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My life was in a gentle arc of finishing the last year of College
classes before I'd have my long sought after Bachelors degree. In
Nineteen Ninety-Three very little happened in my life to disturb this
gentle conclusion to my college years. But that doesn't mean the
time wasn't without some tidbits...
One summer day Daina thought it would be easier if I just drove
myself home from her condo that evening and then pick her up the next
afternoon for errands rather than making the trip both ways herself.
That made sense to me and I drove to my apartment complex and parked
behind my bedroom window and settled in for the night. The next
morning I got up, cleaned up, and dressed and looked out my apartment
back window to check the weather. While the weather was fine, I
realized Daina's car was gone! Not knowing how to respond to this, I
decided to go to the complex's manager and ask him for his advice.
He winced when I told him the news and explained that late last night
the parking lot had been filled with cars that he suspected were for
the next door jazz club. So he called up a towing company and in the
darkness of night had them tow away all the cars he didn't recognize.
This next day, a number of tenants had been coming to him to ask
where their cars were. As with them, he handed me enough money from
petty cash to pay for the car to be released from the tow lot and
gave me the address. I checked the address inside my apartment
against the bus route map and there were no buses that went to that
end of town. How was I supposed to get Daina's car back?
Sheepishly calling Daina and telling her the story, I wondered if one
of her work friends could play chauffeur for us to collect her car,
while I had the release money and car key, I also feared the tow
yard might not release the car to me as it was in Daina's name.
She called a friend who was free and gave her a ride and soon after
picked me up and we got Daina's car back and took her friend out for
breakfast as payment.
Always wanting to approach problems in a constructive manner, I
returned to the manger and said that, since I had experience with
desktop publishing, I could create parking tags for him to pass out
to the tenants and then he would be better able to tell which cars
belonged in the parking lot and which ones didn't. He though that
was a great idea and all I asked for in return was the cost of
getting them printed. He agreed and I went to work on my computer
and came up with a design that he liked and the problem was soon
solved. Having gotten to know me better, he asked me where I worked
out. Worked out? I asked. He said he
could tell I was a body builder since I wore a sweat tee
shirt and he was thinking of building up his muscles as well. I
noted that I didn't go to a club but 'worked out' at home.
This was funny. As with my notebook in High School,
now my attempt to hide my breasts during my final college years had
'over achieved' and people mistook my sports bra strapped down breast
as prominent pectoral muscles, despite my long hair tied as a tail.
I'd cut the sleeves down on the sweat shirts which I used to hide
the sports bra straps, I guess people assumed those short sleeves hid
the otherwise nonexistent bulging muscles of my upper arms? One
time a female teacher in one of my classes called for our nightly
mid-class break, she quickly made her way to the door out, but then
stopped with a group of girls waiting by the door for some reason.
As I got from the back of the class to the door to leave she burst
into laughter as if someone had told her a joke, though I hadn't
seen any of them talking at the time. She leaned forward and
supported herself momentary from 'the laughter' by resting her hand
on the left side of my chest. Once I got to the cafeteria and
thought about it, I felt this was a staged moment and could only
guess that the teacher wanted to cop-a-feel of my 'pectoral
muscle' to see how firm it was. As it was my breast strapped down by
the sports bra a couple of sizes too small, I wondered what she
reported to the girls who had gathered by her once I left the room?
When I had returned to College the previous year, I was greeted by
the half American/half German girl who handled the reception desk at
the office when otherwise not in a class herself. Over the years I
would chat with her from time to time when I'd visit the office. One
evening when I was chatting with her during the class break, she
suddenly brought up the topic about 'all of those minorities around
ruining the country' while eying me intently. Given my Native
American mixed race background, I decided not to bring that up
and instead simply shrugged my shoulders and replied, ''I hadn't
thought about that.'' She didn't continue with the topic and with
the way she had looked at me intently at the time I wasn't sure if
she was trying to figure out if 'I was a body builder' because I was
a secret White Supremacist, or if she herself was one and had been
trying to see if I'd make a good recruit? I hoped it wasn't the
latter as, given her half German ancestry, that would have been a sad
commentary that there were still problems in Germany despite how
World War II had turned out. Either way, I reduced my subsequent
visits with her to only the few times I needed to ask her about an
office related question.
With Fall, came the obligatory 'Psychology 101' class. I was
actually looking forward to taking it as, with my years seeing Jude
and then Samuel, I felt like a psychology acolyte as much of the time
they would be giving me pointers on how to assess troubled people and
help to calm them down if they were having a problem relating to me
and my ambiguous nature. Arriving at the first day of the class,
this new instructor flat out told us that, rather than going through
the book and teaching us about psychology, he was going to 'teach us
to be good Christians as that was the only thing we needed to know
for good mental health'. Then once he was done with that he
would briefly go through the book at the end of the semester to point
out all of the flaws in the 'secular humanist psychological
philosophy'. When break came, I went straight to the office to
withdraw from the class and transfer to the daytime version taught by
one of the instructors I already knew and respected. That paperwork
done, I went to the cafeteria for the rest of my break.
When I left there I was spotted by one of the staff and asked to
return to the office. In there was the rest of my 'Psychology 101'
classmates and they, too, had decided to drop the night class and
look into joining the day class. Given that the College would no
longer have the minimum number of students left in the night class to
pay for the instructor to be there, they were instead going to
replace him by the following week and didn't want any of us to
transfer out. We agreed and I returned to the classroom to retrieve
my books and then left the teacher to watch me leave for the rest of
the night. I wondered if he was aware of what was going on at the
office...?
Had the other students been following my lead, or had all of us
deciding to drop the class at the same time been a coincidence given
the attitude of the instructor? In
this case, rather than pet my already over inflated ego, I've assumed
it was a coincidence.
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