Archive: Memories

At the end of my senior year, my mom and I were on our way to the high school for the spring band concert, and I was driving. And then I hit a turkey.

I will let that sink in so you can laugh. Go ahead — I know it sounds funny.

…

But it was really scary. We were in my old, tiny Ford Escort, and I was wearing a pink dress with strappy sandals because the seniors were going to be recognized at the end of the concert. We were zooming along the normal route to school, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a wild turkey approach the right side of the road. I tapped the brake, but the the turkey suddenly took flight right into the car. Its body landed in the center of the windshield with a horrible crash, forming a giant spiderweb of fracture lines. Tiny glass splinters sprayed over my mom and me, and we both screamed as I pulled over to the side of the road. Once we had determined that we and the car were intact (except the windshield, of course), we switched places. My mom drove home by sticking her head out of the window and peeking through the non-shattered parts of the windshield.

At home, my dad threw a tarp over the windshield and cleaned up the glass as well as he could while my mom and I jumped into a different car. We had already lost a lot of time, so all three of us launched into get-it-done mode. On the way back to school, my mom kept asking me if I was okay. Yes, I said. I was okay. I just had to get there.

I ran into the building in the back entrance by the school building, and one of my color guard friends came up, exclaiming, “We didn’t know where you were!” And then she saw my stricken face. “What happened?”

“I hit a turkey on the way here!” I wailed.

My friend stifled a giggle. I didn’t blame her.  She pulled herself together enough to ask if I was okay, if the car was okay.

“Mom drove it home and then we took another car here. She’s dropped me off. I guess she’s in the auditorium somewhere.”

“Okay. Okay. Let’s comb the glass out of your hair.” We stole the color guard beauty kit and went to the locker room.

Looking back at this bizarre incident reminds me of being a really new driver, and I hate thinking about the noise and the glass and the sense of being derailed. I don’t tell the story very often because it still shakes me up, even after so many years, and I cringe at the thought that the scariness of it will be overshadowed by that punchline: I hit a turkey.

Okay, so it sounds funny — I concede it. To answer your immediate questions: no, I don’t know what happened to the turkey, and yes, there was a head-sized crater in the windshield.

When I entered high school, the activity I wanted to join most of all the color guard. Every weekend, my parents and I watched my sister perform with our high school’s band, and each part of it gave me a thrill. I loved the blast of music hitting the stands, the careful stepping of each person, and the drum majors’ disciplined salute before the performance.

That summer, I went to two days of freshman band camp to learn how to march eight steps in five yards, walk in straight lines using peripheral vision, follow commands on the spot, and hold my flag upright in spite of aching forearms. Then, the rest of the band arrived, and we sweated it out on a parking lot for six hours a day. We each made “dot books,” small binders with our individual drill positions marked out by section; mine was dutifully Scotch-taped and highlighted, and I wore it around my neck on a shoelace. At the first football game of the year, I was brimming with excitement in my hideous uniform. We performed under the lights, and I still remember our Andrew Lloyd Webber-themed field show. The flags for “Phantom of the Opera” were purple with silver stars.

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In my sophomore year at Delaware, I made it onto the sabre line by some fluke. They needed a certain number in the line, and I was dead last. I learned what I needed to know in the two weeks of camp, which composed the hardest physical challenge I have ever endured. The difficulty was tempered when I won a dance solo for the show opener with the newest member of our team, Bill. He and I did a sort of Dirty Dancing-type lift, and at one rehearsal, the band director bellowed from her perch on the hydraulic lift through her megaphone, “Bill and RA! Turn around and face the band this time! Band! Watch them! And then perform like them!” I was stunned, and then completely pleased.

At our first football game, I went to the student stands to find JG during the third quarter, which was the only time we were allowed to stray from the band. My face was sweaty from the August humidity, and I had rolled up my uniform sleeves. “Did you see me? Did you see my solo?” I asked excitedly.

JG gasped, “What happened to your arms?”

In the excitement of the first game, I had completely forgotten that my forearms were covered in angry, purple bruises from my steep learning curve with the sabre.

“Oh, it was just the sabre! Did you see my solo?”

He saw it, he said. But was I sure I was okay?

Yes! I was more than okay!

Shortly thereafter, I had to quit color guard and give up my solo because of a class scheduling conflict. When I sat in the band director’s office to tell her, I cried.

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Yesterday, I walked Ted after work and reveled in the newness of jacket-appropriate weather. In the distance, I heard the local high school band warming up for their evening rehearsal. The drum line ran to my ear: the steady thrum of the bass drums, the higher-pitched quads, and the snappy trill of the snare. Immediately, I was back in it, hauling out equipment, running laps, attaching the Velcro strips of my gloves, throwing my chin up in the area toward the judges’ box with a glint in my eye we called pride.

Ever since I was fourteen, fall has meant marching band to me, and I haven’t stepped foot onto a field for seven years. At every Delaware game, I pay special respect to the band’s pregame show and keep up all the quirky band traditions and cheers. During halftime, the guard receives a hypercritical eye as I murmur encouragement and criticism at every turn: “C’mon, girls, this is an 8-to-5 step here … dress that line, rifles! … aaand hit! Yes!” But it’s not the same. It’s not the same as counting in multiples of 4, making steamy puffs of breath in the autumn air, practicing drills so that you can perform in front of a roaring crowd like you mean it, and knowing that you were just one individual that helped make that giant organism of an ensemble live and breathe.

