Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never Too Late for Her Dumb Ass to Learn Why Froot Loops Are Not for Dinner (37 page)

“That you?” Fletch calls from the bedroom.

“I’m home,” I say, as I walk down the hallway to the master. I have a seat while he packs. When it comes to travel, I’m kind of a Viking and I had my stuff together for this event days ago. Wonder if the Ambassador can head out for a three-week book tour with only carry-on luggage? [
I feel it’s best to find opportunities over which I can gloat, few and far between as they are.
]

“How was your afternoon?” he asks as he shoves six pair of socks and no underwear into his overnight bag. Fletch is not a Packing Viking, bless his heart.

“Not bad,” I reply. “I had a manicure [
OPI’s Conquistadorable seemed to be the most responsible-looking color.
] and went to Palm Beach Tan. By the way, when I was doing my speech research, I saw that a bunch of NASA guys are receiving the same award tomorrow from the Engineering school. Wonder if any of the astronauts are getting ready for their big day with a spray tan?”

“Doubtful,” he says, tossing in sneakers and some workout shorts.

“Um, are you going to the Co-Rec for a pickup game of squash or are you coming to a banquet with me? If it’s the latter, why don’t I help you pack?” I suggest.

Not long after this, we’ve got everything Fletch could need for the twenty-four hours we’ll be gone. From pajamas to going-out shoes, I’ve helped Fletch neatly prepare for any eventuality on the road. However, he argues when I try to get him to put his shirt and suit in the suitcase.

“They’ll get wrinkled,” he complains. “I’ll grab them tomorrow.”

“No,” I reply. “You’ll put them in the car right now; otherwise you’ll forget, if the last three weddings you attended in gym shoes are any indication. I am not about to receive my major award with you in a Donkey Punch T-shirt.”

And with that, we’re ready to go.

Joanna and her husband, Michael, were planning on driving down with us, but they have a schedule conflict tomorrow morning and need to leave at the crack of dawn, so it’s just us in the car. Fletch breaks his cardinal rule of no eating because I was so busy not writing my speech that I also didn’t go to the grocery store and there’s no food in the house. We stop at Arby’s and I do my best not to drip Horsey Sauce on upholstery. [
Oh, forbidden potato cakes, you’re the sweetest potato cakes of them all!
]

When we arrive at Purdue, I’m shocked at how much it’s changed. I guess I didn’t expect it to be exactly the same as when I left, but… that’s a lie.

I totally did.

I wanted to see the Purdue of 1985 when Joanna and I used to
stumble home to our teeny room in Earhart Hall after way too much trash can punch, sweaty and happily exhausted from dancing to Modern English in Keds.

I hoped that somehow, even though it was April, I’d see kids in barn jackets using ironing boards and cafeteria trays to slide down a snowy Slayter Hill.

I was secretly expecting to drive by the fraternity houses and spot familiar faces out there, clad in khaki shorts and white oxfords, feeding sips of Little Kings Cream Ale to a bandanna-wearing black lab/house mascot named Murph.

Instead, I see an army of Justin Bieber clones, texting away as they hurry from one spanking new university building to the next. It’s all I can do to not scream, “Get a haircut!” at each of them as we cruise by. Oh my God, I feel so old.

As we pull up to the Union, I’m melancholy when I realize that all my favorite spots are gone, paved over into parking garages or turned into Starbucks. I haven’t been back at school since the late nineties specifically because I was afraid this would happen.

I never wanted to be that pathetic alum accosting a bunch of undergrads about all the places that ceased to exist decades ago, all
“Hey, kids, you could get a steak for a nickel over there and see a moving-picture show, too!”

I never wanted to be the weird older lady pointing out the front corner of the Yacht Club, where the manager Ferris kept the topless bronze statue that I’d always cover in a paper-napkin bikini whenever I sat in front of it. No one cares that was the exact spot where we raised a glass to Kurt Cobain after his suicide, playing an endless round of Nirvana songs on the jukebox. I remember how we hugged each other, saying over and over with the kind of sincerity exclusive to kids in their twenties,
“This changes everything.”

No one wants to know how good the pizza at Garcia’s was, or how bad the drinks were at Pete’s. Or how I’d meet my best friend, Andy, at the little Chinese place every Friday for the three-dollar lunch special and how every week we’d laugh at how they refused to give us butter knives. [
So, yeah, pretty much my equivalent of steak for a nickel.
]

Don’t get me wrong—I prefer to live in the now. I love my life and the people in it and nostalgia generally makes me happy. I wouldn’t relive my college days on a bet. No one tells you in your twenties how much better your forties are. [
Primarily because if you knew how much your thirties would suck, you’d drink bleach.
] But being back on campus, in the one spot where so many of my best memories were created, and finding a setting that’s completely changed is disconcerting.

