college stories

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound
January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD
February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?

April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992:

Sophomore Year

Summer 1992:

October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:

May 1993:

Junior Year

Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams

May 1994:

Senior Year

June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:

September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel:

May 1995:

by Nyssa McCanmore
Posted on September 16, 2015April 26, 2022

Graduation: Trapped at school–College Memoirs: Life At Roanoke–May 1995, Part 3

I decided to help Cugan move, which would be right after graduation. This made him happy, because–except for one day when Bob and another guy helped–he had no one else to help him move the mountains of stuff he somehow fit into his claustrophobic apartment.

My plan was to stay with him until the W– shire had an event in June, then move back home. There, I’d find a job, save money for a used car and computer, then move back to S–.

On one of our last days at school, probably Saturday, May 20, my non-graduating roommates and friends held a graduation party for us graduating seniors. (Pearl and Sharon decided to add majors and take one more year.)

There was an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen, with layers of vanilla and chocolate, and chocolate fudge. The top was decorated in honor of the graduates. It was delicious.

They gave us presents and cards. Mine included a note paper cube depicting college students each year, and a purple warm fuzzy with a black graduation cap and gold tassel.

The cube depicted the same two students throughout their college years, one per side. As freshmen, they were cleancut, bright, shining, happy students, the guy with a tie and the girl with a skirt and sweater.

Sophomore year, they had half-closed eyes, smiles not so wide but still happy, shorts, wild hair, earrings, and very casual shirts.

Junior year, they were “cool,” with sandals, messy clothes, more earrings, wild clothes, the guy’s hair long and the girl’s hair cropped, their eyes tired, their smiles dopey (the guy) or nonexistent (the girl).

Senior year, they dressed professionally, the girl’s hair long and the guy’s hair cut short, looking like businesspeople–except with bags under the eyes on their bright, shining faces.

When I started work at an insurance company right after July 4, this sat on my desk under a small length of chain mail that Donato or Cugan gave me. The warm fuzzy sat on my computer.

My roommies and I promised to keep in touch with each other, which we did. Remember, this is when everyone got e-mail, and in the 2010s, Facebook!

Saturday, May 20. Graduation finally came, and all this was resolved: Phil, Peter, Shawn, trouble after trouble in other areas–all these things were history. I had a good man.

In only a few months, I proved Dirk wrong about me, that I would not end up an old maid. I did nothing he advised unless I’d already been doing it. I was just myself.

I’d hear young people, such as soon-to-be high-school graduates, complain about Wisconsin and that they wanted to get away from it as soon as possible.

Yet I, on the other hand, came from out of state and wanted to go back to Wisconsin because it was fun and interesting to me.

This was not an indictment against Indiana or South Bend, which probably had more things going on than my new city or S– did.

Rather, I was fascinated by the differences in culture and accent, and would miss these things if I stayed in Indiana. I just knew that any friends I made in Indiana would hear me go on and on about how different things were in Wisconsin. And, most of all, I wanted to be with my friends.

On graduation day, I didn’t go to the morning breakfast or baccalaureate service, which weren’t required and were far too early. But I did go to the lunch and, of course, commencement, and then the reception (which I couldn’t wait for.)

Graduation. Maura, Phil’s mother, graduated that day, and sat near me because the graduates sat together. She gave me a warm hello. When her turn came to get her diploma, friends and family cheered. One of them cried, “Way to go, Maura!”

Taylor was there, I believe. I don’t remember if Phil was there, but even seeing his mother made me feel weird. She didn’t seem to like me any less for what had happened, but I hadn’t seen her since September. Seeing her again reminded me of Phil.

Rather than this graduation being one of my happiest moments, I was sick of school and couldn’t wait for graduation to be over. (I’ve since learned that Cugan felt the same way at his graduation.)

I was nervous, though I didn’t let my one or two minor mess-ups bother me. (I found them amusing, actually. I forget what they were, though I might have gone the wrong way once or stumbled into a chair.)

Get me outta here! I kept thinking. I even felt this way as we filed out of the hall at the end. All I wanted to do was be with Cugan and attend Mermaid’s, which I couldn’t because it was the same day.

I arranged with Pearl and Sharon, who were booked in that same apartment for next year, to use their storage room for a good amount of my stuff. I gave them my dustmop, which I no longer needed.

I was to fetch the stuff later on after I got a job, got a car, and then moved back to S–, which I expected to do within the next school year. Fortunately, this worked out, as I found a job, got a car, and moved to Fond du Lac less than two months later.

