days, particularly the evil and dreaded "Civ" class that all sophomores were required to take. "Western Civilization," as uncool collegiates called it (everyone else called it "Civ"), was a combination of history and literature, the idea being that you would study the literature of the time period in history that you were also studying at the same time. The class periods for Civ were extra long, almost like two in one, and they were team taught by a history and a literature professor together. And they were extremely PAINFUL. Everyone hated Civ.
When it came time for me to sign up for Civ, my friends and I were told that we should try to get Crouch and Mullins because they were the best professors. They, we were led to believe, were the ones that would make Civ more interesting and more bearable. My roommate Alicia and I decided to take the class together, and we were determined to get Crouch and Mullins no matter what. At registration time, wouldn't you know, the only time Crouch and Mullins were teaching Civ was at 8:00am in the morning. We fully believed we were doing the right thing by voluntarily signing up for Civ at the earliest hour because, well, it was going to be worth it. What kind of idiots were we?? The worst kind. Once classes started, we soon began to discover that someone had fed us a load of poppycock. And it tasted BAD. I think Crouch and Mullins were just the opposite of what we had been told. They were the dryest of the dry. The dullest of the dull. The awfullest of the awful. They were two of the . . . no, maybe THE two biggest reasons why every sophomore at OBU dreaded Civ like the plague. Yes, it was THAT bad.
The chairs in our Civ class were fixed in a horseshoe pattern, and they were sort of stadium style. There were only two chairs in the each of the two top rear corners, and with the stadium seating, they were higher than all the rest. Those were the two chairs Alicia and I chose for our long semester of Civ. Now, to get to those chairs, we had to basically scoot by and climb over all the rest of the people in the class. This was particularly unfortunate because we were late to class EVERY DAY. I was always a very punctual kind of gal, but Alicia . . . well, she was not. I won't go into all the reasons why I waited for her every day, but suffice it to say, I feel very sure that everyone in the class hated us.
As if signing up for an 8:00am Civ class wasn't already crazy enough, I showed even greater idiocy by never getting enough sleep. I was the typical college stupid, I mean student, staying up late every night often just for the heck of it. Granted, some of those nights I was up studying, but I remember once just staying up all night for fun and arriving at the local donut shop when it opened. Not the brightest light on the strand. Now, when you're as sleep-deprived as I was, a loud rock and roll concert or even the fire alarm can lull you into dreamland. But Crouch and Mullins at 8:00am? I might as well have taken a bottle of Valium and a swig of Jack Daniels.
So, this was the deal. Alicia hated to take notes. I on the other hand was the note-taker extraordinaire. Alicia had no trouble staying awake, even though she was as sleep-deprived as I was (don't ask me how). I on the other hand could fall asleep inside of a jet engine. So my job was to take notes for the two of us, and Alicia's job was to keep me awake so I could do so. I can't tell you how many times I woke up to the sound of Alicia's voice in my ear saying, "Where are you going??" which was her way of rousing me when I started drifting off.
Alicia devised many ways to pass her time in Civ class. She always figured that was an hour and a half to accomplish something productive since I was taking notes for the both of us. Once she brought a stack of magazines, some construction paper and scissors and crafted several homemade greeting cards. Another time she brought an entire loaf of bread, an economy-size tub of margarine and a butter knife and ate her breakfast. By the way, she didn't eat the whole loaf. But I was incredulous that she wagged all that stuff to class with her and sat up there on display and buttered her bread like she owned the place.
Now, this arrangement worked pretty well until one time when we were studying for a big test and we started going over my notes. To my horror, a bunch of them didn't make sense. Things were incoherent and much of it wasn't even legible. There were several places where sentences literally trailed off the bottom of the page. Apparently, Alicia hadn't been totally successful at her job (maybe she had been too busy with her bread and butter) and I had ended up sleeping through several lectures after all. Fortunately, I had read enough and caught enough that I did fine on the test. I don't remember how well Alicia did. We got a pretty good laugh out of it, but I do think I tried to get more sleep after that.
We survived Civ, and lived to tell about it. I think I pulled out a "B" for the semester in spite of the botched note-taking. The next semester I chose a different teaching team and a later hour for the second half of the torture, and it wasn't quite as bad. And I took the class alone. I probably did better in the class overall, but it just wasn't the same.
Next time maybe I'll write about the time I went flying in a hammock. Good times.
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