I was reminded today of a trip my dad and I took about this time of the year in the late 80's.
I was headed to college for the first time and, looking back, it was a bittersweet memory for me.
Although I had my license, I don't remember driving, nor do I remember which car we owned at the time (probably the beige VW Dasher but maybe the late-eighty's silver Camry). It was a ten-hour trip.
Because I was from outside a certain radius, I was allowed early-access to the dorms. There was a legion of assistants to help me unload my foot locker, my bike and whatever else I owned (an Apple IIc, my $105 mouse and dot-matrix printer?) and get it into Luckett Hall. (Remember when a mouse was $105? I do, because I earned every penny to buy that one.)
I don't remember what we had for dinner but after I got settled, I remember asking which bunk my dad wanted (my future roommate was pretty local and hadn't arrived yet).
He wasn't staying. He'd booked a room in a local hotel.
"I've already had my first night in my first dorm room," he told me. "We'd just stay up late hearing me tell my stories and you wouldn't get a chance to have any stories of your own."
A wise man, that Dad.
So what do I remember about that evening? I remember thinking about this clean break. I remember how helpful the RA and RD staff were in getting my gear down the steps into my basement dorm room.
I remember that the bed was a twin long, the only sheets we could find to send with me that would fit were pink and that I had a creme cotton thermal blanket and a quilt my mother made me a few years earlier.
I remember being awakened at oh-dark-thirty by the fire alarm, rushing out into the hallway in my PJs, rushing back in again to grab my key and then heading for the stairwell exit.
I remember heading up the stairs to the ground level and seeing the pulled fire alarm handle. I remember thinking that since there wasn't any evidence of fire near the pulled fire alarm, I was probably safe and I should head back to bed.*
I remember standing there thinking that I should still treat this alarm as real since I didn't really know if there was a fire someplace else.
I remember still standing there when the RA showed up, saw me there next to the pulled fire alarm and started asking questions. Thankfully he believed me (or at least gave me the benefit of the doubt).
Most of all, though, I remember thinking about my dad and wondering about his first nights in his various dorms (Grove City, Penn State, etc.).
I wonder if he got to run around in his PJs.
*During my three years' tenure in Luckett, we had countless fire alarms and to my memory, every one of them was false. Sometimes my roommate and I would think about getting up and sometimes we wouldn't. Several times I remember being told to put my foot on the floor. Murphy's law said that the alarm would stop as soon as you woke up enough to step out of bed. Murphy's law also said that it would continue ringing as long as you stayed in bed. Murphy's law also said that if no one from the entire dorm left the building, the whole dorm would die in a terrible conflagration.
