old exit 37
VT has obviously been on my mind this week. Flashes of memory are surfacing like bubbles. I thought maybe I'd try to give me & you something else to remember about Tech for awhile.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University = VA Tech = Tech = VT. The VT logo was designed by a math student who based it on the notation for the square root of 1.
These are my very best college friends. From left to right, we have Stephanie McGinnis, Lynn Marie Bagley (sitting), yours truly standing behind Lynn, Sioux Madden, and Lee Worley. We were at Spring Fling of my sophomore year - that's the huge year-end theater department bacchanalia. 1990 - check out all the awesome hair! Lynn, Sioux & Lee changed my life, individually & severally. I loved them so much. I still do.
Lee taught me self-defense, and also how to be actual friends with a guy. He was older than me and he laughed easily and talked even easier. He was a huge influence on me; and helped me through a lot of angsty late teen confusion. Anyway, after acting class one day, we were standing at the water fountain, and I spit a whole mouthful of water in his face. Stupid youthful impulse. He thought it was hilarious (thank christ), and swore he'd get me back. A few months later, I'd forgotten all about it, and we were at the library. We were walking & talking and he stopped for water. As he stood up, I just knew I was about to get soaked - it was a gleam in his eye. Before I could react, he spit. I could do nothing; there wasn't any time. At that exact moment - I shit you not - a girl walked right in between us and got the full blast. I escaped! He profusely apologized to her (with me unhelpfully in fits of giggles), and then chased me all the way back to the PAB (Performing Arts Building).
Lee also crashed an exam of mine. HA! I just remembered this. I was kind of a secret math genius (boy, sure have let that skill founder, haven't we?), and I passed my AP Calculus exam in high school with a 5, so I only needed 9 credits (3 semesters) of math in undergrad. (Interesting, because I passed AP English with a 4 and only needed 3 college credits -- that's what you get for going to an engineering school, I guess.) I took Real & Unreal Math (yeah - don't ask because I don't remember), Statistics & something else I can’t remember right now. I loved Stat, it was so interesting. I guess I should say I loved the subject itself. The exams sucked ass, and seemed to have no bearing on what jazzed me in class. The final was unbearable, except for the fact that Lee - who wasn’t in the class - waltzed in about ½-way through the test. It was a big enough class that only Sioux & I would know he wasn't supposed to be there. He had a loud and hilarious conversation with the TA, where he pretended he'd just woken up and needed to take the exam. he grabbed an exam, sat right at the front, scribbled his way through it in about 15 minutes, and then left. The TA didn't know what the hell to do. It was HIfuckingLARious.
All my math classes were EARLY. Which, ya know, sucked. There's more than one reason I was a theater major. I left the dorm one winter morning for an 8am class. It was a bitter 25ºF, and I was bundled. Two and a half hours later, I was slogging back to my dorm with all of my bulky outer clothes in a heap in my arms because it was now 65º. Friggin’ crazy. It was my freshman year, and I’d never seen anything like that. By senior year, I secretly waited for it to happen. There was always one freakish week in late January/early February that felt like crazy spring. The trees would bloom, we’d all skip classes, we’d feel young and all-powerful. Then the trees would crawl back up inside themselves and reality would slap us upside the head, in the form of a raw wind cutting us in half no matter how appropriately we tried to dress.
I much preferred my classes on the north side of campus. I hated having classes across the drillfield, because that necessitated actually having to cross the damn thing. Winter was the worst. When created in the 1880s or sometime like that, the drill field was level with the road around it. Over the years, it sunk because of an underground lake. It was about the size of 4 football fields in an oval, and it was a huge bowl that basically created a wind-tunnel. When the wind was fierce (i.e. the whole g-d winter), you could let your self fall forward into the wind and still be standing straight up. It was magic. Ear-freezing, frostbiting magic. It would either take you half or twice the time as normal depending on whether you were traveling with or against the wind.
Now that I type it, I realize that I'm not sure if that underground lake story is true, or even plausible. But we all believed it.
Another thing we all believed -- that a hokie is a castrated turkey. I'm sad to say, it's a myth. It's true that our mascot is a turkey called The Hokie Bird. The turkey part comes from when VT was a military school for boys who couldn't get into VMI (or so they were derided). The VMI boys made fun of them by calling them "gobblers" - indicating that they ate too much - i.e. weren't fit or elite enough for VMI. The Techies took it and turned it around by using a turkey as their self-appointed mascot. Yes. Before my time, we were the Gobblers. Awesome! The Hokie part comes in from a popular VT cheer which started "Hokie hokie hokie hi." From that, they become known as the Hokies, but kept the turkey.
Oh, and also - I slept with the Hokie Bird. Thank you very much. He was a theater double major. And in really good shape. REALLY good. A lovely boy; I really liked him. Barry Ellenberger. God, we were children.
Ahh, memories. Funny things. These aren't the ones I even thought I was going to spill, but there they are.
