Chapter 37: Let It Burn

Saturday, November 24, 1984

We had a relatively leisurely breakfast with Mom and Dad but were still on the road by ten.

Mel and Cammie were considerably more upbeat than they’d been on the drive down. According to Mel, things had stayed better with her parents after Thanksgiving was over. It wasn’t completely hearts and flowers, but they seemed to have realized Mel was going to do what she was going to do and they either needed to get with the program or risk seriously damaging their relationship not only with Mel but also with Mark, Morty, and Emily. Since they really loved Emily (who wouldn’t?), and not just because she was willing to put up with both of their miscreant twins, that was a major risk.

Most likely, Alex and Carol still thought of Mark and Morty as ‘miscreants.’ From the outside, they weren’t very different from the manic pranksters they’d been not so long ago. They’d carefully kept up their reputation through the years at Memorial, occasionally swapping with each other in a class or pulling some similarly harmless stunt.

That said, it was as genuine as Janet’s ‘valley girl’ persona. That works both ways: Janet had some ‘valley girl’ in her. She wasn’t just faking it. At the same time, she was so much more than that, and ‘crazy like a fox.’ Mark and Morty were the same way. Oh, sure, they’d gotten National Merit Scholarships and such, but it was still tempting to think of them as literal ‘sophomores:’ wise fools who had coasted on innate talent rather than put in endless hours of serious, dedicated work.

They’d done most of that while with us, after all. It’s possible the Rileys never saw their studious side.

In any case, things were looking up. That made me very happy. Unlike the Clarkes, the Rileys didn’t have an enormous hurdle to overcome. Whether the Clarkes would even reach a state where a simple conversation was possible was completely unclear. I’d settle for Cammie letting go of her anger and simply writing them out of her life. Anger would do nothing to them, but it would eat away at Cammie over time.

Most of this I knew because I’d lived it with my ex-wife. Anger is powerful, and the longer you let it persist, the more it tends to become a generalized force affecting everything and everyone, even those you should be the least angry with.

I’d seen it in Laura, too. Her anger with Asshole Steve and Bitch Angie was perfectly justified, but it said something about her that her dying words had been focused on people who had been out of her life for years by then.

Most likely, Laura had needed to meet Angie and me for this life to work in the long run. Simply having us out of her life wouldn’t have given her the ‘closure’ she needed.

We talked about little of that directly during the drive, of course. Mostly, we talked about the happiest moments of Thanksgiving. That, and whether A&M or TCU would be giving thanks in a few hours.

My bet was on TCU, but I was prepared to be wrong. This game was close to an unknown for me. I was happy about that.

Our ‘seats’ were pretty lousy by one standard, but also pretty good for freshmen. We were on the upper deck, but towards the front and right around the 10-yard line. Being an early bird had been rewarded again.

The t.u. game would be much, much worse. We were at the mercy of UT in terms of what tickets A&M had to distribute. Upperclassmen would definitely camp out for the best seats, and even some freshmen might.

We probably wouldn’t. I’d be content to simply be in the stadium. It’s not like I hadn’t attended Texas games with lousy seats before, after all.

In the end, this game was indeed a surprise. TCU wasn’t some hapless opponent — they’d come into this game ranked seventeenth in the nation. Still, A&M held a 28-7 lead at one point in the third quarter, both from playing stifling defense and from the offense really getting going.

TCU mounted a comeback attempt in the fourth quarter that had us all nervous, but the closest they got was 28-21. A forced fumble late in the game sealed the victory for A&M (well, that and an ‘insurance’ touchdown to make it 35-21).

This was a big moment for the Aggies. A loss would have guaranteed a losing season. Now, they were 5-5. They still had t.u. (ranked higher than TCU, and who had just beaten TCU) next weekend, so there was hardly any guarantee of getting that 6th win, but at least it was possible.

In my mind (and, most likely, mine alone), it was closer to being a sure thing than a pipe dream. If I was still a betting man, I’d have bet heavily on that game. It was one of those on my original 1980 list of betting opportunities (which still sat in an encrypted file on an old floppy disk — there was no way I was ever going to put a list like that on paper!)

We would see in a week. For now, the jubilant crowd spilled out of Kyle Field, many of them taking the same path northward as us. They would mostly wind up at the Northgate bars, while we would wind up in our nice cozy home.

Different strokes for different folks, as always.

