2002-05-11 - 11:26 a.m.

Four years I've spent here. Forty-eight months. That's enough to have five consecutive pregnancies. A twenty-fifth of a century. A presidential term. And now the the clock has run out, the toll of doom has sounded, and I'm to be tossed out on my ear with only my thin vellum significator to protect me.

Four years of my life. Do you think it will do me any good? Of course it bloody won't. When I tell people in the World Outside where I've spent these four years, they'll adopt these strange, puzzled, simian expressions and their eyes will glaze over like glistening doughnuts and their mouths will hang slack. Then they'll gather what passes for their wits and give me a sly milk-curdling grin before they carefully and politely inquire about when my college was built. (Because it's "new". Ha. Ha. Thank you, clever satirist. I'd never considered looking at the name of my alma mater in such an unusual and humorous fashion.) And when I tell alums and hangers-on of New College that I only spent four years here, they'll snigger and wonder what kind of fool I must've been not to have taken the usual five.

Four years of which I hope to be able to remember at least two. I'm already forgetting large bits of my first year, and even trailing fragments of my second. Third year is a mad muddle, and the past few months are a rocketing blur. Obviously, my hindsight is becoming myopic with age. But if I concentrate, I can remember a few things which I'm sure I won't forget. Even when I'm off in the vast, mysterious world, fighting the Shadow Masters of the Great Conspiracies with only my turbo-pistols, my jaunty fedora, and my dazzling smile, there's still a few things I'll take away from New College aside from a shiny new degree, a mild caffeine addiction, and a latent fear of modern art.

I'll always remember watching the storms pour in over the Bay. One night in particular I remember sitting out in the rain on the slick marble steps of College Hall with a shivering huddle of friends and watching streaks of lightning roar across the cloudscape while the driving downpour thrashed the gentle bay into an angry iron cauldron.

It will be hard to forget sitting in Second Court Lounge in the dead of the night with a double handful of weary students of Professor Doenecke's World War II, trying to hack our way through another dense chapter of Keegan while J.C. strode about the room gesturing wildly and declaiming eloquently on how "Rommel laid the smack down across the whole damn African campaign."

My future therapists will never let me forget my various efforts at reviving the Rocky Horror Picture Show on campus, and the subsequent debaucheries which put both Sodom and Gomorrah to shame. At least I have the only copies of the tapes, so my opportunities for blackmail are rich.

My times with the CatalysTangent will always be with me. Even if I hole up in a Conch Republic bar and drink black rum until my brain cells go leaping out of my ears in a futile attempt at suicide, I'll always remember. Sitting at the huge table and bickering and groaning and growling and laughing over the affairs of the world. Basking in the seemingly boundless wisdom and good humor of Professor Vesperi, whom I would not want to forget. Hammering out movie reviews and articles about whatever we could dig up information on in the dead of the morning in an effort to keep the paper free of white space. And suffering the unusual burden of being an actual newspaper. Or at least a remarkable simulation of one.

There's a golden tidbit; sitting in that north-east classroom of College Hall, and listening to Professor Deme wax poetically about the Hapsburgs, while the sun slanted down over the roof and poured through the branches of the tall tree which sat outside the window.

Pinning bugs in a styrofoam box on a steaming Saturday afternoon in Professor McCord's lab ... tipping a canoe over in the middle of the Bay on a cloudy morning and treading water while the boat's contents sank to Davey Jones' locker ... saying farewell to Professor Deme, Professor Berggren, Hansen, Selby, the University of South Florida (although that last has proven to be one of those painful, lingering break-ups that everyone dreads) ... Symposiums at DeSoto House, sushi at Sam Oh Jung's, coconut prawns at Tropical Thai, film festivals at Burns Court ... ridiculous costumes, ridiculous drinks, ridiculous attempts at papers, ridiculous sleep schedules ... listening to John Moore talk in a tone of prophecy about whatever darned thing crosses his mind ... wading through pools of history ... meeting and greeting and laughing and crying and living and dying and doing all the other things we just do. Strutting and fretting my four years on the stage, four years before the mast ... four years, no more.

Wrestling has certainly left its mark on this campus. Nothing can compare to sitting on the couches and cackling like crows at the marvelous circus that unfolds on the screen while hapless students walk by and mouth snickering unheard comments. The jabronis. The popularity of this marvelous bi-weekly past-time is no doubt due to the stalwart efforts of the New College Wrestling Alliance, of which I am co-founder and quite possibly reigning champion. It's hard to remember who's the champion since we lost the belt, but I'm fairly certain that I was the last person to pin Eclipse.

Ah, yes. That would be a silly thing to forget. New College has given me something even more precious than a library copy of my thesis, even rarer than a root beer-flavored Dum-Dum put in my mailbox by the Random Acts of Kindness troupe; New College has given me my fiancé. Which reminds me; all you soft-hearted Novo Collegians should be sure to come to College Hall on May 31, 2003. What could be more tooth-rottingly sweet than two alums getting married in College Hall? That's right. Nothing.

That's a reasonable enough place to end this largely maudlin recherche. I would like to close my career here with an eloquent elegy:

*****

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