Chapter 28: A Plot Afoot?

Tuesday, October 23, 1984

The Batt had a few interesting things today. As with yesterday, there was a lot of pro-GSS content. Though not all of it was pro — one piece mostly berated the senators who’d voted to support recognizing GSS — the majority of it was pro.

The other was more personal for me and Cammie. There was a brief article about A&M’s debate team. Their top CX team had placed second at the Emporia, Kansas tournament (a major tournament in college debate), and it was mentioned that A&M had probably one of the top sixteen college debate programs in the United States.

Cammie and I sat down and talked about it. Being part of a strong program was a draw. It didn’t hurt that A&M’s top team was a guy/girl team, either.

On the other hand, we still felt the same as we had before. We’d done what we had set out to do. Heck, we’d done far more than we set out to do. Our lives would likely not be better if we pulled out our evidence cases and put on our suits and got debating again. The upside of not debating, and having all that time to do other things, was probably higher than the upside of giving it another go.

That, and Memorial debate had been lightning in a bottle. It wasn’t just that we were really, really good. It wasn’t just that we all loved Meg, and she loved all of us. The biggest thing was that we — almost all of the forty-plus kids who competed in Debate and Drama — were close. Some closer than others, but everyone was one team, united, working together and supporting each other.

Maybe A&M had that, but the difference was that we didn’t know them. We had our family right here, in the house. Going to a tournament without Jas, without Angie and Paige, without Gene and Sue and Amit and Sheila and Carole and Megan and on and on and on — that sounded, well, lame.

It’d be somewhere between an ego trip and a grab at past glory if we went back. We had new things to do.

Still, I wished A&M’s team every success. One day, perhaps, we’d even be sponsors of them.

We just weren’t going to sign up anytime soon.

After thinking about it, I decided to invite Carl, Hank, and another guy named Paul Kensington to come over and work on homework and study together. I absolutely didn’t need the help. By this point, I was certain that I could teach this class and everyone (including me!) would learn more than we were now. Heck, we could put Mr. Baker in the class and he would learn a considerable amount.

Considering I was still, and likely always would be, a mediocre assembly language programmer, that was saying something.

The point of it wasn’t to help me. It wasn’t necessarily just to help them, either. It was more around making some friends in a field in which I intended to take more classes. Each of them seemed like interesting people, too. Two kids with lousy high school resources who both managed to get a good enough score on the Computer Science AP to skip the usual freshman courses? That had to say something about them! That Paul was mostly surviving the class without help said something for him, too.

If it turned out to be a bust, I’d be out a few hours here and there. That’s not a big deal. College is, in many ways, a long sequence of ‘a few hours here and there.’

On the other hand, if it worked, I’d have people to bounce ideas off of in classes where it mattered, and I might have friends who’d be good to have later in life.

Plus, Marshall was likely going to be tickled pink to find out that I’d befriended his Booker T. Washington nemesis as well as being brother to his Drama nemesis. That we were all friends showed a lot about us.

When I brought it up after class, each of them was eager to join. They were also surprised that I lived in a house, too. Carl and Paul were in one of the Commons dorms, while Hank was (of course) in one of the Corps dorms. Those were right next to each other, so they’d have company on the walk home.

Carl, Hank, and Paul arrived (separately) just after we’d finished dinner. I introduced them to the girls, of course. They did their best to try to charm them (which wasn’t all that good, I’m sorry to say — Carl was the best at it), and the girls did their best to make the guys feel at home.

Angie talked to Carl a bit about Marshall. I think it really amused Carl that Marshall’s nemesis was a fairly small blonde girl. But, then, Carl was never going to be a physical challenge to Marshall, either. He wasn’t Steve Urkel (a reference only Angie would have understood, and made to me later) but he wasn’t that far off from Urkel, either. Imagine a more grown-up Urkel with considerably better social skills and that was pretty much Carl.

We worked on the first floor for now. I’d started to consider ways of updating the basement. While they weren’t nearly as common as they were going to be, whiteboards were now available. They weren’t exorbitantly expensive, either. A whiteboard mounted on one of the walls, some cheap couches and chairs, and a coffee table would make a terrific study space, and the whiteboard wouldn’t get in the way of entertaining.

Not that we’d do that much entertaining down there yet. There wasn’t even a television! Or a stereo! I could move my old boombox down there, though.

Wednesday, October 24, 1984

The courts had yet another ruling that I agreed with. Texas’s ‘blue law,’ which banned sales of many things on Sundays (but allowed many other things to be sold) was struck down as unconstitutional. It had been struck down before, repeatedly, but the state supreme court kept upholding it on appeal.

Unusually for courts, that didn’t stop district courts (and even some courts of appeal) from continuing to strike it down. Lower courts seldom picked this sort of fight with the state supreme court, but this was a special case.