Sports victories are an odd thing. At Memorial, at least, we personally knew some of the players. Here, the only players we knew weren’t actually playing yet, merely practicing and biding their time.

Yet there is plenty of research showing fans of a team being physiologically affected by a win or a loss. Obviously, that has to start in the brain, but it’s expressed in hormone levels and feel-good (or feel-bad) chemicals. A win can have jubilant fans feeling almost as if they’d won the contest themselves. A loss might send some people into a bit of depression. Domestic violence spiked after particularly painful losses, too.

We were hardly immune. All of us were ‘on the bandwagon,’ as we had been at Memorial. The odds were high we would be even more so next year, when Andy and Cal might reasonably be expected to be playing in some games. Perhaps, even, many games.

So, our being in a celebratory mood was no surprise. We definitely weren’t in the mood to sit down and study or do homework. Indeed, the couples all seemed to have something on their mind and went to bed a bit early.

Nor was our being a bit tired in the morning any surprise at all.

Sunday, November 25, 1984

We went out and bought a medium-sized artificial Christmas tree and some lights for the house, along with some ornaments. Not a lot of ornaments, but some.

The lights made us remember we didn’t have a ladder, so we got one of those, too. It was a big extension ladder capable of getting to the second-story roof.

We might wind up with the most decorated house in the area. None of the others had decorated yet. I fully expected the fundamentalists to, but they hadn’t as of now.

When we got home, we put up the tree and I put up the outside lights with everyone else helping. We’d keep adding to things every year.

Monday, November 26, 1984

We had tests in most of our classes this week. The first week of December was officially a ‘dead week,’ where no classes could have tests or mandatory homework. Essays could be turned in, but you could wait until finals week if you preferred.

It hardly felt like a semester had gone by. Yet here we were, less than three weeks from the winter holidays. I seemed to recall my first semester at Texas plodding along and feeling like it took forever.

Practice, practice, practice. That, and the company here and now was far better than it had been then.

I spotted an ad in the Eagle I had to explain to the others without really fully explaining it. They started out skeptical but, fortunately, were willing to be convinced.

The College Station Police Department (strike one) was hosting a lecture and slide show presentation (strike two) at the Ramada Inn (normally, that would’ve finished the strikeout) about con artists and check forgery.

Not totally uninteresting, but not the usual sort of thing we’d have raced off to see.

The draw, in this case, was the speaker, one Frank Abagnale. The name, of course, meant nothing to the others. Why would it? Sure, he’d written a book, but it hadn’t been one we’d noticed. None of them knew about the movie Steven Spielberg would one day make out of Abagnale’s book, and I didn’t tell them.

Instead, I simply said Abagnale’s exploits were truly the stuff of legend and I only knew that because he’d been more famous in the future, then suggested we take the time to see him in person while he was still a minor celebrity at best.

That was all it took. We’d pretty much all give each other the benefit of the doubt in this sort of discussion, and my tossing in a bit of future knowledge added to the pot.

Thus, we made plans to be at the Ramada tomorrow night. I hoped Mr. Abagnale would relate some of his more ‘colorful’ stories. Most likely, he would.

We had three study groups in the house tonight. Jas had a bunch of Journalism friends, Cammie and Mel had some people from their Physics class, and Angie and Paige had four people over to study Introductory Accounting. Since I wasn’t doing anything else, I joined the six of them and listened to how their class approached things.

Their material was close enough I could both help and get some studying done myself. Plus, I got to meet some new people. Not only that, but people who were in my major and who might be in my classes down the road.

I took a break from studying and called Michael. He confirmed plans to meet us for brunch at Kerbey Lane Cafe on the Sunday after the t.u. game. With our already having plans Saturday with Mark, Morty, and Emily, we were set for meals in Austin.

With a brunch meeting we could potentially go see his new facilities after the meal and before we headed out of town. I was pretty sure he was dying to show them off.

Cammie and Mel could be in on the tour. They were insiders enough, now.

Tuesday, November 27, 1984

I was starting to feel confident about Ms. Reed remaining in place for the rest of the semester. I was also starting to find the whole thing amusing.

For me, there was a difference between my being a high-school-aged kid and relating to a teacher who was an age I’d been and my doing the same thing in college. Ms. Reed wasn’t much older than I was right now. I’d been her age, of course, and been a grad student and a TA. Our experiences were likely pretty similar, even if she’d been born a few years earlier than I had.