Friday, March 17, 2006
The Perfect Storm
I enjoyed psychology classes when in college. I even entered college thinking I’d like to major in psychology and be a psychologist. That plan went to pieces for a number of reasons not the least of which was the fact I had to take Research Methodology a prerequisite for which was statistics. After my horrific showing in that class statisticians breathed a sigh of relief when they realized they had nothing to fear from me. Recognizing that psychology was no longer a viable major I still enjoyed taking classes. Go ahead, call me a dilettante.
My Junior year I took a class through the psychology department titled “Substance Abuse.” The class, contrary to popular belief, was not a “how to” guide so much as a study of the psychological and physiological components of addiction and withdrawal. (Certain individuals, who shall remain nameless, did however find my textbook particularly enlightening when it came to psilocybin and took it upon themselves to explore first-hand the veracity of claims made by the textbook’s authors.) The student-teacher ratio, like most at SLU, was pretty low - somewhere in the neighborhood of 25:1 - so you had a pretty good idea as to who your classmates were and where they tended to sit. That is to say, an absence was pretty easily noticed by both professor and student.
As a fairly typical small college town Canton has its fair share of bars. My favorite was The Hoot Owl - a dive par-excellence that may well have begun my love affair with dive bars. Located in what was years ago a train station that once served the community it was right next to train tracks. Tracks still used even today by freight trains, passenger trains having long given up the ghost to the more modern Greyhound bus service. When sitting at the bar enjoying your $1 Labatt’s Blue you could hear the whistle and feel the rumble of a passing train while neon beer signs shook on the walls. It was all part of the Hoot experience. Another part of the Hoot experience for some was to start drinking green beer at 6AM on St. Patrick’s Day. On the morning of St. Patrick’s Day 1988 at approximately 10:20 I was sitting in my Substance Abuse class. The topic of the day was alcoholism. A desk was empty. Deb was missing.
About 10 minutes into class something kind of resembling Deb burst through the classroom door. Her frizzy blond hair was more unruly than usual and her eyes were glassy and unfocused. Her ill-fitting sweatshirt was inside out and dotted with unidentifiable stains. Around her mouth, as gaudy as coral lipstick applied by a 90-year old woman in Tampa, was a tell-tale green ring. After navigating her way to her seat she noisily sat down offering her apologies to the professor who was simultaneously insulted by her interruption and amazed at his good luck for the opportunity to have a “teaching moment.” Poor Deb kept it together for all of five minutes at which point gravity took over and her head made contact with the desk. We all tried to ignore her loud snoring but it proved to be too distracting. The professor ended the lecture early that day with the agreement that we would exit the classroom as quietly as possible leaving Deb to sleep off her drunk and eventually awaken in an empty classroom - the humiliation of which was expected to keep her sober for the remainder of the semester. Or at least sober for the remainder of that semester’s lectures.
My Junior year I took a class through the psychology department titled “Substance Abuse.” The class, contrary to popular belief, was not a “how to” guide so much as a study of the psychological and physiological components of addiction and withdrawal. (Certain individuals, who shall remain nameless, did however find my textbook particularly enlightening when it came to psilocybin and took it upon themselves to explore first-hand the veracity of claims made by the textbook’s authors.) The student-teacher ratio, like most at SLU, was pretty low - somewhere in the neighborhood of 25:1 - so you had a pretty good idea as to who your classmates were and where they tended to sit. That is to say, an absence was pretty easily noticed by both professor and student.
As a fairly typical small college town Canton has its fair share of bars. My favorite was The Hoot Owl - a dive par-excellence that may well have begun my love affair with dive bars. Located in what was years ago a train station that once served the community it was right next to train tracks. Tracks still used even today by freight trains, passenger trains having long given up the ghost to the more modern Greyhound bus service. When sitting at the bar enjoying your $1 Labatt’s Blue you could hear the whistle and feel the rumble of a passing train while neon beer signs shook on the walls. It was all part of the Hoot experience. Another part of the Hoot experience for some was to start drinking green beer at 6AM on St. Patrick’s Day. On the morning of St. Patrick’s Day 1988 at approximately 10:20 I was sitting in my Substance Abuse class. The topic of the day was alcoholism. A desk was empty. Deb was missing.
About 10 minutes into class something kind of resembling Deb burst through the classroom door. Her frizzy blond hair was more unruly than usual and her eyes were glassy and unfocused. Her ill-fitting sweatshirt was inside out and dotted with unidentifiable stains. Around her mouth, as gaudy as coral lipstick applied by a 90-year old woman in Tampa, was a tell-tale green ring. After navigating her way to her seat she noisily sat down offering her apologies to the professor who was simultaneously insulted by her interruption and amazed at his good luck for the opportunity to have a “teaching moment.” Poor Deb kept it together for all of five minutes at which point gravity took over and her head made contact with the desk. We all tried to ignore her loud snoring but it proved to be too distracting. The professor ended the lecture early that day with the agreement that we would exit the classroom as quietly as possible leaving Deb to sleep off her drunk and eventually awaken in an empty classroom - the humiliation of which was expected to keep her sober for the remainder of the semester. Or at least sober for the remainder of that semester’s lectures.
posted by Anonymous, 3:35 PM
2 Buffaloes were bitter enough to post comments:
Hmmmmm. I had a very similar, yet opposite experience.
