The Ramblings of a Madman

Rumors of my death have been greatly exagerated...

Monday, August 08, 2005

Tales from the Lost Semester - Volume 6

Are You Nervous?

It’s time to come clean on a few things (not like I haven’t already, but, well, you know). I have always been a worrywart. I seem to have the type of personality whereby creating some sort of crisis or problem in my head motivates me to devise and implement a solution. This mentality serves me well in my current job role – I get paid to think of shit that could go wrong and make sure that there’s other shit going on that stops that bad shit from going down. But being in a state of constant worry is not what I would call ideal in any kind of social setting. And while we’re talking character flaws, the other one that stands out in my mind is my irrational desire to have everyone like me. I don’t like confrontation, I don’t like arguing, I don’t like disagreeing, and I don’t want anyone to think I’m a bad guy – I’d rather bend over backwards to come to some common solution than be right or stand my ground. I realize that these traits cause me much more stress than I probably need in my life. And when you’re a freshman in the burgeoning social scene that is College, having these traits can be somewhat of a hindrance on your social life; imagine going into every social and classroom situation worried about how you speak or how you look, concerned that something you say or do might either piss someone off or, God forbid, make them not like you! What does this have to do with the Lost Semester? Frankly, more than I care to admit but will anyway. Like all other human beings, I am far from perfect. I have my flaws like anyone, and these unfortunate character traits are no exception. However, the coupling of these two traits of mine led to words and actions that caused many to find pleasure in uttering what soon became my three most hated words at every possible turn: “Are you nervous?”

As has already been well-established, I spent a great deal of my freshman year developing the textbook model for parents across the country on how not to have your son or daughter lead a successful, healthy, well-adjusted lifestyle when away at college. My first semester report card read as follows: B-C-D-dropped class, giving me a solid C average and thus killing any shot I had at actually securing a job within my field at an early stage in my career that would guarantee me the most success (i.e. a Big Six Accounting Firm – in hindsight, I am happier than a pig in shit that I didn’t go that route, but that’s beside the point). Career suicide at 19 – great way to boost those confidence levels! I spent more time during that first semester cleaning the MPB house and attending line-ups than I did in any of our school’s fine libraries – good, character-building, humiliating times. By the time the Lost Semester rolled around, I had already drank enough beer and eaten enough burritos to speed me along the way to packing on the Freshman Fifteen (or Twenty, but who’s counting?); I had smoked enough pot to kill a horse (or at least render him extremely dim-witted), had dedicated no fewer than 25 hours to psychedelic endeavors, and as a result, had begun to watch my once-extraordinary gift of gab slowly deteriorate to the point where I couldn’t hold a five-minute conversation without looking away, touching my hair or stammering like a mental patient. Simply put, I was becoming somewhat of a mess.

Of course, as is often the case with me, I have let my flair for the dramatic take over my storytelling – in reality I probably wasn’t as goofy and foolish as I make myself out to be. Sure I had done lots of drugs, which definitely had some effect on me. But I was still able to function in social situations just fine – it’s just that, well, I didn’t like them very much. I initially blamed it solely on the everyday marijuana use, but it had gotten to the point where most people just annoyed me to the point where I had no desire to interact with them, so perhaps it’s just that most people I went to school with sucked (a logical conclusion, given some of the prize pupils down in Champaign). Either that or I was an anti-social freak. But I’ve mentioned my core group of friends in previous installments – I was actually pretty comfortable with those guys most if not all of the time. And there were other guys in the house and in my pledge class who I got along with just fine. And seeing as I had a close relative down at school with me (let’s call her Emma, although those in the know who read this know exactly of whom I speak) who knew lots of girls, so I became friendly with many of her friends, giving me quite the network of folks I could readily socialize with. Still…

Maybe it was the process of adjusting to life on campus (no small feat). Maybe it was something that snapped in my head during Hell Week while riding a bicycle through the basement wearing nothing more than my tighty-whiteys. Maybe it was the dumbing-down process I had subjected my powerful-yet-emotionally-sensitive brain to. Maybe it was my silly desire to be liked by anyone and everyone at all times, no exceptions. One thing is for certain, though – my confidence (a trademark of mine since I got contact lenses in 1986) was slipping. I can’t pinpoint when or where it started, nor can I identify the one or two things that fueled its deterioration, but I knew it wasn’t at the levels I was used to. The bonus for those around me is that I became a cavalcade of comic consternation, and simply stating the question “are you nervous?” usually set me about the task of fixing my zipper-headed long hair as I glanced about in fits of paranoia and replied, “uh, unh, um, uh, well, uh, um…no”. More often than not, this was a lie – I made my way through the Lost Semester in almost a constant state of nervousness. However, that didn’t mean I enjoyed having people call me on it. If you were fat and everyone knew it, you’d probably feel better if someone asked you if you had lost weight or, better yet, not said anything at all, rather than having them ask “are you a fat ass?” whenever they crossed your path – just a hunch.

