“Another Story” Part II … I don’t have a name for it yet…   Leave a comment

So I have been working on this long story connecting the lives of ten college students who all see the same psychiatrist and end up in a terrible bus accident, or rather a terrible bus ‘on-purpose’. I’m not sure where it will go, and as of now I have tons of little paragraphs that don’t fit into one picture.

This little section is the beginning of the psychiatrist meeting the students for the first time…

The month of September was usually the quietest for me. The freshman students were setting in to the routine of late night parties followed by early morning seminars, but their new found addiction to the campus café’s cinnamon vanilla lattes was still boosting energy levels. The sophomores were busy finding dates with juniors, and vis versa, and the senior had yet to realize that in nine months they would be unleashed from the safety of the campus kennel into an unforgiving world where young pups work a full day for a meager bone.

Some years I had taken vacation in September, once on a cruise to Bermuda, another time to the Shenandoah forest. This past year I decided to wait until October to take a vacation to intentionally miss the first stampede of over-privileged and disillusioned children. Even the seniors were still children. Maybe they had moved on from diapers and sippy cups, but given the option, I’m sure a few would choose to still drink fresh milk from the breast if it was easier and cheaper than making the weekly trip to the grocery store.

I had miss judged the clock, substituting the magical midnight charm when the princesses really turned back at 10pm. The storm came on September 29th, the morning after I bought ink to print my boarding pass from the office. First came Sharron, in tears flooding the hallways to the point I considered buying a kayak to make sure I could escape from work. As she sat on my tan leather couch, slouching like a geriatric sloth I noticed a faint smile when I asked about greek like, my favorite subject of conversation when there is no common ground. Before she could spell out the third delta of Tri Delt, there was a furious knock on the door, a knock asking to be addressed 3 weeks ago, and not a minute later.

I muttered a “Please give me a minute,” and sent Sharron off with advice to work on studying in the library and not in the living room where the other girls were more focused on figuring out how to make their tongues fit into their boyfriends mouths than how to connect the double bonds of styrene into a polymer of poly-styrene. The challenges of upper middle class Americans never ceased to amuse me, especially after a large dose of caffeine, with half an ounce of chili pepper flavored chocolate melted in. I was more curious about the rigid knock. It sounded confident and powerful, two things seen often in the Army or on the streets of Harlem, but rarely on this campus.

I wish I could write better. I feel like my style changes all of the time. Some days I am inspired and others I am not. Hmmm.

Posted September 9, 2011 by bluelightening in Uncategorized

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