When all my things were packed in the car or stored in the storage room, and I had talked to and introduced Catherine to my parents, it was time to go.

The things in the car were to be loaded into a van belonging to Cugan’s dad, which Cugan took to Mermaid’s.

I called the Residence Life Coordinator (RLC) to check out, thinking it would just be a matter of telling her I was leaving, and then leaving. I was only the first one to leave in my apartment, after all: Pearl and maybe the others would leave the next day.

But even though I was only the first to check out, RLC told me I couldn’t until all the furniture in the entire apartment was back in the original places.

!!!

I’d call her up and tell her things were ready, but she’d come over and say something still wasn’t right.

We were there for hours after the 4:00 reception (which was short and informal, and in the cafeteria).

I don’t remember how late we finally left, but it seemed like we never would. We were pooped out and sick of it all, and just wanted to leave. We also wanted dinner.

We feared Pearl wouldn’t be able to get around, since all the beds had to be set on the floor and not bunked, and the official arrangement was so impractical that it was hard even for the able-bodied to move around in the tiny bedrooms.

Pearl decided that she and her family would take care of the vacuuming the next day.

RLC found problems here and there to charge us all for, even though they were probably just normal wear and tear.

At long last, RLC okayed my leaving, so my parents and I fled. We went to dinner (starving by now), then stayed overnight in a hotel.

I had no idea when I would see my roommates again.

The next day, my parents drove me to Mermaid’s, wondering who all the strange people were and what kind of group this SCA was, anyway. (Mom feared they might be druggies.) We found Cugan sitting with his tent, which I think he had taken down by then, and he looked happy to see me. We loaded my things from the car and into his dad’s van, and then my parents left for South Bend.

Cugan, as autocrat, or the guy in charge, had to make sure the campsite was cleaned up properly by noon, when the event was officially over. I helped sweep out cabins, and may have done other things as well, so I helped at Mermaid’s that year even though I didn’t even attend it.

Cugan found a lump in one of the beds in the dormitory–one of the college-age girls, still asleep. He had hoped everyone was up and would be gone from the site by the time they were supposed to leave.

I later saw this girl by the horses in a long, white, flowing gown that reminded me of Melissa’s gown in Dragonslayer. (Melissa was the first maiden shown being sacrificed to the dragon. The name is only used in the novelization.) This was my dream gown.

Cugan ran hither and thither and cleaned, wishing more of the shire members would help him. Finally, cleanup was finished, everyone left the site, and his stressful time as autocrat was officially over.

Index
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound

January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD

February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?

April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992:

Sophomore Year

Summer 1992:

October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:

May 1993:

Junior Year

Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams

May 1994:

Senior Year

June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:

September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel:

May 1995:

by Nyssa McCanmore
Posted on August 19, 2015September 29, 2020

Defending my Thesis; Graduating with Honors–College Memoirs: Life At Roanoke–May 1995, Part 2

Possibly on May 13 or a later date, Cugan and I took our new favorite movie, Much Ado About Nothing with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, to Laura’s house and showed it to the boarders there.

I had never been to Laura’s house before. She lived outside of V–, a small town in M– County. Her boarders were her boyfriend Bob, Shannon, Dan, Helena, and Helena’s two-year-old daughter, Ellie. All of them were in the SCA.

Laura tended to pick up strays, both human and animal.

She lived in a moderate-sized, unfinished, red house on a moderate-sized farm. The living room had no carpet, and it and the bathroom still seemed to be only half-done. The living room was packed with stuff.

I don’t think Laura raised crops, but she did have a horse or two, and rabbits in the barn. Cats and a large black puppy named Nala wandered around.

Soon, two cute, tiny puppies joined the group, Shannon’s puppies. When he got older, the male tried to hump Nala, even though he was a toy breed and Nala was one of the largest breeds. Eventually, unfortunately, Nala ate the female. 🙁

Ellie was as curious and mischievous as a two-year-old usually is, but the others didn’t childproof the house. When she found the flour and covered the house with it before everyone woke up, they probably shouldn’t have been surprised, since the cupboard wasn’t locked.

Bob had a bad temper, which Laura didn’t put up with for long. After all, she’d already been in a bad marriage, and left when the guy pointed a gun at her. I sensed she was going to break up with him when I saw how annoyed she acted with Bob. Cugan saw nothing.