There may be two additional factors that played into my increased state of nervousness (outside of the constant pot smoking, that is). The first – my roommate and good friend CS is one of the funnier, more creative people I know. As a testament to this fact, he was the kind of guy who would invent a nickname for someone out of the blue and it would just stick. He was the one who named our roommate Miser (short for Money Hungry Miser, from “Car Thief” on the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique). There was no rhyme or reason why our roommate became Money Hungry Miser – CS said it was so, so it was so. It was with that spirit, given that I had a solid body frame for a man of my short stature, that CS initially began to call me “Rock”. He may have gotten it from Tim Raines, who was a popular player with the White Sox at the time. He may have been alluding to the fact that I had a solid build. He may have pulled it out of thin air. Whatever the source, he liked the name, and so I was Rock. Well, being funny and creative, CS couldn’t stop there – over the course of the semester I earned the following nicknames (plus others I can’t remember):

• Rocko
• Rocky Bilboa (I imagine for The Hobbit’s Bilbo Baggins)
• Rock Chiseler
• The Chiseler from Sizzler
• Mountain Rock Ranger, Two-Time Champ
• Rolf Bernershka (former San Diego Chargers kicker and host of daytime Wheel of Fortune)
• Hades (since my bed was in the underworld of Room 23)

And so it went. Now I must point something out here – I actually liked all of these nicknames when called them by CS or Miser. I saw it as a Room 23 inside joke, and knowing CS these were meant to be terms of endearment. However, being the psychologically unstable soul that I was in those days, I naturally became quite tense/paranoid when others in our circle of friends would mockingly call me by these nicknames. “Heeeeey, Rocko!” “Oh no! The Rock Chiseler!” It was excruciating. These being saner days for me, I can look back and realize that my friends were only partially teasing me (because they liked me, no doubt) while also picking on CS for his tendency to invent goofy nicknames. But if you tried convincing me of this back then, well let’s just say there may have been some stammering and hair-touching involved.

The other situation that did wonders for the death of my self confidence was the fact that my friend Pops began dating Emma (my aforementioned “relative”) early on during the Lost Semester. It warrants mentioning that during high school, Emma and I had somewhat of a contentious relationship – she ran with the upper echelon of the popular crowd while my stoner friends and I partook in our unpopular stoner ways. But when we went away to U of I together, it’s like all of the strife that existed between us just melted away. The fact that we were both thrust into this new experience together and had each other to lean on had a lot to do with this, and I was very happy to have her there and thrilled that we ended up becoming friends through the whole process. We shared a common background, a desire to fit in and have fun, and a feeling of sheer contempt for my roommate Big Tim (when she showed up at my dorm room dressed as a hippie on Halloween to drop of some candy for me, Big Tim noted, “Wow, that’s a new look for you!” to which she replied, “It’s a Halloween costume, you fool.”). It also must be noted that Pops was (and remains) a great guy, and early on in their relationship I thought it was great that my friend and my relative were now dating. Did I mention I was rather clueless at that point in my life?

So to summarize – take a soft-in-the-head 19-year-old, have him smoke pot almost every day (to dull his facilities a bit), give him some bad grades, take away his ability to talk up the ladies, throw in an intimate relationship between his close relative and one of his best friends, assign him several crazy nicknames, and ask him if he’s nervous every 15 minutes and chances are you’ll end up with the makings of a mess of a young man. The plus side to all of this is that this lays a great foundation for tales that will surely keep my nine preferred readers entertained to no end – we all have our demons, our embarrassing stories, our regrets, and we all like to take comfort in knowing we’re not alone. Given some of the future installments that will roll out on this blog, let me just say that, well…I’m a little nervous.

Until next time…

2 Comments:

At 9:47 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Senior Class of 92, when asked to vote on who really had the upper hand; Emma's Chicks or Rohlf's Stoners, well...

Stoners won by a landslide.

Pass that joint to the left, man.

 
At 9:18 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm a little behind and am catching up. I'm learning so much. For example, our GPA's were identical. How cool. I eagerly await Volume 7!

 

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