The class was called "Parties and elections", and there were approximately 20 people in the class. No, it wasn't about how to party, although some might argue that point. Anyway, it was an upper level political science class focusing on the way election campaigning has changed drastically over the years. Our professor was just a few years older than the seniors, and was a very laid back guy. On more than one sunny day occasion, Mark decided to take us on a "field trip" to a nearby bar with a patio, where there would indeed be a lecture. Of course there was lots of beer, and we were sitting outdoors on a nice spring day, so the lectures would be a bit on the uninspired side.
I'm sure Mark would have been immediately dismissed if anyone knew about it, but there were never any repercussions.
The class was called "Parties and elections", and there were approximately 20 people in the class. No, it wasn't about how to party, although some might argue that point. Anyway, it was an upper level political science class focusing on the way election campaigning has changed drastically over the years. Our professor was just a few years older than the seniors, and was a very laid back guy. On more than one sunny day occasion, Mark decided to take us on a "field trip" to a nearby bar with a patio, where there would indeed be a lecture. Of course there was lots of beer, and we were sitting outdoors on a nice spring day, so the lectures would be a bit on the uninspired side.
I'm sure Mark would have been immediately dismissed if anyone knew about it, but there were never any repercussions.
I remember hearing the Deb story the day it happened! Unfortunately, I only vaguely remember Deb, though I am pretty sure she was a Pi Phi. Wait. Oh god. Memory flood here! I remember Deb now! Christ, Soden, why did you have to go and drum up a memory as awful as that one?
I think Deb went to Greece for J-term the year I went, and she was the one sitting next to me on the rickety old Boeing 707 we flew from Santorini to Athens. That plane was so rickety and so old it did not have overhead compartments -- just one long bin with elastic cording holding everything up there (like a Greyhound Bus, really). And the door to the cockpit was missing, and the pilots had rigged a little suction cup cupholder thingy and stuck it to the window, then set a plastic beer cup half filled with water in it and were using it as an ashtray as they smoked furiously, cigarette after cigarette after cigarette, until it was full and overflowing and altogether too reminiscent of the cups we picked up at the fraternity house the morning after a party. And even though the weather was clear, the wind was blowing in Athens like a motherfucker, and the airport -- which is now part of a huge athletic complex developed for the Olympics, but which was then pretty much right in the city -- was preparing (unbeknownst to us) to close down for a spell while the bad weather "blew over." The pilots, becalmed with a false confidence brought on by the nicotine high, decided to land the plane crookedly, so the first hard bounce off the runway brought the left wingtip -- I swear it's true, I saw it with my own eyes -- less than a foot from the runway. And the second bounce brought the right wingtip almost as close. And shit got jostled in the overhead bin, and things were falling onto people's heads. And, like I said, I was sitting (randomly, I assure you, Carol was on the other side of the aisle) next to Deb, and she was crying. So I let her hold my hand while the plane finished careening down the runway, and I told her everything would be OK, even though I wasn't entirely sure that would be the case.
Now that I think about it for a sec, that wasn't Deb, but another ugly Pi Phi. Still, a good story I hadn't had a chance to retell in a while.
I think Deb went to Greece for J-term the year I went, and she was the one sitting next to me on the rickety old Boeing 707 we flew from Santorini to Athens. That plane was so rickety and so old it did not have overhead compartments -- just one long bin with elastic cording holding everything up there (like a Greyhound Bus, really). And the door to the cockpit was missing, and the pilots had rigged a little suction cup cupholder thingy and stuck it to the window, then set a plastic beer cup half filled with water in it and were using it as an ashtray as they smoked furiously, cigarette after cigarette after cigarette, until it was full and overflowing and altogether too reminiscent of the cups we picked up at the fraternity house the morning after a party. And even though the weather was clear, the wind was blowing in Athens like a motherfucker, and the airport -- which is now part of a huge athletic complex developed for the Olympics, but which was then pretty much right in the city -- was preparing (unbeknownst to us) to close down for a spell while the bad weather "blew over." The pilots, becalmed with a false confidence brought on by the nicotine high, decided to land the plane crookedly, so the first hard bounce off the runway brought the left wingtip -- I swear it's true, I saw it with my own eyes -- less than a foot from the runway. And the second bounce brought the right wingtip almost as close. And shit got jostled in the overhead bin, and things were falling onto people's heads. And, like I said, I was sitting (randomly, I assure you, Carol was on the other side of the aisle) next to Deb, and she was crying. So I let her hold my hand while the plane finished careening down the runway, and I told her everything would be OK, even though I wasn't entirely sure that would be the case.
Now that I think about it for a sec, that wasn't Deb, but another ugly Pi Phi. Still, a good story I hadn't had a chance to retell in a while.