Dan must have been lazy or a bad boyfriend, because one day he was thrown out of the house, and Shannon ended up marrying another guy.

****

The defense of my thesis was actually the last of my finals, since seniors took finals earlier than the other classes did.

On Monday, May 15, I defended my thesis in front of the panel of teachers I selected. I forget who was in the panel. I know Dr. Nelson and his wife were, and I suspect Thea, Todd and Christina also were.

The defense was set for ten a.m.; it lasted twenty minutes, and the teachers asked me questions. Then I went outside the room, one of the conference rooms in Jubilee, and waited in the hall as they talked about my thesis behind the closed door.

Then Nelson came out and said they were impressed with my extensive reading (more than some of the teachers on the panel had done) and the quality of the work, and would give me an A-.

Not only that, but Nelson put my thesis in the Roanoke library, along with past theses which were so honored, as an example for future students of a good thesis paper.

Such an end to all the anxieties I held about this paper for three and a half years! And at first I wasn’t even going to write one: I was going to drop out of the Honors Core program and take Senior Studies instead!

Now, I needed to re-type the thesis, and give it to Nelson.

Not only that, but the school informed me I would graduate cum laude and with honors. Though I can’t find my final grades, my total GPA was between 3.5 and 3.59.

I got to wear a gold, braided cord for the ceremony, exactly the same as and worn exactly the same as the one given to NHS members in my high school graduation.

As I wrote in the Journal,

One more page of my thesis to type!! That’s the last of my homework. Wow. I can’t believe it. It still hasn’t hit me.
Last Wednesday as I sat in Chaucer, I thought, this is my last class. And I won’t be going to Chaucer or any other class, except for Brit Lit final.
–Such a thought! It made me sad, especially since I’ll miss Chaucer. That was a fun class. I’d recommend it, but Christina wouldn’t be teaching it next year. I’ll also miss Pearl’s CD’s. 🙂
I’m so happy to say I got an A- on that thesis!

****

On a Wednesday just before graduation, a guy came up to me at the information desk in the library. He was pleasant-looking, and chatted with me for a bit, finding out my name and such.

I wasn’t deliberately flirting with him, but suspected he was interested. Apparently my instincts on these things improved greatly over the years, because while I was on a date with Cugan, this guy called the apartment and asked for me.

Tara or Pearl answered, and told him I was away. Somehow she ended up telling him I was at SCA dance practice with my boyfriend and dressed in medieval clothes, which he said sounded “so cool.” Afterwards, Tara or Pearl chatted and one said to the other, “How does she do it?”

How do I do it? They once asked this same question about Cindy, who despite having only one sort-of boyfriend before college, kept attracting guys at college.

I had such bad luck with men that I often felt like an ugly duckling–until the second half of senior year. And now my friends were asking of me, “How does she do it?” What a difference!

Later on, this guy called me and talked for a bit. He asked me to dinner, but I said I wasn’t comfortable with that. I didn’t know him all that well, and I had an exclusive boyfriend.

He seemed okay with that, and asked if he could get to know me as a friend, because he recently divorced and was looking for friends. I said okay, but I didn’t see him in the library or hear from him again.

Index
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound
January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD
February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?

April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992:

Sophomore Year

Summer 1992:

October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:

May 1993:

Junior Year

Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams

May 1994:

Senior Year

June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:

September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel:

May 1995:

by Nyssa McCanmore
Posted on July 22, 2015June 23, 2022

Peace with My Abuser, Phil–College Memoirs: Life At Roanoke–May 1995, Part 1

In the beginning of May, Cugan finally found a job (having been out of one for a few months), which would start at the end of May, and needed to move to Fond du Lac.

Near the end of the school year, the forums were fun because The Elite Lamer had his own forum. It was about conspiracies in government and everywhere else.

I had fun reading it and then debunking and disagreeing with what he posted. But did this annoy him? Did this upset him? No.

To my amusement, he loved to talk to me in tele and Farwest Trivia, and said he liked my style. I had fun talking with him, and whenever he came into tele or Trivia I greeted him with, “Hey, The!”

This was how the Owl’s Nest BBS used to greet me each day, as I mentioned here. Now, I gave The Elite Lamer, or TEL, the same treatment.

He was sad when it was time for me to graduate and give up TCB until AOL finally put in the promised Telnet (which it was supposed to have installed months before and never did until after I needed it.)