I’m too old to get back to it, now; my prime has passed. I can’t instruct a team because of my work schedule, and I’m too far out of the game to be relevant, anyway. I know all of these things, but I still miss it so much. These days, whenever I hear high school kids rehearsing, I stop and strain, stretching my ear to catch a few notes.

#12, 13

“Are you looking forward to football season?” I asked.

JG and I were sitting on the couch this weekend tossing around ideas for new tailgate menus, like barbecue wings or pancakes. Even though it’s fun to think about what the upcoming season has in store, it’s also intimidating because fall is our busiest time of year.

“Yeah, I am,” JG said. “Delaware should be good, and the family fantasy league will be fun.”

He paused, then added, “I’m glad you like coming to football games.”

I do like going. In a lot of ways, committing to a whole season of Delaware home games brings back my days in the marching band, and I have a certain masochistic attitude toward outlasting inclement weather. I enjoy the ritual of it all: putting on my jersey; seeing how fast we can set up our tailgate site; singing the alto harmony line to the national anthem; and cheering for the band at half time. It’s fun going back to campus and being part of something bigger than myself, even if it’s just a stadium filled with 20,000 other Blue Hens yelling at the same referee.

When I think back to my college career, only the fond memories spring to mind, even though my time there certainly wasn’t all positive. The bad times, like being dumped by a boyfriend just days before my birthday; my horrible, 6-person rhetoric class that met at 8am; and stressful hours spent decoding organic chemistry emerge so dimly in comparison to brighter, better times.

My favorite chemistry teacher, an adorable Texan man in his seventies, always dressed up for Halloween; my favorite ones were the knight and the wizard. The building that houses the English department has a lovely rotunda on the top floor where the names of the English canon authors are painted along the circumference, and I loved sitting up there and reading during my spare half-hours between classes. When I was a freshman mentor, the other mentor in my building came down to my room to flop into my beanbag chair and talk almost every Friday afternoon; we called them our “office hours.” In 2003, when the football team was making a run for the national championship, JG and I (along with a group of engineer friends) chipped away at the ice-encrusted student bleachers to watch our team win what we fondly refer to as the “snow bowl.”

All of these rose-tinged memories are in stark contrast to what happens when I think about high school. My immediate associations are tough and harsh. I wanted to get out of there as fast as humanly possible and run past the constraints I perceived in my town and my school. I never lingered because I was bound for college and my very own new life.

Sometimes, it’s hard to explain why I love Delaware football so much when I only tolerate college football as a whole, and I can’t abide professional football, notable exceptions being the Superbowl and any Joe Flacco highlight reels. Part of it is definitely that I get to spend the whole time with JG, and it’s a fun thing we can share. However, when I’m singing along to the alma mater, there’s something bigger and deeper going on, and it reminds me of all the reasons I loved college and who I became there.

Remember that alumni retrospective I was scared to write?  Well, we received the published newsletter in the mail recently, and I was pleasantly surprised with the final result.

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One might say that I was an English major convert.

During my freshman year at the University of Delaware, I was an eager chemistry major.  I planned to do research and earn my doctorate, and I launched into two semesters of math and science.  However, those two semesters were completely bereft of reading (other than technical tomes) and writing (other than equations).  Much to my parents’ panic, I claimed to have “a major identity crisis” — wasn’t I clever? The following year, I changed my major to English, with a chemistry minor on the side.

Compared to the structured chemistry curriculum, coming over to the English department was a burst of freedom, if not chaos.  I saw that there were core major classes, but the order wasn’t that important.  I was confronted with the choice of courses based on the content and the instructor, instead of a proscribed sequence.  In my new classes, I was a square among amoebae with my frantic note-taking and constant referral to the syllabus.  I did not take naturally to the ebb and flow of discussion, so I read diligently and wrote as best as I could.

I did not stay disoriented forever.  Before long, I built up a strong affection for Memorial Hall and the hours I spent there puzzling over literary criticism, picking apart the renaissance man, and laying out mock publications.  When I went to my evening lab sessions with my chemistry cohorts, it was no longer my primary residence; I was fully ensconced in the “arts” part of “arts and sciences,” and they never let me forget it.  I was, however, greatly sought-after when it was time to produce formal lab reports.

As a medical editor, I’m lucky to work in the writing segment of the scientific sector.  My two worlds have collided, and it suits me well.  Outside the office, I can see how my conversion to the English department affects even the smallest parts of my life.  I can’t stop myself from pausing to listen to political ads just to tease out the rhetoric. I automatically correct typos in newspaper ads, look for the redemption aspect of plots, and identify frame structures in novels.

I knew I was in the right academic field when I attended the first class of my Biblical and classical literature course.  The instructor handed out the syllabus, and another classmate whispered to his neighbor, “Man, there’s a lot of reading and writing in this class.”

Meanwhile, I could only think, “Yes, please.”

#19