I know I have something good with Wonder Boy because when he went to the hoity-toity grocery store by my house and saw a funny toy, he picked it up knowing it would make my day. And, of course, it did. 
At the animal shelter I volunteer at there are lots of sweet cats who need homes. Many of the cats are black and it turns out that a lot of folks don’t want them because of superstitions and whatnot. Can you imagine? Some of the black cats are super-duper sweet. So I have a theory – the cats just need better names. And so, I rechristened one of the cats. Truthfully, I don’t know what his or her original name was – he / she was a newbie to the shelter. Me, being a new volunteer (and I am so sticking with that excuse if I get yelled at), don’t know all the rules about cat naming. I have noticed that nearly all of the cats have Christian names. BORING.
So now the shelter has a cat named Lima Bean.
Lima Bean and many other vegetable-named cats are awaiting a loving home with you.
The other day I was walking out of this house in Clifton and was hit by the overwhelming scent of stale beer. Sick as it is, I thought of Athens. Athens, like most (fun, cool) college towns, wears the scars of too many parties. Intermingled with kids walking to an from class are hippies with the trail of pot smoke following them like a bride’s train and frat boys with sweat that has a higher alcohol content than your grandpa’s whiskey.
This past weekend I was sitting in a baby shower talking to a high school junior who has started college shopping. She said her father had driven through Athens and based on what he saw of the party atmosphere it was not on her prospective school list. That’s fine, but she will never know the pleasure that can be extracted from a nasty smell.
Sometime during my first few years of college I went to a party in some huge house with rooftop access. That was before I could hit bars and raiding random parties was the cool thing to do, and, frankly, the only thing there was to do on the weekends. I was never good at the whole party-raiding thing, but free drink is free drink. As my friends and I tried very hard to be cool and fit in with all the other people, we stumbled into a smoke-filled room. Me, with all my class and tact, said very loudly, “Geez, what stinks in here?” Of course, it was the signature scent of marijuana, which one of my friends hissed at me as she yanked me out of the room. The mortification. We hurried up to the rooftop where I was able to coolly watch people pass around a joint, as if this was something I saw everyday, and watch streakers run around the block.
Many years ago I was taking a walk with a woman I worked with who was from New Orleans. While we walked about we caught a whiff of some trash sitting out in the hot sun. She sighed and said it made her miss home. She felt the same way, she said, when she drove past the trash yards around town. I thought it so odd at the time that she could associate something so gross with some place she loved so much. Maybe not.
For a variety of reasons, I have been particularly reminiscent about college of late. Last week I went to lunch with some co-worker friends and walked to an overlook on the campus of University of Cincinnati and I swear it about made me choke. All these kids (at what point did I start referring to them as kids?) were walking around wearing whatever they wanted and doing whatever they wanted. I was gagging on the envy working its way up from inside me.
This weekend my sister and her man made a trip to visit my brother for a birthday party. I wanted desperately to go with them but our schedules didn’t quite work. Turns out that may have been a good thing. My sister said her friends partied until after 5 am. She had to crawl into her car sometime after 3 and just fall asleep – evidence we’re related! She and her man passed my brother at noon on Saturday walking down the street with a blown up raft, even though he couldn’t explain why. Now, to be fair, it was Mill Fest weekend and there were undoubtedly many-kegged parties going on. And yet, I think questioning the raft is fair.
While hearing about my brother’s antics, many of which cannot be posted in lest parental-type folks happen upon this post, made me a little concerned for his liver, I was mostly more sad about missing college. I am told by the likes of Wonder Boy that not everyone has this same sentimental approach to college and, in fact, I think he thinks I am a little (more) nerdy for it. Ah well. It’s not college as much as the time of my life. After all, I don’t wax pretty about my time in grad school very often.
In a possible attempt to depress myself, I am going to launch into some good old Ohio University stories. Some of this was at the suggestion of Becca whose eyes about feel out of her head when I told her about my college roommate, whom we shall refer to as V.
As I sit here typing away at my computer, and be it known that I am a very loud and fast typist, I am reminded of the noise V’s toenails would make as she walked across our linoleum down room floor. She grew her toenails out as long as possible and always had them painted some pearlescent tone. Long toe nails are nasty, by the way, but pearlescent, clicking toe nails are so much worse. When V would break a toenail, as one is prone to do when their toenails are over an inch long, she would save the broken off bit in a small box. She had an entire box of broken off toenails in her desk.
V was big on saving bits of her past. That was all fine, until her maybe boyfriend maybe ex-boyfriend had to cut off his mullet hair so he could get promoted at his pizza joint. He mailed the mullet hair to her and she sewed into a heart-shaped pillow of her own making. It was cheap fabric and she didn’t sew it very tight so little mullet hairs were always busting out. She drew on it with a marker, something like “V X J” and always had it on her bed.
V knew mullet boy from her high school days. In high school V had been the president of V-squared, which stood for Virgins Forever. She got kicked out of both her post and the club her senior year when she and mullet boy consummated their love.
V was a good one-year roommate for me. She taught me a lot of about What Not to Do and how to have fun. And believe it or not, she really was fun.
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