TEL and others told me I could Telnet in because TCB was going on the Internet. I’d never heard of Telnet, so they explained it. I could log in to out-of-state BBS’s without paying long-distance charges!

For a few weeks, someone with the handle “Jesus Christ” and someone with the handle “Satan” (Nobody, I believe) began coming on TCB. It was endless amusement for Sharon and me when they both came into teleconference. They even had a mock war.

Whenever “Jesus Christ” came into tele, I typed, “Hello, Lord!” and sometimes cyber-bowed to him. Others did similar things.

Then there was Aahz, who read many of the same books I did but was into outdoor activities. We probably got to talking when I recognized his handle from a character in the MythAdventures fantasy-comedy series.

He loved having intellectual conversations with me. Though only about twenty, he considered himself grown-up because he already had to wonder where all the money for his bills was coming from.

I became a huge flirt online, flirting with Ish and others and even using the adult action words at times. I loved double entendre and innuendo. Sharon called me a cyberslut, but I just laughed. This online flirt still, to this day, comes out now and then.

****

After having been called “negative” by Shawn, I finally had poetic justice: First, James called Persephone, not me, the most negative person he’d ever meant. As far as I could tell, he didn’t hate me, so he must not have thought I was so very negative. Second, I met Cugan and became “the happy cell” in the couple.

I was the bright one, the light one, Cugan the dark one. He’d be pessimistic and I’d be optimistic; he was dark-colored and I was light-colored. It was like we were two of the same person, with certain differences that made me “light” and him “dark.” It amused me.

What Shawn called negativity proved to be not disposition, but circumstances. Who wouldn’t be negative while being depressed? Did he expect me to get up and smile and dance around when my life seemed to crumble around me?

Sure, Cugan was difficult at times, but the difference was, he knew it. If he did something that may have hurt someone’s feelings, he felt bad about it. He knew he had a temper, and admitted it got him into trouble.

He wasn’t like Phil, who didn’t recognize that what he did wasn’t right. You could actually talk to Cugan. Things could actually get better with him, not worse. We learned how to communicate.

****

One evening, I came online and found Crash Helmet, my ex Phil.

Somehow, we began paging each other. Maybe “Crash” figured out who I was and paged me. I don’t remember how or why our conversation started.

But I wanted to show him I’d moved on–and make sure he had not slept with anyone else in the two weeks before we got back together last September. You know, because of possible STDs. He said he had not.

I told him about all my men since Charles: Stimpy, Cugan, Speaker (I accidentally told him I met Speaker, which was supposed to be a secret, then told him to forget that), Brad, maybe even the Vampire.

Yes, I was boasting, but after the way he treated me, I didn’t want him to think I was sitting around lonely, waiting for his return. I told him that Cugan left, but came back three days later.

I wrote, “I heard your minivan died. How do you get around?” Persephone had told me this.

I believe Dave now had to cart him around, just as he once had to cart Dave around. I remembered how much he hated having to drive Dave around when Dave lost his license over a DUI.

He wrote, “It’s so good to talk to you again.”

I don’t think I said much to that.

He must have also mentioned that he still had some of my character sheets, because after this I found him in the Pub one day to ask him about them. I think Dave was nearby. Did his eyes bulge out of his sockets to see me talking to Phil?

Phil sat by the pool tables. I walked up to him, a confident, dignified, businesslike air about me. I was so over him that I had been with another man the night before. His claws were finally out of me.

He smiled and called me N.M., an old nickname, probably taken from the signature to one of the letters I sent him in the fall. He didn’t have the sheets with him, but said he’d get them to me. I took my leave and walked away.

He didn’t get them to me until just before Christmas: He showed up unannounced in the parking lot of my apartment building just as Cugan and I packed the car to visit Cugan’s parents. I was startled, Cugan was annoyed, and Phil left soon after.

****

On Thursday, May 4 at 6:30 p.m., I went to the annual Honors Convocation. I got a ticket for Cugan before we broke up, wondered what to do with it after we broke up, and now he went. In fact, I asked him once, after the breakup, what to do about the ticket, and he said he would still go.

This was semi-formal. We sat across from Anna, so she met my man.

As far as I know, Phil was still in the Core program and Persephone probably was as well, but I don’t remember seeing either of them. If I did, it must have been insignificant for me to not remember it at all.

Index
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound
January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD
February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?
April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign
May 1992:

Sophomore Year

Summer 1992:

October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:

May 1993:

Junior Year

Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams

May 1994:

Senior Year

June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:

September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel: