"You can't go home again," is not original as the reader well knows, but it is absolutely true; You can't go home again.
I left home at age eighteen to go to college, but I always reappeared when my clothes needed washing. My mom spent many a Saturday afternoon with the old ringer-type Maytag getting me ready to return to Tennessee Polytechnic Institute. I attempted my own laundry on occasion, but it was never the same for some reason, and the schedule of a T.P.I. music major was extremely tight.
I had a chance to finish an advanced degree and took it. I didn't go home between the time I finished the first advanced degree and the beginning of the second. However, when halfway through the Specialist in Education from Indiana University I had a couple of weeks and no place to go other than HOME!
IU had a Department of Instructional Technology in the College of Education that required three years experience in the field before conferring an Ed. S. Degree. I had the prospect of a position at The University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and I was awaiting the "word" from them. In the meantime I was stuck at home, ...in Carthage, ...with no money, ... in my parents living room, ...all alone, ...with my mother ... giving me the big-eye!
She didn't have to say a word, and didn't, but the message was loud and clear. Had she voiced it, it might have been, "Now what?"
I soon left; first to Memphis to do nothing more than to get out of Carthage; then on to Knoxville to assume my new position as the Audio Visual guy. Things worked out well after that, and I haven't had to go home again out of necessity, YET!
Actually, never going home particularly applies to going back to your old high school when they are in session and you are waiting for your first college semester to start. I think it is a ploy between your old high school and your new college to stagger the starting times just to humiliate the, soon to be, college freshman!
You're sitting around with nothing in particular to do, just waiting for the day when the college dorms open, and you see all the cars covering the hill at the old high school. You think how great it would be to go over and visit a few minutes with all those "jolly juniors" and "silly sophomores" who will, no doubt, be ecstatic to be in your presence again!
Oh, the temptation, the allure, the irresistible magnetism of it all; it's just too much, TOO MUCH! It is absolutely the smoothest seduction one can perpetuate upon one's self. The outcome is, of course, totally devastating. Those, once "old pals" have now staked out their own turf, and you are a non-entity in everyone's eye. No one has any time to speak to you, and some even show disdain at your presence. Well, I didn't stay long: I'm a fast learner!
There are some who can go back to the old high school and pull it off. They make a grand entrance, determined to make the biggest possible splash! Sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn't!
An old girlfriend of mine wanted to make a big splash going back to visit good old Smith County High. She had thought of herself as a big fish in that small pond, and she was determined to dazzle the old crowd.
She arrived driving a white Mustang convertible accompanied by two extremely large, long nosed, Russian Wolfhounds. She was "dressed to the nines" in a white sweater and a very-mini, white skirt, four-inch heels, and a short, white, fur coat; A little warm for the season but image was everything, and it is important to make a fashion statement without becoming a slave to fashion, is it not?
A stunning entrance was made to the main building. She traipsed, strutted and proceeded to overwhelm everyone within visual range. Wolfhounds cavorted and entangled themselves in the throng of students going to their next class. She passed from one group of "admirers" to another with ultimate panache, seemingly oblivious to the smiles and stares.
She went down to the new band room to visit her former, most intimate old friends where another grand entrance was made. Spotting a fully assembled clarinet, her own instrument in past days, she reached down to the case open on the floor to render a timely ditty. While bending over and attempting to escape from an entanglement of leashes, one of the wolfhounds "cold-nosed" her right in the tush! Evidently the crotch panel of LEGGs pantyhose offer insufficient insulation from the ice-cold nose of an inquisitive wolfhound!
The response was extreme to say the least: She let out a “WHOOP” and she would have climbed the concrete block wall had it not been newly painted with a very slick epoxy paint.
Going home? Some times the magic works and sometimes it doesn’t.
No comments:
Post a Comment