December 1992--Accidents Will Happen
My RA friends, Sharon and Rachel, now jokingly insisted, whenever we referred to the dorms, that "They're not dorms, they're residence halls!" Apparently this was some mantra the school tried to teach the RA's.
Sometime probably in December, when Pearl connected our Bible study group with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, we began organizing it and making rules. There were the usual growing pains: I thought it should be more lenient, but stricter rules for officer beliefs were voted on. I didn't make much of a fuss, though; I said what I wanted to, and the officer rules were voted on democratically by a large group of people.
InterVarsity meetings, based on a slip I found, were: Bible study, Mondays at 9pm in Old Main (room 22, it says, but we also did room 14, same time, during Winterim and Spring Semester). Spring Semester, we often used the Phi-Delt room as well.
When we met in room 14, Pearl and other discussion leaders liked to leave on the board whatever they had written there for our meeting, hoping to amuse or witness to the first class to use it the next morning. We left some pretty strange messages up there at times. We had a lot of fun with this.
We had some cool people show up that year, even a few guys. Unfortunately, two left for UW-Madison, one may have left the school, and we were left with only one guy most of the time. This was Mike, the brother of the pledge master. But more about him later.
We discovered in Bible study meetings that Dori, my fellow pledge, was quite a flirt. She was engaged, yet still flirted with all the guys just like she did when she was single. She told of being a big heartbreaker in high school.
One day after a snow, Rachel built a cute little snowman on Pearl's scooter, I think in the basket.
One week in December, I got the flu and had to spend at least a couple of days in my room. I didn't even go out for meals; my wonderful roommate went out and got me sick trays, or rather styrofoam boxes, from the cafeteria. Besides homework and MTV, I passed the time by reading about 100 pages of Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. I mentioned this book before; I had seen the movie on Masterpiece Theatre, and now I found the abridged book in the Roanoke library.
Shawn said once that, rather than sitting there feeling bad about his criticisms, I should turn it around and say, "I don't care what you think, I don't want to do my hair/wear my clothes that way." I began doing this, telling him to let me be the way I wanted to be and not always try to change me. But you see, until then, it just hadn't occurred to me. I didn't realize that just because he thought I didn't look right or act right, didn't make it true.
Shawn told me once that Cinemax came in quite well in Grossh Lounge, even though it was supposed to be blocked because we weren't supposed to get it at RC. The guys there would often watch it.
After we had a maintenance guy come in and fix our heater knob, Clarissa and I kept our room nice and warm (often hot) during the winter. This was a wonderful change from the year before. Only extreme cold outside made the inside cold.
On December 2, I wore shoes instead of boots to class because I looked out the window and saw no ice left on the sidewalks. But the sidewalk outside the library, which was on a small hill, was one big sheet of ice, the only ice anywhere. On the way to work from class, I slipped. After I fell the first time, I was too scared to move over to the snow beside the sidewalk, since that would mean moving sideways and possibly falling again. I took another step or two, then fell again. Shawn later called me a klutz and said with a smile that an intelligent person would have known to get off the ice. But hey, it was a big hill of ice and even non-klutzes could have fallen. Getting off the ice was hard for a short person on a wide sidewalk.
Though the report says the hill was salted, and though Memadmin said she saw maintenance crews salting it all day, this is not what I saw. From my close-up view of the ice, there was no salt on it at all.
A non-trad from one of my classes saw me and asked if I was okay. She helped me up.
"I got so worried about you when I saw you fall twice," she said.
At that time I felt little pain, though my left arm had been pulled down by my heavy bookbag and did hurt somewhat. But I figured it was enough pain to make Food Service horrible. I went on to the cafeteria and found Nancy. I said I'd fallen and was too hurt to work. She and Arthur were concerned, though I thought I was just bruised
"Come see me if the pain gets any worse," Nancy said.
I went back to my room. As I sat on my bed studying, the pain grew worse and worse. I either called or found Nancy, and told her what was going on. She told Memadmin. Memadmin found someone to drive me to a clinic in S--. My arm hurt so bad now that my eyes teared up.
The doctor did the usual things, but I hated the X-rays because my arm was put into positions that hurt even more. After he put the cast and sling on, however, it felt better. It wasn't a plaster cast; I just had a hairline fracture in my elbow.