The other unusual thing about the blue law fight was that one seldom saw retail businesses openly violating the law, but that had become par for the course. Some stores had started ‘enforcing’ the law by putting up a single rope barrier with signs saying ‘these products aren’t on sale today.’ All a customer had to do was reach over the rope and pick up the product. Cashiers would ring it up right along with anything else the customer purchased.

Some went even further and just put a sign up at the entrance to the aisle: ‘Some products on this aisle are not on sale.’ How was a customer to react to that? Most reacted by ignoring it.

Sure, the state very occasionally sent out ‘mystery shoppers’ to try to purchase goods that could not legally be purchased. If they succeeded, they fined the store. District courts often tossed out those fines. The state sometimes appealed, but it cost the state an enormous amount to keep appealing while the shop owners could just represent themselves. If they lost, they had to pay a trivial fine years after the offense.

The whole thing was ludicrous, and I was nearly certain it would end for good within the next year or two. By 2021, I suspected very few people — even those who grew up with blue laws — still really remembered what it was like to walk into a store on a Sunday and find out they couldn’t legally sell you the thing you wanted.

We had a brief message from Detective Frederick waiting on the answering machine. It wasn’t much, just an acknowledgment that he was looking into it, but had no leads and felt it was relatively unlikely that they’d catch the culprit.

That didn’t surprise me. Short of a neighbor who’d seen something and wanted to admit to it, what could he do? Even 21st-century CSI teams wouldn’t be able to crack a spray paint graffiti case very much of the time.

Most likely it would always be a mystery. Even if our problem neighbors did it, they would never admit to it. There was no upside for them. Thus far, they hadn’t even acknowledged that they knew it had happened. For all I knew, they didn’t know it had happened.

After listening to the call, Angie said, “I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I want to look for either a karate instructor — that was fun, and I’m way out of practice — or just a good self-defense class.”

Mel nodded slowly, then said, “It seems to me that karate would probably be better for long-term fitness and stuff, but a good self-defense class would be something we could all do and then it’d be done. Hopefully, we’d never have to use what we learned, but we’d have it just in case.”

I nodded, saying, “Yeah. I’m all for long-term fitness, but we hardly need it right now. We’re walking miles every day, and I don’t think any of us have put on any weight.”

Mel chuckled, and said, “I, for one, am definitely more fit! All the walking was kicking my ass the first few weeks. It’s much better now.”

“I agree,” Paige said. “Back to self-defense. Maybe in the spring? I mean, if something happens now we’ll feel like idiots for not prioritizing it, but...”

Cammie nodded.

“It’d be really hard to fit it into everyone’s schedule right now. Maybe in the spring we can plan it out better.”

“Spring Saturdays won’t be as bad,” I said. “No football games, probably few rallies or the like after January.”

“That’s a good point,” Paige said. “Daytime Saturday might be good.”

I was in favor. If it was a women’s self-defense class, maybe I could volunteer to be a crash-test dummy or something.

Jas said, “Also, make sure you’ve got your ‘bear spray.’ We know there are some bears out there now!”

Mel nodded, and added, “That, and we know at least some of us have painted targets on our back.”

We might not make progress on self-defense quickly, but we definitely needed to keep that in mind. That, and keep the bear spray handy. Repainting walls wasn’t a big deal compared to some other possibilities.

Tonight was another GSS meeting. We were again meeting at Luby’s. As with the last meeting, I felt like they got plenty accomplished, but I saw too much infighting to make me feel sanguine about their future. Oh, it wouldn’t destroy GSS (most likely), but some of these fights looked like they could turn messy.

Angie and Cammie, in particular, were thinking along the same lines. I wouldn’t be surprised if both of them tried to get more involved in the hopes of trying to take some sort of leadership role next year. Paige and Mel would no doubt support them.

Jas and I wanted to help, but that was it. We simply couldn’t realistically try for a leadership role. That would be a terrible idea.

After the meeting proper ended, two guys that we didn’t know recognized us from the Houstonians for Equality rally, which led to a small commotion when everyone else realized there were (minor) celebrities in their midst. Angie and Paige got a lot of attention from a bunch of girls who’d previously ignored them, and Cammie and Mel got nearly as much. For my part, it felt like more people were willing to credit me with being a staunch ally rather than some straight guy just there to be nice.

Once all of that died down a bit, we all mingled. Mel wound up talking to a guy she knew from one of her classes. After a bit, I spotted a girl who was in my math class. She initially seemed skittish, but was much more outgoing once she realized that not only did I have a girlfriend, but that she was here. The idea of going to a GSS meeting to hit on a lesbian seemed ludicrous, but I’m sure she got hit on a lot, so ... maybe?

In any case, her name was Lindsay Ryan, she was also in business, and she seemed extremely sharp. Quiet, but sharp. She’d probably have to be, being another freshman in a totally out-of-place math class.