Here's a picture of one of my favorite places on campus. It's a hill on the very northeast edge of campus, right where it connects with downtown Blacksburg. I'll always remember the drillfield in winter, but this place equalled summer.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University = VA Tech = Tech = VT. The VT logo was designed by a math student who based it on the notation for the square root of 1.
These are my very best college friends. From left to right, we have Stephanie McGinnis, Lynn Marie Bagley (sitting), yours truly standing behind Lynn, Sioux Madden, and Lee Worley. We were at Spring Fling of my sophomore year - that's the huge year-end theater department bacchanalia. 1990 - check out all the awesome hair! Lynn, Sioux & Lee changed my life, individually & severally. I loved them so much. I still do.
Lee taught me self-defense, and also how to be actual friends with a guy. He was older than me and he laughed easily and talked even easier. He was a huge influence on me; and helped me through a lot of angsty late teen confusion. Anyway, after acting class one day, we were standing at the water fountain, and I spit a whole mouthful of water in his face. Stupid youthful impulse. He thought it was hilarious (thank christ), and swore he'd get me back. A few months later, I'd forgotten all about it, and we were at the library. We were walking & talking and he stopped for water. As he stood up, I just knew I was about to get soaked - it was a gleam in his eye. Before I could react, he spit. I could do nothing; there wasn't any time. At that exact moment - I shit you not - a girl walked right in between us and got the full blast. I escaped! He profusely apologized to her (with me unhelpfully in fits of giggles), and then chased me all the way back to the PAB (Performing Arts Building).
Lee also crashed an exam of mine. HA! I just remembered this. I was kind of a secret math genius (boy, sure have let that skill founder, haven't we?), and I passed my AP Calculus exam in high school with a 5, so I only needed 9 credits (3 semesters) of math in undergrad. (Interesting, because I passed AP English with a 4 and only needed 3 college credits -- that's what you get for going to an engineering school, I guess.) I took Real & Unreal Math (yeah - don't ask because I don't remember), Statistics & something else I can’t remember right now. I loved Stat, it was so interesting. I guess I should say I loved the subject itself. The exams sucked ass, and seemed to have no bearing on what jazzed me in class. The final was unbearable, except for the fact that Lee - who wasn’t in the class - waltzed in about ½-way through the test. It was a big enough class that only Sioux & I would know he wasn't supposed to be there. He had a loud and hilarious conversation with the TA, where he pretended he'd just woken up and needed to take the exam. he grabbed an exam, sat right at the front, scribbled his way through it in about 15 minutes, and then left. The TA didn't know what the hell to do. It was HIfuckingLARious.
All my math classes were EARLY. Which, ya know, sucked. There's more than one reason I was a theater major. I left the dorm one winter morning for an 8am class. It was a bitter 25ºF, and I was bundled. Two and a half hours later, I was slogging back to my dorm with all of my bulky outer clothes in a heap in my arms because it was now 65º. Friggin’ crazy. It was my freshman year, and I’d never seen anything like that. By senior year, I secretly waited for it to happen. There was always one freakish week in late January/early February that felt like crazy spring. The trees would bloom, we’d all skip classes, we’d feel young and all-powerful. Then the trees would crawl back up inside themselves and reality would slap us upside the head, in the form of a raw wind cutting us in half no matter how appropriately we tried to dress.
I much preferred my classes on the north side of campus. I hated having classes across the drillfield, because that necessitated actually having to cross the damn thing. Winter was the worst. When created in the 1880s or sometime like that, the drill field was level with the road around it. Over the years, it sunk because of an underground lake. It was about the size of 4 football fields in an oval, and it was a huge bowl that basically created a wind-tunnel. When the wind was fierce (i.e. the whole g-d winter), you could let your self fall forward into the wind and still be standing straight up. It was magic. Ear-freezing, frostbiting magic. It would either take you half or twice the time as normal depending on whether you were traveling with or against the wind.
Now that I type it, I realize that I'm not sure if that underground lake story is true, or even plausible. But we all believed it.
Another thing we all believed -- that a hokie is a castrated turkey. I'm sad to say, it's a myth. It's true that our mascot is a turkey called The Hokie Bird. The turkey part comes from when VT was a military school for boys who couldn't get into VMI (or so they were derided). The VMI boys made fun of them by calling them "gobblers" - indicating that they ate too much - i.e. weren't fit or elite enough for VMI. The Techies took it and turned it around by using a turkey as their self-appointed mascot. Yes. Before my time, we were the Gobblers. Awesome! The Hokie part comes in from a popular VT cheer which started "Hokie hokie hokie hi." From that, they become known as the Hokies, but kept the turkey.
Oh, and also - I slept with the Hokie Bird. Thank you very much. He was a theater double major. And in really good shape. REALLY good. A lovely boy; I really liked him. Barry Ellenberger. God, we were children.
Ahh, memories. Funny things. These aren't the ones I even thought I was going to spill, but there they are.
Here's a picture of one of my favorite places on campus. It's a hill on the very northeast edge of campus, right where it connects with downtown Blacksburg. I'll always remember the drillfield in winter, but this place equalled summer.
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