Chapter 91: Responses

Sunday, February 19, 1984

We were out of our motel by nine, had breakfast at an IHOP along the way, got to Logan in plenty of time to catch our plane, and were back in Houston by two.

We rolled up to Gene’s for Study Group just before three. Then we (along with the rest of the Study Group crew, who were already there) waited almost half an hour for Gene to make it home. He’d had trouble finding his car, then needed gas.

It was still fine, of course. We could’ve all skipped. I think we got together mostly just to talk about Lexington with the people who hadn’t gone. That and play games and hang out.

We dropped Jas and Paige off around six, then headed home, managing a late dinner with Mom and Dad. We’d told them how we’d done when we called home, of course, but they wanted it repeated in person. I thought Mom blushed a bit when I mentioned lobster rolls, but I wasn’t sure.

It certainly wasn’t as big a thing as Michigan had been, not for either of them. They always liked to hear the stories of our trips, though, and we were happy to share.

Angie came in around nine-thirty, rubbed noses, then snuggled up.

“I’m getting spoiled, too,” she said, sighing. “I’d much rather sleep with either you or Paige than by myself. Maybe not every night — I think I may be one of those girls who wants to do something on my own every so often — but most nights. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all of that, but I like to snuggle with someone I love.”

“I like that, too,” I said. “Still a bit new and amazing to me, relatively speaking, and you know why.”

“I know two reasons why. You were heavy, and heavy people tend to get hot. Also, your wife was always ... prickly.”

“I think she’d have liked it if we could snuggle more. I couldn’t, because of the getting hot part.”

“You think so, but you don’t know. Shift the wrong way and bump her, and...” Angie said.

“Um ... well ... yeah? I mean, you have a point there. It’d have been a big fight at three in the morning.”

“I try not to be too judgy, but sometimes I am, anyway.”

“Anything bringing this on?” I said.

“Nah. Well, okay, yes. We got to snuggle on the trip. You didn’t. I mean, nothing happened except for snuggling, but snuggling is wonderful.”

“Excuse me for a minute while I run to the bathroom,” I said.

She giggled, then whapped me with her pillow. “I know you better than that! Just mentioning girls snuggling won’t set you off!”

“Too true. My prurient interests are far more refined than that.”

I got another whap, as I’d expected.

“Speaking of ... well, no, I think that’s going too far,” she said. “Anyway! I talked to Mom. They went out to Red Lobster Saturday night. I got the impression they probably went to sleep later than we did, even adjusting for the time zone.”

“La la la...”

She giggled and bopped my shoulder. “You’re happy, too. Admit it!”

“I am! Definitely! They deserve every happiness.”

“They do,” Angie said, then sniffled. “After everything I put them through...”

“Ang,” I said softly. “Not this Mom and Dad. You never ‘put them through’ anything except Max. I never ‘put them through’ anything except being an irresponsible teenager who made Mom drive me around to D&D too much, then bonked myself on my head.”

“You...” she said, sniffled, then grabbed a tissue and blew her nose. “You’re right. I ... well, I don’t forget that, but I also do, maybe. I lived it, and that was my focus.”

“We just have to remember that. Unless we tell them, anything we say about ‘paying them back’ has to take into account that we’ve done much less wrong than your average teenager has.”

She blew her nose again, then said, “Yeah. No, I agree.”

“They’ll want us to ‘pay it forward,’ anyway. They wanted to raise us, and they’re loving getting to. We’re paying them back the way they want to be paid back every day.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“Yeah,” I said. “In this case, definitely. I’d have felt weird if my kids seriously said that they wanted to ‘pay me back,’ and they put me through a lot more than we’ve put Mom and Dad through. Raising them was the reward. It’s what I ... we... wanted to do.”

She sighed. “Listening and learning, big brother.”

“We’ll still pay them back, anyway. It’ll just be more subtle, probably. ‘Oh, Mom and Dad, listen — we’ve got this trip we can’t take. Want to go on a cruise for a week?’ Things like that.”

“I like that,” she said, then sighed. “And I like snuggling. I really do.”

“Me, too.”

“Gotta make it to Friday. Then we get two more nights with our girlfriends,” she said.

“Looking forward to it, of course.”

“And hopefully we’ll be homeowners on Saturday.”

“It all seems good. I’ll say right now that owning a home is a hassle, but also a joy. We’re responsible for everything, but we can also change whatever we like if we’re willing to put in the work or pay for it,” I said.

“Some things have to change. I could actually see having that kitchen in roughly a decade. It’d be all retro-chic. Right now it’s just horribly dated and yucky.”

“‘Retro-chic?’”

“I was in prison, not dead!” she said. “We got decorating magazines. I wanted a house one day!”

