I'd been lying awake for a couple of hours, watching the light of dawn slowly creep in around the blinds that covered her bedroom windows. Recently I had been pondering my life and the direction — or misdirection — it seemed to be taking. As the first rays of sunlight peeked through the slats, I turned my head to stare at my companion, who was still lost deep in her night's sleep.

The sunlight really wasn't very complimentary to Maggie. She was 41 years old, more than twice my 20 years. She was still a beautiful woman, just as she had obviously been all her life. Yet in the sunlight, the wrinkles around her eyes and around her mouth were signs of her increasing age. Still I could not deny that I loved Maggie May. She had done so much for me... and yet I couldn't help but think that my life was in limbo because of her love.

I was a boy of 18, living in the body of a grown man, when I first met Maggie. I had left home to continue my education at university, my first time of any significant length away from my parents. I'd always had Mom and Dad to fall back on and provide me with direction.

Now I was 300 miles from home, with just enough money to get me through a month if I squeezed every dime. By then, my folks would send me another check and so on, for the time it took me to get my degree. Then Dad expected me to earn my own way.

I had little problem getting moved into my dorm room. I had brought just the necessities with me; no boom boxes, no high-end stereos, no TV set, nothing that didn't apply to clothing or study. I assumed that all university students lived to study — how naïve was that?

The third day I was on campus was registration day for new students. Following instructions like a robot, I went to the huge hall in the administration building basement where total chaos reigned. I finally figured out that everyone had to join the longest line first, which led to a table where several women were seated; pulling forms from card file drawers. I got in line and waited, moving up a step at a time until I was at the head of the line in about 40 minutes.

I was standing there wide-eyed, watching all the activity in the huge hall. There had to be at least five times the population of my high school in the hall right then, and that was only freshmen! I heard a shrill whistle and looked back at the table to see one of the women trying to get my attention. Embarrassed, I walked over in front of her.

"Name?" she asked, as she looked me up and down.

"Jackson Keller — Jack," I said.

"Do you have a picture ID of some kind?"

"Um... will a driver's license do?"

She smiled. "Sure."

I handed her my driver's license and watched as she scrutinized all of the data before she checked the picture against my real life image.

She began to thumb through a computer printout and quickly found my name. One of the other women shoved one of the card file drawers at her. She thumbed through the drawer until she found what she wanted and pulled out a 5x8 card. Confirming the information was correct, she handed me the card.

"Okay, look, Mr. Keller. We've got some problems with your high school records. You're okay to go ahead and register today but I need to see you in my office tomorrow. If we can't get this worked out, you will not be allowed to attend classes so be there."

"Yes, ma'am," I gulped out. "Where do I... ?"

"Second floor, room 237. Ask for Ms. Maggie Carrington."

"Yes, ma'am. What time should I... ?"

"I'm going to be very busy tomorrow. Why don't you make it about 4:30, okay?"

I nodded and backed away. She pointed me toward the English Department, the first class on my list. I wandered though the rest of the day, going from one department's cluster of tables to another until I finally had a working class schedule. Dazed and tired, I stumbled back to the dorm.

I wasn't too dazed to make it downstairs with my roommate when it came time for dinner. I learned in a hurry that a dorm full of college men lined up quickly when it came time to pass out the food. Naturally I just became one of them.

The following day I set out to find out a little more about the campus. The school advertised that their campus comprised more land than most universities and I soon became a believer, since I had to cover it on foot. I located the buildings where all my classes were located. On Mondays-Wednesdays-Fridays, I would have ten minutes to leave one building, walk three-quarters of a mile and get to a classroom in another building; that would be stretching it.

A little after four o'clock, I turned toward the Administration Building. It was a few minutes walk but I'd be early so I slowed my pace down to a leisurely stroll and began to enjoy the sights of the campus for the first time. The buildings were impressive, the landscape was nice and uncrowded - and the women were plentiful.

Even taking my time, I had to kill ten minutes sitting on a bench just inside the Admin Building foyer when I arrived. Finally just before 4:30, I walked up to room 237 and asked for Ms Maggie Carrington. I was directed down a short inner hall to a row of small offices and found her name on the second door.

She was standing beside a coat tree putting on a light jacket when I knocked. She turned and glanced at me with a frown that changed to a small smile.

"Oh, yes. You're Mr... ?"

"Keller... Jack Keller," I replied.

"Oh, yes. I had about forgotten. Just a minute."

She turned back to her desk — not difficult in the small office — and picked up a card. It looked like the same 5 x 8 card I had used the day before during registration.

"Listen," she said, "it's been a long day. Do you like coffee?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Okay, how about going with me to get some coffee and we can talk about this little problem. Hopefully it is just a misunderstanding."

"Okay." I assumed she meant going to one of the local watering holes.

She closed and locked the office door behind us and then we walked down a back staircase and out the opposite side of the building from the doors where I had entered. I assumed we'd be going to her car but we walked past the parking lot, down one of the streets that cut through the campus, and across the road that bounded the school on that side. In the middle of the second off-campus block, she turned up the walk of a house.

I was surprised, to say the least, that she unlocked the door of a private residence and invited me in. I meekly followed her and waited while she hung her jacket on a hook on the hall wall. She took me into a comfortable looking living room.

"Have a seat, hon, and let me put the coffee on. I'll be right back."

"Okay. Please take your time," I replied.

I heard her moving around in the kitchen for several minutes and then the sounds faded. For several minutes it was so quiet the only sound I heard was my heart beat and the ticking of a big grandfather clock. I couldn't tell which was louder.

Well, I did hear the distant sound of coffee perking but it wasn't all that intrusive. And after a bit even that sound faded away. Shortly after that, I heard the shuffle of feet, like rubber or soft soled shoes scuffing over a hard floor. That was followed by the sound of cups being moved and then a chair scraping the floor.

"Come on in here, hon. We'll drink our coffee and see if we can figure this out," she called.

I rose and walked toward the voice, soon finding myself in a kitchen/dining room combination. She was sitting on the long side of a dining table pushed against one wall, with another chair pulled out beside her, a mug of steaming coffee sitting in front of it.

She gestured toward the chair when I hesitated, so I moved to it and sat down. I noticed that she had changed clothes and was now wearing a lightweight robe, loosely drawn together by a belt at her waist and ending just below her crossed knees. The fragrance of fresh coffee wafted up to my senses — as did the soft smell of roses.

"I hope you like flavored creamers, hon. I've become addicted to them," she said, offering me a decanter of french vanilla creamer.

"I like them too," I said, pouring a dollop into my mug.

Her small portfolio was open on the table and she had a couple of cards in front of her. One I recognized as my registration card but the other, a blue card, was new to me.

"Okay," she said. "Here's the problem. As you know from our catalogue, you are required to have four full credits in high school English for the course of study you've chosen. How many did you take?"

"I took English all four years of high school."

"How many did you pass?"

"I passed all of them. I didn't have a grade lower than A- in any English class," I replied a little astounded.

"Really?" She raised her eyebrows in question. "Your transcript doesn't show that."

"No? I... I'm puzzled. Can I see?"

"Sure," she said, holding the blue card over so we could both look at it. "See, here's the freshman class with an A+ final grade, your sophomore class with an A-, and your junior class with another A+ final. But there is no senior English class."

She used a pencil to point down the list of classes from my final year and I had to agree there was no English class listed. Most of the classes were listed in cryptic notation but easy enough to interpret: Phys was high school physics, Trig/Pl.Geo was a half year each of trigonometry and plane geometry, etc. But there was no English class.

However there was a class called Emg'osj OV. Try as I might, I couldn't think of a class I had taken that would fit that description — until I began to think back to my old typing class. No, it wasn't the typing class but having been trained to use a QWERTY keyboard, I thought about the letters. Hm... if someone typing the information had used the home key with the left hand but moved the right hand one key to the right, English IV would become Emg'osj OV.

I began to explain what I thought had happened to Ms Carrington. At first she was skeptical but then she pulled out her little electronic notebook and checked the keyboard, then laughed at what she saw.

"Okay, I can see how this could happen. I'm going to assume that everything is okay. We'll write to your high school and ask for a corrected transcript but that should work out fine. How's your coffee?"

"Excellent," I replied, suddenly in a better mood.

When her left foot, dangling a soft house shoe, grazed gently up my left leg, my mood became even brighter. I was sure she had done it by accident but I would have that little gesture in my memory banks to think about later.

Ms. Carrington put the cards back in her portfolio and closed it as she was asking me about my interests. I told her I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life, which was why I was taking a generalized course of study — liberal arts, whatever the heck that meant.