The next day in Music class, Shawn walked in and saw my sling. His eyes flew open. I smiled. I took after my dad; when he came home with a broken arm one day, he snickered at Mom.
At one point, my arm swelled up because I didn't know I was supposed to use ice and keep my arm elevated. When Arthur and Nancy saw this, they grabbed some ice packs, and insisted I keep my arm packed with ice. Arthur adjusted my sling so my arm pointed up like it was supposed to. The swelling went down within probably a day or two. Clarissa and I didn't have an ice tray in our little fridge, so we got the ice from the kitchen. We used a rubber ice pack, sometimes using cold water if nothing else was available. The next year, I rented a fridge with an ice tray. Though I never needed it, at least it was there.
I still took showers, but with difficulty. I had to learn how to shampoo with only one hand, and wash my right arm with an arm that could barely move. Everything I used to take for granted, was now a chore. At least it was not my dominant arm. I may have asked people to carry my meal trays at first, but I must have learned how to hold them myself. At one meal, I balanced my tray so skillfully that Sharon said I would make a good waitress.
On Monday, December 7, I saw the school nurse. She checked my arm and may have given me pain pills. We talked about the incident, and she said, "Oh, yeah, the school's gonna pay for your medical expenses."
The cast was taken off a bit before Christmas Break. This was my best Christmas present. I still couldn't do much, but I could do more than before. I was glad to carry my tray more normally and--especially--shampoo my hair with two hands again. My elbow was tender for some time even after the sling came off, and if the weather turned cold, my elbow hurt. But it was set well, so within a year or two, even the cold-weather aches went away. Today, you wouldn't know I ever had a fracture. I do, however, have a healthy respect for ice. Though falls rarely hurt more than my pride and some muscles, I still wear boots for only a tiny bit of snow. Ice frightened me for some time after the fall, even small patches.
I expected to get sick pay, since the fall wasn't my fault; I thought everybody in every job got sick pay. But when I asked Arthur about it, he said I'd only be paid for the hours I actually worked. I'd have to ask my parents for money again! Contrary to the student stereotype, I did not like asking my parents for money when I had a job, and when I called them each week it was merely to chat. My arm needed rest all through Winterim, so that was two months without pay.
A hypnotist did a show on campus on December 8. Actually, the students sitting onstage as volunteers did the show. What I remember: One of the guys thought some monstrous thing made out of sausage-shaped balloons was important. Another guy thought the microphone was the most gorgeous lady he had ever seen. He caressed, kissed and even licked it. Daphne, the RA of the suites, sitting in the audience, let herself go under hypnosis along with the students onstage. (I didn't because I wanted to watch people make fools of themselves.) When she came out of her trance, whenever the hypnotist said a certain thing, she ran around and yelled, "The Indians are coming! The Indians are coming!"
One night, after a Bible study meeting in Old Main, Pearl, Sharon and I went to the head of the staircase. I went down, But Sharon stayed up, leaning over the railing. She said, "Do you ever feel like throwing yourself over?" She wasn't suicidal. Pearl laughed and said no, but I knew exactly what she meant. Somebody else felt that way! Maybe I wasn't so weird. It wasn't suicidal, just the thrill of danger, something you weren't supposed to do--probably some primal urge, such as the Id.
Around 12/16, Shawn told me things that people had told him about me. They hoped he would "talk" to me about them. These things were nasty and untrue, yet he believed them! Also, someone asked Shawn why I was sad all the time. He said, "She wants to be." What kind of crap was that? I was no longer depressed about the breakup, but I had plenty of other things to be depressed about. Peter kept playing with my mind, pretending to be friendly and then biting my hand every time I extended it in friendship. He spread lies about me and even used the administration to try to force me to shut up about what really happened. Shawn's actions did not match his words, and he kept criticizing me.
Shawn should have said, "She's sad because she's dealing with some difficult stuff in her life right now." Anyone would have understood and cut me some slack. But instead, his reply made me sound maudlin or morose, like I was too stubborn to be happy, like I wanted attention or enjoyed sadness, like I was a negative person who would always be a downer. In fact, I am an optimistic person who is usually content. I needed Shawn's support, not his criticism.
I wrote a poem about a werewolf, the beast of character assassination. I eventually used it in Advanced Poetry. It shocked people; it drew praise. It was published in a new, campus literary magazine called Farrago.
This is the poem:
"The Beast of Backbiting"
They're a werewolf.
