See Me Squeegee

Thanks to a fantastic college reunion this weekend – congrats to Alexa and Jeff; “where you at?” to Curt and Brent; and good seeing you to Katie and all the ADPi girls – I want to kick off the week by introducing a recurring feature on this blog, The CW Chronicles.  We’ll go with CW because a dozen years after college we should probably clean up the language a little bit, but ultimately it’s the vulgar-ish nickname that grew to encompass an entire group of friends for college, even though it began as simply an insult hurled at them by one Bryan Sperling.

Anyway, in these chronicles I’ll play Herotodus to our adventures from college, saving for posterity our most beloved stories and hopefully introducing non-college-friend readers to a terrific era: Late 90s, Ann Arbor, Michigan in the infancy of the internet, just before cell phones, as seen through the eyes of some decent students who enjoyed a good time.

In these posts you’ll learn about Curt, my college roommate and one of the more entertaining characters from this group; Brent, who looks and acts just like Napoleon Dynamite and who rivals Curt for funniest suite of stories; the aforementioned Katie and Alexa; Todd, the Rhino; the ADPi girls and the Vaughan/Sylvan Street girls, maybe some #7 girls and some Lahser kids.  You’ll hear about the Lawn Gnome, the Chicken Boots, the Lady We’re Effed roadtrip and plenty of others.  But I’ll begin with my personal favorite: Curt Loses His Coat.

Curt Loses His Coat

It’s hard to think of a better day to have been a student at Michigan than the day we beat Ohio State in November, 1997 to win the Big Ten championship, remain undefeated, and play for the national championship.  That day was insane – we were #1, Ohio State was #3, we woke up to a light dusting of snow and perfect football weather…  The student section was fuller than ever – that season, freshmen received “split” tickets because of too much demand, so only half of freshmen actually had tickets to that game.  But through the wonders of college ingenuity, nearly all of them got in with forged tickets or sneak attacks on the gates.  The dorms were full of visitors – everyone had friends who wanted to be near campus that day.  Parking was impossible within a mile of the stadium (this will be important later) and so lucky us – students and student ticketholders living a ten minute walk from the stadium on the day of the biggest game that Michigan has played in my lifetime.

As most of you know, Michigan hung on to win 20-14 behind the strength of a Charles Woodson Heisman-clinching punt return TD and an interception return by Andre Weathers.  We students rushed the field, braving pepper spray and security to run wild on the turf and celebrate with players and other fans. I can’t do this moment justice in words, but trust me…no student there will ever forget it.

And here’s where the tale of Curt’s coat begins, with this amazing Saturday as the backdrop.  Naturally I lost contact with everyone I knew – remember…NO Cell Phones yet! – and so hours later after squeezing as much joy as possible from the experience, I got back to my dorm room, filled with visitors, revelers, nappers, whoever, and saw Curt packing a backpack on his way out the door.  Why?  Why would a man leave campus on this greatest-day-of-all-time?

It harkens back a few months to when Curt selected his class schedule.  He’s as conscientious as they come, taking challenging courses and studying like crazy.  His schedule was already burdened by tough college-level Spanish classes, interesting because he and I were in the same Spanish classes all through high school, yet I passed out of the university requirement on the entrance test, and Curt didn’t.  Why?  Curt had to go to the restroom during his placement test, got lost, and wasted 45 minutes trying to find the classroom again so he flunked it and had to take four semesters of college Spanish.  Curt is unlucky like that, as this story will prove.  So Curt is packing his schedule with challenges and decides to take a “fun” elective – introductory black/white photography.

That class would be the bane of his existence the entire fall semester.  He should have known – on the first day the professor even remarked that most people take this class as a fun elective blowoff, but if that was anyone’s intention they should drop the class immediately.  Curt, unwisely, soldiered on.  Now, remember – this is Ann Arbor in 1997 during the grunge era.  Britney Spears wouldn’t emerge on the scene for another few months to fill our world with pop-based happiness.  This is still an angst-ridden period for many, particularly on a college campus where that “no one understands or respects us” agenda can brood among people who identify or want to identify with a downtrodden group.  And Curt’s class was almost entirely filled with these people – Curt hated class.  Instead of group photo projects taking pictures around the Diag, it was all dark…his groups were full of wannabe tortured artists.  Curt suffered all semester.

And what was getting him more than anything was some project for which he needed to use a computer program that he couldn’t figure out.  I remember this as a group project – not sure that’s entirely true but bear with me – for which Curt was in charge of the computer component because, lucky him, he had his own computer (again…1997. Having your own computer was unique).  And after a week or so of struggling he had mentioned this to his mother, who had a solution:

Curt’s parents’ neighbor worked for IBM.  Curt would meet with this neighbor on Saturday afternoon after the football game and figure out his problem, then come back to campus to celebrate with us.  Not ideal, but understandable. IBM guy to the rescue.  So Curt got in his car, we promised to leave him a note of where we were headed if we left for the evening before he got back, and he took off to solve his computer problem under the expert tutelage of an IBM employee.

Now, while Curt was gone for several hours, a few friends and I – Curt’s crew had he been around – had  the night of our lives.  The dorms were still buzzing, and eventually we found ourselves at the house party of starting quarterback Brian Griese and half the football team.  Drinks were flowing, congratulations everywhere, the prettiest girls on campus were in the best mood they could be in.  Unbelievable night.  It ended, as many readers will remember, just after I went out in the yard to piss around 3am or something, noticed a guy vomiting next to me, and realized it was Griese.  So I threw a few fingers down my throat and vomited with him so that I could boast, as I still do, that I PUKED WITH GRIESE AFTER THE OHIO STATE GAME!!!  Anyway, epic night.  And where was Curt?

Curt was, indeed, meeting with an IBM employee.  This neighbor was employed by the computer giant…as a janitor.  Knew nothing about computers.  But he was proud of his job and gave Curt a tutorial of the years-old computer in his house.  Lessons like “this is a mouse and this is a keyboard” and “here’s how you load paper into the printer”. And Curt, ever the too-nice guy, couldn’t cut him off.  He sat and took his kindergarten computer lesson for well over an hour.  Then had dinner with his parents, kindly thanked his mother for the lesson, and drove back to campus, all told having lost at least 5-6 hours of his day in the exchange.  Having done so, he decided to go to the computer lab and finish this thing once and for all, then celebrate over beers with us.  But first, he had to park, and couldn’t get near campus on such a busy day, so he parked a healthy mile or two away – down by Briarwood Mall – and trudged up to central campus.

Now – an aside I should tell you.  I got this sequence of events on Sunday in the late afternoon, when Curt returned to our dorm room wearing a new coat.  Imagine finishing the most insanely fun weekend of your college career and not seeing your roommate at all during it, then having him walk in with a bag of groceries and a new  coat.  This wasn’t Curt returning from a party that didn’t quit.  This was inexplicable.  And here’s how the rest of the story goes.

Curt got back to our dorm room sometime around 9pm Saturday night, and we were gone.  He saw our note that we were out celebrating at Oakland and Hill, and he figured that since he’d already invested so much time in this due-on-Monday project he ought to finish it.  Oh, and by the way – Monday was the Monday of Thanksgiving week.  No class was doing anything important that week…most students were flying home on Tuesday or Wednesday.  Curt had the lone angst-ridden class that had big projects due mid-semester the week of Thanksgiving.  And so Curt walked over the to campus computer center – the Fishbowl – at Angell Hall.  Now, no one in his right mind was studying on this epic night.  There were a few weirdos there (and North Campus was probably packed, but that’s just North Campus) but this was late Saturday night, the week of Thanksgiving, after a huge win over Ohio State.  Curt was one of a handful of losers at the computer lab.

Which was great, because the staff there was able to help him figure a few things out, he made some progress with his project, and sometime well after midnight he figured that at least he was done.  He’d probably not get to party with everyone but he’d at least be finished.  And so he made some last adjustments, determined that he was satisfied, pressed “Print” and walked to the bank of printers.  Happy with the printout he walked back to his computer and discovered…

Someone had stolen his coat.

Someone had stolen his coat. Out of the empty computer lab.  His coat was gone, after midnight in late November in Michigan.  He had only left his chair for 2-3 minutes tops in an EMPTY ROOM.  But his coat was gone and his night would get worse.  Defeated, he walked over a mile back to his car – with NO COAT because it had been stolen – drove the half-hour back to Canton, and spent the next day coat shopping with his mom.

As you’ll learn in later chronicles, Curt’s wardrobe is peppered with items he purchased after or to avoid a crisis.  Nearly every article of clothing tells a story.  But none to me is more emblematic of the Curt Experience than that coat.  I’ve never had a more fun night in college and I’d bet that most of us would say the same.  Curt didn’t get that night.  He didn’t even get to drink a beer at 4am and listen to us describe it.  Curt walked over a mile to his car in short sleeves without a coat, then got to spend the day at Burlington Coat Factory buying a new jacket.  That, in a nutshell, is Curt.