“You mostly missed the trend that would’ve really cost us.”

“Uh oh?”

I chuckled. “Gourmet ‘foodie’ kitchens, with extremely expensive ultra-high-end appliances.”

“Sounds like way too much, especially for college. When we have our mansion, I’ll rethink.”

“‘Our?’”

“Paige and me, I mean,” she said. “Yours can be next door. We’ll have a private road so we can take our golf carts back and forth between them.”

“Ah! So not just one mansion?”

“Nope. We can use all seventeen bedrooms ourselves. You never know when friends might drop in.”

“True enough!” I said, chuckling.

“We should sleep,” she said.

“We should.”

“This was a good trip. I’m glad we went. Partly I’m glad because I’ll have a lot less pressure at UT, and I want that to just be a fun trip.”

“Me, too,” I said.

We rubbed noses.

“Night, Steve,” she said.

“Night, Ang,” I said.

“By the way, I’m not pretending that you’re Paige. Not even a little.”

“That seems like it’d be a little hard to do, considering our builds.”

“I’ve got a very good imagination!” she said.

“That’s true! Just for the record, I’m not pretending that you’re Jas, either. Not even a little.”

“I’d make a better Jas than you’d do as Paige.”

“Completely agreed and stipulated,” I said.

“Damn! I was hoping to make you prove it!”

“Love you,” I said, chuckling.

“Love you, too!”

One more kiss and we were off to sleep.

Monday, February 20, 1984

The morning announcements covered our glories from the previous weekend. They also covered the continuing success of the basketball teams. I doubted we’d have state championships there, too, but they were doing well. Calvin had a reasonable shot at playing high-level college ball, though he definitely wasn’t a ‘one and done’ talent. But, then, ‘one and dones’ were much rarer in the 1980s than a few decades from now.

Megan had a strong chance at college ball, too. She was built just right for the college women’s game, and her skills had developed tremendously. Sadly, she’d be much too early for the WNBA, but she could have a great college career, anyway. There was always at least the tiny outside chance of her getting on the national team, too, though the competition was incredibly intense at that level.

There was news from Ben Morgenstern’s birthday trip, of course, but not a lot of it. I gathered that (as with the first go-round version, per Angie) some couples had formed, others had broken up, and some were just messed up.

Angie and Jess both told me that the best news was indeed girls-only. Not much surprise there. It looked as if Mike and Trish’s relationship had survived the trip, at least. I had no idea whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, though.

We went through this Student Council meeting at a particularly fast pace, partly because we had so little to cover. We’d accomplished the things we wanted to accomplish, and those of us who were seniors were ready to start passing the reins to the kids who’d be here next year.

That said, there was still more than a month before the election and those who might run didn’t have a slate together. Technically, that wasn’t Council business at all, though. The Council didn’t pick its successors. Members might recruit candidates, but that was entirely different.

The bulk of the recruiting would fall on Megan, the presumptive candidate for President, and Jaya, who looked to me like a shoo-in for Vice President. I imagined they’d enlist Tom Myerson for help. Megan had the advantage of having plenty of contacts in athletics, of course. Being in different grades was probably also an advantage.

They had about two weeks to get a slate together. I’d be happy to help, but this wasn’t my fight, and they were more than capable of handling it on their own. Unless asked, I’d stand back and watch them kick some ass.

Paige and Jess went out to dinner after Student Council. Hopefully, they’d have fun!

Tuesday, February 21, 1984

Paige had apparently had a great dinner with Jess. I got the feeling that it made her more comfortable with them truly being friends. I completely understood that. It had floored me when Jess rather suddenly went from ‘untouchable goddess’ to ‘my friend Jess,’ and Paige was going through the same thing.

We accomplished little more at Study Group today than we had on Sunday, with the exception that more naps were taken. Next week we’d get back into shape. I had no idea if A&M kept up the relentless pace of exams that Memorial did, but I thought it probably didn’t. Most college classes were much more built around two or perhaps three mid-course exams plus a final, along with a paper or two and any number of quizzes.

Of course, that made each college exam or paper that much more high-stakes. Blow a high school paper or exam and you had several opportunities to offset it. That was less true in college, sometimes much less so. I’d blown a few tests in college, and it had been a major scramble to get those classes back on track.

I’d at least taken all of them, though one I managed to take only by accident. It was a very unmemorable Computer Science class, one that (even in my first life) I could have taught, and I’d gotten in the habit of skipping. By complete luck, I picked test day to show up. Thank goodness! The only way I could’ve failed that test would have been to not show up.

The odds that I’d get that lazy again, even for a very boring class, were remote. I was a different person and had different habits. Even for the boring classes that I could teach (and there would be a few of those!) I’d still put in the work. After all, I’d just done that for four years. What was four more?