Summer 1993-Music, Storm And Prophetic Dreams

I listened to the local Top-40 station, U93, but alternative station Q101 from Chicago was my favorite. It usually had better and more interesting songs than U93 did.

Even when a Q101 song crossed over to U93, it would often happen some time after it was first played on Q101. I also listened to dance station B96 from Chicago from time to time.

On June 8, I wrote this in my diary:

Fun happenings at [our house] tonight. We’ve been having terrible downpours (or ‘wonderful,’ depending on your point of view) for the past couple days. Tonight, lightning struck the tree on the [front] side of the house, and it split in two!
The one half fell into the neighbors’ front door….I saw the half lying on the ground when the lightning lit up the sky once. My parents were on their way out to help them, when they saw our back door was blocked as well, by a limb from the oak tree!
When we first saw the tree in the neighbors’ yard, after Mom called Dad and me over with a voice that told us something was up, the phone rang (I knew it was the [neighbors], after only one ring;
my parents probably guessed as well), and we heard sirens off somewhere–all in the space of a few seconds! I thought the sirens were for us, but I guess not.
[Our street] was flooded, too. Some people on FOX [32] News were saying their Chicago neighborhood got flooded the worst it’s ever been, that it gets worse every year.
This weather’s covering several states, including Wisconsin, but it’s worst in Michigan and maybe Indiana. There are flash flood and severe weather/thunderstorm watches all over the place, and in some places they’ve even had tornadoes.
FOX News was reporting baseball-sized hail, and I saw a newsclip of someone holding some.
This weather must be covering most of the Midwest, all the way over to Minnesota! White Castle restaurant, in Chicago, has a moat around it, which probably won’t be pumped up until about midnight, so the people there are stranded, wanting to go home. What a week, so far.

I had no idea that the storm that led to the trees falling down was only the beginning of an awful summer for Wisconsin and other areas. Though we got nothing worse than constant rain and annoying earwigs, there was flooding in some states that caused property damage.

Wisconsin was hit with flooding, and when junior year began, notices were posted on Krueger Hall doors about how to get relief if your farm had been damaged by the summer floods.

I believe Missouri got it, as well, and I wondered how Latosha was doing in St. Louis.

Though a South Bend Tribune article on earwigs said it was only a myth that they bit people’s ears, my older brother could swear that they did so to him when he was sleeping in his basement room one night.

Imagine, though, what it was like for me, when the house was invaded by earwigs, to find a big picture of an earwig on the front page of the Sunday paper!

****

Fortunately, I recorded my dreams–which, somehow, foreshadowed my future relationship with a guy I hadn’t even met yet: Phil O’Hara, Dave’s brother. Phil’s face reminded me of Eric Idle of the Monty Python troupe, and I told him so a few times.

At least twice over the summer of 1993, I dreamed about Eric Idle: He’d be my hero or a teacher making a move on me. Yet when I actually met Phil, I forgot these dreams completely, not remembering them until 1999, when I re-read my diary and wrote about my junior year.

On July 9, I dreamed about a young priest. I wrote, “I like the priest, even though he’s ‘unavailable,’ because I feel he could become available.” Phil spent seven years planning to be a priest, until he decided he didn’t want to be alone.

On August 14, I dreamed this:

I discover that I’m to be married to a guy I’ve just met at school, or wherever that place is….I’m finding out about this guy by talking with him, and it may be this one or the next one that knows some ninja moves.
This guy’s about my age, with short, thick brown hair, and a bit taller than me. Then something happens to him, so I have to marry his twin brother. He’s a little different than him, but not very much.
He shows me the knife blade…that he carries in his pocket, and I think, …’This guy’s a fighter. He could beat Peter up any day.’ The fact he’s a strong fighter stirs up something primitive in me, and I feel a strong attraction.
I hope my thought of Peter isn’t a problem. But the marriage can’t take place until I take care of some things….
I’ve found out some things about him and like him, but I can’t say I can’t live without him or can live with him, because I don’t know….
I was afraid he’d get tired of waiting [after some things I did] and leave, but here he is, ready for the after-wedding. I guess there isn’t much to do, maybe exchange some words, to be married.

The physical details I recorded matched Phil’s. The alarm went off too soon, and I wrote, “I was disappointed, of course, to find it was only a dream and I didn’t even have a boyfriend, let alone a fiancé or husband.”

I recall a dream about getting engaged to a priest, whose brother did not like me. We may have even had a secret wedding. Unfortunately, I can’t find it now, or I’d copy parts of it for you.

This, as well as the Eric Idle dreams, has an uncanny resemblance to what was to happen with Phil. The funny thing is, on June 26, I pondered in my diary whether I was precognitive.

****

Over the summer, Catherine began dating a guy named Glen. And also over the summer, she got engaged to Glen. She had all sorts of praises for him in her letters to me.

****

I wrote in my diary on July 30, “Why do I keep thinking of Peter so much these days? It’d make you think I wanted him. Maybe I’m alone too much; I don’t know. A little voice said, ‘Perhaps he’s thinking of you, too.'”

Several months later, I would find out the answer to this question. On August 10, I wondered if the memories of Peter were taking me over again because they were “actually less painful than those of Shawn.”

That is possible, that after all the hurt from Peter, what I felt for Shawn, and the pain I felt over Shawn, was far more than I ever got from Peter.

Keep in mind that our whole strange, twisted friendship-with-benefits lasted for more than a year and two months, far longer than my relationship with Peter.

September 1993
Life at Roanoke: My College Memoirs–September 1991 through May 1995

Table of Contents

Freshman Year

September 1991:

October 1991:

November 1991:

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: