My father was in charge. Is that a cop out for not going in the direction that I thought I would? I remember my father saying that a woman's college was not acceptable to him, so I sent my regrets to the prestigious school in Philadelphia and trudged off to Hope College in Holland, Michigan for a semester of separation from family, and a reckoning.

My father selected the school because he, a contractor, had built the church and rectory for Rev. M. a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church of America. He liked what he heard from Rev. M. about mandatory chapel at 6 A.M. and a bible based curriculum. Bed checks at 9 P.M. sounded like a good idea for his only daughter. My family was male dominated. That is an understatement.

Hope College was academically demanding but I felt like I had landed on an alien planet. No one had heard of the twist. Twelve freshmen girls and two senior women advisors lived in Mandeville Cottage, a lovely two story, green roofed, white sided house that abutted the freshmen boy's dorm. Ten of the girls were from the Midwestern bible belt and had names like Vanderhousen, and VanLandegent. They were extremely religious and dutiful girls and looked askance at me and Anita for our differences in dialect and social expectations. Loneliness and isolation might have been a problem except for Anita, a quiet and scholarly girl from New Jersey. She knew how to twist.

Anita made me pee my pants with laughter. She told me that I was the only person in her life who thought that she was funny. How could that be? How could anyone with such a wit and vision of the world not be acclaimed as the humorist that she was? The other girls were drawn to us because we were fun. We worked hard, and acted sensibly around the boys and didn't curse so we were not terribly dangerous.

We talked. After our advisors shined flashlights into our beds at 9 P.M. and put a black check mark on the clip boarded chart next to the name that matched the 'sleeping' face all twelve girls in military metal bunk beds would wait until the footfalls retreated to the downstairs suite of rooms. The door downstairs closed and, as long as we were very quiet, we could talk.

I can remember being appalled that any seventeen year old girl could be sent out into the world as unprepared for life as these girls were. They were the proverbial babes in the woods and the wolves lived right next door. Bad things, according to these innocents, did not happen to those who loved the Lord. Until my semester at Hope I had considered myself a well schooled Lutheran, a spiritual person. Now, I felt like a closet heretic. Thankfully, when it came to religion, I just listened. Christians, like most, are an intolerant lot when they have you outnumbered.

Snow fell for the first time on my birthday, October 6th and by the time my father came to pick me up at Christmas the snow was plowed to a height of fifteen feet on both sides of every road with hand shoveled breaks here and there to allow the ladies access. The ladies of Hope had to wear skirts and stockings and heels which would have made traversing the mountains of snow a bit difficult.

The girls in Mandeville distinguished themselves with the highest freshman grade point of any house. We also won the snow sculpture contest during the winter festival by shoveling snow into a mountain in our front yard, whacking it down with shovels and carving out a huge, twenty foot high and thirty foot long cocker spaniel puppy, replete with pink tongue carefully colored with strawberry jello powder.

My brother Jim, at the University of Miami, wrote letters about the terrible political upheaval in Cuba, that his room mate's sister had told stories of walking to school and seeing the bodies of political dissidents hanging from light poles on street corners. President Kennedy announced the Bay of Pigs invasion and my world collapsed when I realized that if there were a war I would be on my own.

The girls of Mandeville knew exactly what we would do if Russia, the evil empire, dropped an atomic bomb in Lake Michigan. We would steal a car, rob a gun store, then a grocery store and escape across the Northern border and drive as far north as we could go. The thought of being cut off from my family during a national emergency became a physical pain. I missed my family. I missed my three year old brother. I wanted to go home.

On the ride home for Christmas vacation in my father's new pale yellow Cadillac, (which my brothers referred to as the pimp mobile) I told my father that I would not return to Hope for second semester. He actually listened without comment or command while I gave him my carefully thought out plan. I knew that I had to go to a 'religious' school so I had arranged to transfer to Thiel College, a Lutheran school sixty miles from home. I told him to choose between allowing me to go to Thiel or I would leave home and become an airline stewardess.

'No daughter of mine is going to be a flying whore!' he said, pronouncing the word whoooo..er. Quite a mental image to me of heinous activity taking place on winged mattresses. Mental diversion is the stuff of
survival. Thiel it was.

To transfer required good grades and the sneakiest pursuit at Mandeville Cottage...midnight studiers. After our advisors were asleep the studiers would tip toe up the attic stairs wearing hats and gloves and coats, wrapped in blankets, carrying flashlights. We would break 'lights out' and study in the unheated, freezing attic until dawn, then unkink our stiff bodies and go off to mandatory chapel, smelling of the dust of ages past. So much for sinning at Hope College.

My father picked me up at the end of the semester, Jan 18th? and we drove away from Hope College loaded down with the hat boxes and trunks that had carried such high hopes just four months and a lifetime ago.

My father pulled my older brother out of the University of Miami and made him transfer to Thiel with me as my chaperone. He got his Juris Doctorate from Miami several years later, which was some small consolation for his sacrifice on my behalf.

I declared a pre med major and was required to test into the program. I've always been quite good at standardized testing and tested into third year courses. A horror. As the only female and the only freshman in a junior chem class I felt like I was sitting in on a Greek class. My professor
guaranteed me a 'D' in the course if I would stick it out until things made sense to me. I was terrified that I would flunk out of school and switched majors. Once again, I was required to test into the major,history, was accepted and was given as my advisor and my freshman professor one Dr. T., a hawk nosed Aryan Rhodes Scholar, chair of the history department, whose field was French history. A side note is that only women were required to test into these two majors. Dr. T. had a 75% failure rate. I aced his first course, but to do so required six hours a day of study. I had never in my entire life worked to learn. He chose eight, hand picked history scholars for his seminar in French history. I was the only sophomore. He flunked us all. I became an English major and here I am today, teaching English.

(correlates: OneThingAfterAnother, Hot and Sour, ProdesseQuamConspici, ...)