Do you ever have dreams about Vanderbilt? I'll admit that I do: it's a recurring dream, one that I have had at least once a year for the last seven or eight years. In it, I'm running down the staircase of Rand by the Bookstore, trying to find my old P.O. box in Station B. Classes have let out, and I'm negotiating my way through other students to get to my box. The dream always ends before I get to find it and open it. Sounds like I have some unfinished business: maybe I need to get to Reunion to find my old mailbox?
After the last blog posted and my riposte to my old buddy Frank, I swore to myself to avoid the menace of TMI...you know, "too much information." It seems like we're all surrounded by TMI in this day of instant celebrity, immediate gratification, and new fixes for old problems. To my thinking, good "scoop" is best saved for conversations, lunch/dinner/drinks, etc. with friends, with whom you can share a good laugh (and so that you have the added pleasure of seeing the shocked looks on their faces when you confound them with the news at hand). Thanks for sharing, Frank! You've given a few of us some mental sight pictures that must be shaken at all costs.
Thinking of friends and acquaintances gets me back to the subject at hand: Reunion. Like many of you, I'm hoping to be able to get to the Reunion this fall. I made it back to several (our 5th, 10th and 20th) and frankly, I had a better time than I had expected I would at each of them.
What's the lure of the Reunion for those of us who keep in touch with our classmates sporadically at best? It's partly the lure of a good party and camaraderie with folks whom we used to share dorm rooms, bad food (come on: who among us would willingly admit to enjoying Branscomb and Rand dining room fare back then? The "Mr. 4x4" sandwich, with its rainbow-hued slab of roast beef, made Army mess hall food seem like a delicacy by comparison), new adventures in academia and sports, all the highs and lows of college life--the highs were high (for some of us, more high than others), yet the lows seemed less so with good friends in our lives. To all appearances, Vanderbilt has changed significantly in many respects. There's always the hope that the 'Dores will actually win one at Homecoming. There's also always the hope that the person for who you used to have a huge crush may show up, and you can finally talk without being shy about it anymore. (If I'm speaking about myself here, sorry, I'm not 'fessing up who the girl is. Besides, I'm a married man.)
Maybe for some of us, however, the simplest explanation is a touch of nostalgia for things passed brings us back home to Vandy once every five years. If life has been for you as it has been for me, my four years at Vandy were the last utterly carefree days I have experienced in my life, pending retirement or the onset of unexpected wealth. The ability to hang out with friends; drink brews at the Overcup Oak or sangria in the Carmichael Towers' basement; hang out on The Wall or listen to some of the very dramatic and never-boring speakers who'd visit it; hear great thinkers talk at IMPACT or at a SGA Speakers Committee presentation; and just to think about some seemingly important thought and have the time to follow it through to its logical (or less than logical, if beer-sodden) completion with professors or buddies....Perhaps George Bernard Shaw was right: maybe, youth is wasted on the young.
But, folks, we are still young--I, for one, cannot completely accept I'm middle-aged--and, whether with or without recourse to blue pills, waxing or other dipilatory treatments, Hair Club for Men (or Women) and radical weight-loss treatments or other cosmetic surgery/Botox/collagen/enhancements--enough of that list, back to my self-imposed injunction against TMI at the start of this blog--here's hoping as many of us who can get to see one another at the Reunion this fall. After all, 25 years from now, we'll be...well, let's just not go there for now, OK? Best wishes to you all. -- Nick
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