Each lie's a tooth
in a long mouth full.
Long fur of self-righteousness,
shadow-black.
Pointed ears prick at the agreement
of others of its kind.
Watchful, red eyes.
Help me, help me,
it careers after me!
It roars, cracking the air--
Foul, hot breath of judgments.
You have the gun;
I grab your sleeve.
Shoot it! Kill it!
Once it had you,
tearing with dagger-claws,
ripping for your heart,
to make you one of them.
I shot the gun,
scared it away.
I tended your wounds,
plucked out a broken claw,
an implant of perceptions.
Your hand flew up from pain,
knocking the claw to my chest,
scratching me, though no blood drawn.
Now shoot a silver bullet of truth--
The werewolf falls,
eyes fixed, in death, in surprise.
But it rises again,
snarls, fangs bared,
saliva oozing.
Its pride is hurt.
You shoot again, hit the shoulder.
The beast rages, lunges.
You shoot once more, hit the heart.
With a pitiful whimper and a gush of blood,
the beast dies.
I wasn't the only one affected by rumors. Once, a teacher told his class to beat the stress of finals week by starting a rumor. They would see how far it got by noon. So one of his students did just that. I don't know what the rumor was, but by lunchtime, it was all around the school.
In the midst of everything, the daily routine went on. Our mailboxes usually held junk and campus circulars, not "real mail," or letters from friends or family. Catherine came up with the term "EMS," or "Empty Mailbox Syndrome."
In my diary and letters from this time, I gushed over the book Clarissa. I loved the Gothic feel of many scenes, such as Lovelace showing up in Clarissa’s hotel as a gouty old man. I'm not sure if it's called pre-Gothic or Gothic; it's been described both ways. On Masterpiece Theatre, it was called a Gothic. It came out before the supernatural tales of the 18th and 19th centuries, but had the traditional elements of a Gothic: A young, virtuous virgin is abused and locked up by a dirty, usually old, man. Richardson's book Pamela, an earlier work, had a similar theme, except that the dirty man was young and handsome, and eventually "reformed." In this one, the man was young and handsome, but did not reform. The book was far more intense and intricate than the movie could possibly have depicted. I laughed when Clarissa's coffin arrived and she had it dragged up the stairs to her room. She shocked everyone in the hotel, who said, how could she bring her coffin into her room? She said, how could they be so surprised, since it was just a box to hold her earthly body? She expected to die and go to Heaven, where everything would be beautiful and peaceful.
Two songs became associated in my mind with Clarissa. The first was "Unchain" by Whiteheart. I listened to it over and over during Christmas Break, and the beautiful melody seemed to fit somehow as I read. Maybe it was the plea for God to "release my soul" "unchain." After all, Clarissa kept pleading for Lovelace to release her, and no longer keep her a prisoner in the brothel where he had taken her. The second song was "Ordinary World" by Duran Duran, a song which came out over Christmas Break and was played over and over as I listened to the radio while reading. The melancholy music and lyrics fit Clarissa well. The song may have been about a breakup, but Clarissa's sadness was due to the betrayal and awful treatment from someone who said he loved her.
I drew pictures of the characters, to help me imagine them and their period clothing, since characters are often a blur of emotion and action as I read. They rarely take on a concrete appearance unless I can look at a picture. This may be because of NVLD. I based the first picture of Clarissa on a plate in the "Fashion and Clothing" article from our 1960s Collier's encyclopedias. This was my masterpiece. I somehow got her haircolor mixed up: I thought she was a brunette and her friend Anna a blonde, though it was the other way around. But Clarissa's features--based on beautiful British actresses I'd seen over the years--were lovely enough to fit her description. I tried to draw Lovelace, but I preferred the one in the movie, Sean Bean of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring.
I admired Clarissa, the paragon of virtue, and the ending brought me close to tears. Maybe I connected with her on a subconscious level, since I knew what it was like to be lied to, lied about, and emotionally abused by men. I had no clue why this happened. I suppose the natural gullibility caused by NVLD, and the ostracism I’d often experienced throughout my schooling for no reason I could see, made me an easy target. Boyfriends were never easy to find, especially when my faith said they had to be Christians--and even the Christians could be jerks. I wanted to stop the abuse, but had no idea how. I couldn't control Peter's actions, and still hoped Shawn would stop criticizing me and fall in love with me.