A flashback

Since I teach creative writing and Bible besides Pre AP English and AP English, many of the kids in my classes have been my students for several years, which gives me an opportunity to know them as well as any adult can know teen-agers.  And because I have, in a sense, become part of their lives, when their senior year draws to a close, I’m always filled with this deep desire to warn them, for I was once in their shoes. And flashing back to my first year of college -- for that’s one momentous event we will soon share -- I want to wrap them up in duck tape, give them a manual at least 12 inches thick, fit them for blinders to keep them looking forward to their future, and insist they walk around with headphones on, playing back every warning they’ve ever heard in their life. But, of course, I can’t do that. I couldn’t do it for my own children, and I certainly can’t do it for someone else’s children. Nor can their parents. Nor can anyone who cares about them. Besides, if I did, they would look quite weird and never make any friends! Life will come and with it experiences and choices, some they make and some that others will make, but which will also affect their lives.

Recently a college friend reminded me of the time my roommate and I walked into a dorm room immediately after a girl had a baby, an event so traumatic I usually keep it filed away in a box, only to pull it out as graduation rolls around each year. I was never having any children after that experience. Alas, our sons are 31 and 28, and my former roommate has two sons, too. Traumatic, unimaginable, a nightmare for us, really, but it didn’t stop us from having a family like I thought it might. And that, I think, is one thing I learned in college about life:  to continue forward despite the trauma of the past.

One day when he came for a visit, my roommate’s father brought us a maroon Aggie shovel so that, in his words, he could shovel his way into our room as we had lots of clothes, many which landed on the floor.  We thought the shovel was cute and a conversation piece, so we hung it on the wall and didn’t use it as he intended until some friends brought us an old bathtub from the quack shack that we used as a dirty clothes hamper, and then we finally shoveled the clothes off the floor.  And that, too, is another thing I learned in college about life:  you have to shovel forward to clean up the mess around you.

That same year my roommate and I also had a stalker, whom we called the boogie man as the word stalker hadn’t become such a buzz word at that time.  For months, any time we walked in our dorm room, the phone would immediately ring and someone would either breathe or hang up.  Hour after hour. Day after day. Finally, the police put a tracer on our phone and the calls stopped. Apparently, the boogie man was someone we knew. And that, too, was something else I learned in college about life:  to move forward past fear sometimes you have to ask for help. 

And then there were the guys who hid in our closet one day….

Many of us have an endless supply of tales associated with that first college year – some, wonderful and others, traumatic ; some, regretful and others, celebratory -- but all are memories from a part of the past, a time of experiencing life beyond what our parents could control. For me, it was also a time when I learned how important choices were, not just mine but those made by others around me, too. That there was power in the choices I made, but also power in the choice to move forward. To start over.

And so, as a new group of high school seniors begin to prepare for their own experiences, I flash back to my college years, not because they’re a part of my past but because they’re a powerful part of my present. I value those experiences, even those which resulted from my own poor choices, for they taught me to live life forward, letting the regrets birth the determination and desire to begin again. And to be grateful that life isn’t a dull standardized test with one chance at getting it right, but an exciting learning process that never stops.