Fletch and I check into the Union. We get ready for the reception before the awards banquet and I dress carefully in a black wrap dress, accented with a snappy plaid scarf/shawl. Truth? I’m not wearing this piece for fashion as much as for function. I call this my “good eatin’ scarf” as it protects whatever I’m wearing underneath from errant mayo and salad dressing dribbles. As pleased with myself as I am at having created this solution, I remind Fletch to give me a kick if I try to tell anyone about it. Somehow I bet the Ambassador wouldn’t be impressed.

The reception is in the room across from where the Student Check Cashing window used to be. Fletch, Joanna, Michael, and I all laugh, remembering how every Friday afternoon, the entire campus would line up at that window to cash a minuscule check for the weekend. The window’s gone now, replaced with a large bank of ATMs. I make a mental note to return there later to get
money out of the machine, not because I need cash, but because it will be the first time at Purdue that I’ll have stood in that spot and had more than $10 in my bank account. [
Related note? I still seek out ATMs that dispense bills smaller than a twenty. Finding one that spits out five dollars is like spotting a unicorn!
]

While we’re in the reception, we notice all the large oil paintings of dour old men sitting in leather armchairs. Fletch insists we take a picture of him posed that way, too. He looks eerily similar to the University’s founder and it makes me laugh, wondering if John Purdue was just goofing around with his old drinking buddies when he had his portrait done, too.

I meet the other award recipients and they’re all lovely and in no way act like I don’t belong with them. I may or may not suggest we pose in a human pyramid when we get our photos taken, but I’m pretty sure they know I’m joking. [
If I weren’t, I’d be a base. Am very sturdy.
]

The most surreal moment of the night happens when I enter the ballroom because I’ve been here before. The last time was twenty-four years ago when I was working for the University’s catering department. There I was, a few weeks from flunking out after my sophomore year and I found myself filling iced tea glasses at a banquet for the outstanding graduating seniors. As the speakers droned on about all the amazing accomplishments my peers had achieved, I felt very small and insignificant.

But here? Today? I get a sense of where I’ve been and how far I’ve come, and I feel a sense of belonging. So when it’s time for me to step onstage and give my speech, I do it with confidence and panache and when I’m finished, I swear the audience claps louder for me than any of those graduating seniors so many years ago.

There’s a point later in the ceremony when we accept our awards and everyone acknowledges those who helped them get there. During my acceptance, I thank all of the usual sus-pects, including Brian Lamb, founder of C-SPAN, who happens to be a special guest at the dinner. You see, he didn’t hire me for a C-SPAN internship back in the day, primarily because the time I met him I’d been marinating in gin for a few hours and I may or may not have mentioned how much “I likesh Congresssshhhh.”

I give a quick summary of the story, adding that he shouldn’t worry and that everything worked out for me without the internship.

And in that moment, I bring the house down.

After the ceremony, hugs are exchanged and photos taken, and I finally feel like I’ve officially graduated from college and into adulthood. All in all, this has been a great end to a spectacular evening and the next time Purdue asks, they’re getting the first check I’ll have voluntarily written them and trust me, it will be for more than ten dollars.

This is where I wish the story ended.

It doesn’t.

After hitting the ATM—two hundred dollars, because I can!—we change into our bar clothes and meet Joanna and Michael in the lobby. The plan is to hit Harry’s for a couple of drinks and then head to more grown-up venues with our local friends. In the years since I’ve been gone, the town’s become a bit of a destination, full of gastropubs and wine bars, which sounds really nice. Besides, Harry’s is bound to make me sad because when I walk in there, it won’t be like it was back in the day. Rather, I’m going to run into nothing but college girls in skimpy
tank tops [
That’s what the kids today wear, yes?
] as Ke$ha and Katy Perry tunes play on the jukebox in the background.

No, thanks.

Then the damndest thing happens—we enter Harry’s and it IS 1993. The place looks—and smells—exactly like it used to and the old friends we’d hope to meet are right there at the door while Steve Perry wails in the background about holdin’ on to that feelin’.

It’s like Brigadoon.

Only with beer.

Shocked and awed, Joanna and I make our way to the back of the bar to see if our names are still carved into the wall… and they are! The jukebox begins to play Van Morrison and the college girls—who aren’t all tarted up, by the way—shriek and begin dancing to “Brown Eyed Girl,” exactly the way we used to do.

Um, what is going on here?

Did the Liberal Arts department re-create my favorite parts of college here in this bar? If so, color me impressed.

In honor of the occasion, I switch from the wine I’d politely sipped at the dinner to Long Islands because it feels so appropriate.

As for the rest of the evening, I’ve pieced together what I can via tweets, photographs, Facebook posts, and video.