esrosedotblog

I was the first person from my family to go to college.

I do have to say that my cousin Phil went to a business school, two years. And flunked out.

I, on the other hand, as you may have heard, went to fucking MIT.

What was that like for my parents? What was it like for me?

The answer to both questions is nicely put together in this NYTimes Essay.

Taking My Parents to College

I can remember the day very clearly when they dumped me off on Ames Street in Cambridge.

Well, not really true. They did help me unload the car. But I couldn't get rid of them fast enough. Truth is that I dumped them.

They knew that. We had rehearsed this scene over and over.

High drama.

They did not stay with me. I had a week of "orientation" after all which, in reality, was pledge week at the fraternities.

And I had no intention whatsoever of joining a fraternity. None.

Why I felt this way (and still do) is still a bit of a mystery except for my clear identity as an introvert.

Every "advantage" that I heard about frat-life was a threat to my independence.

I did attend some functions. I went to a breakfast for freshman at some church so I could report home that I had tried that.

I went to an orientation that was held in my faculty adviser's home (everyone had one of these, use them or not, I did not)

Mostly I isolated.

Fortunately I was an avid non-drinker then. Had I been on the booze I would have been in the hospital. Instead, I suffered.

As it happened, there was another freshman in my dorm. And more miraculously, this kid was from Newfoundland PA which is only twenty miles from my hick town only hickier. The son of an undertaker.

He was so scared that we could not talk. Even I was less frightened than he was. I am sure today that, like me, he was gay. A queer in those years.

What saved me was the arrival in the dorm of the well entrenched sophomores, juniors and seniors who had lived in this unit "for years".

My roommate was a sophomore who was even more insecure than I was.

Arthur had terminal acne. The room smelled of his medication, that sulfur stuff. His voice had not broken yet. A clarinet player, he had buck teeth and, I am grateful, never played in the room but went to practice sessions of the school concert band. Which was excellent. Made records.

We did not get along but neither of us would admit it.

We stayed the year.

Then I found another kid in my freshman section, Chem Engineering, also a closet case and while we never ever did it our "sensibility", the brother hood of sissies, got us through two years before we finally had it with each other.

A long story. But I am sure all from repressed feelings for one another. I can still see his body. I will not elaborate. Oh. Those were the days!

So, where was I?

My parents wanted to know all the details of my life at MIT. I could share none of it.

Or wouldn't.

How could I tell them about the things that were happening to me? The real college things.

I could also not tell them about the fear and anxiety. The terrible ball clenching terror of class and the threat of failing. I had no alternatives.

They were, or I thought them to be (same things) a third world embarrassment.

I went home the first summer between freshman and sophomore years. Horrific. I was so unhappy.

I never went back after that. I had a dining hall job at MIT that I could segue into the summer, my course got me a lab job in a food manufacturing plant (a layabout job, full of fun, I learned how to be the rebel, my introduction to rebellious thinking in the corporate environment. See below) I lived on campus in a free room in the dining hall. I had so imbedded myself by this time that it was my true home. I can still smell that upper break room where I slept. It was seldom used because it was on the fourth floor. Soft furniture, a lounge. Wonderful! Soaked it in. The loner life was begun. The one I managed to lead until this very day. Alone but not. You have to be one to understand.

I had left my family behind. The house family, the extended family, I never went back.

I did honor my father and my mother (dad more than mom) and did the obligatory. But I was on my way and no one, not anyone, from my past came along.

I was a less than mediocre academic success but I excelled at the non-curricular. Dance committees, political office, just fucking around. I ended up my last year as the head captain of the dining hall. My former summer bedroom became a lounge for the staff. Blah blah blah.

Labels: family, home, MIT