This was the first paper I wrote for the Story and Reporting course in 1981 at Columbia College. The assignment was to write about the events before the first class in present tense.
Morning
Network news. FY ’82 starts now. Cutbacks. Columbia. “No!” I’m awake.
At breakfast, Larry shows me a computer magazine he brought home from work. “There’s some interesting stuff you can read while you wait for the bus.” He puts the magazine and an envelope containing 2 bus tokens in a folder alongside me. It seems strange to leave the apartment with him at 7am. Downstairs, we go into the lounge where he turns on the light, moves a chair from a table. His parting words and kisses are warm. He’s gone. I spot some good things in the magazine, but my mind wanders in its wanderings from the cutbacks resulting in the elimination of a program I’d helped create to whether the special CTA bus will come on time to the unknowns of Columbia College. I wish I knew the damn room the damn class met in. What was I doing in a class where I wasn’t supposed to talk. (Larry had compared that to my abstaining from sex.)
A woman with a cane is on the bus. I try to make conversation, but she won’t play. We drop her off. The driver asks whether Michigan or Ohio is better. I say the address several times, wondering where I’ll end up. He checks his list and apologizes because he thought it’s North instead of South Michigan. He dodges traffic in order to make time.
Students swarm around the printouts of room assignments. I join them knowing I will have to ask for help. The logical sequence of the list is apparent to no one. A couple who act as if they were made for each other ask which classes I’m looking for. “Story and Reporting,” I say and pray.
“Reporting—News and Reporting?” He triumphs, and I hate having to spoil it. She glances at her watch after f few more tries. I tell them to go on and not be late; I’ll be OK. Relief and regret blend on their faces as they hurry off.
A white-bearded gentlemen steps from the crowd and offers to be of assistance. He understands “Reporting’ and “Writing Department”.
“Do you have your class schedule?” he over-enunciates. I pale; why didn’t I think of that, but it’s probably buried amid pop cans, library books, and unmentionables in the carry-all behind me. I shake my head no. He takes me to the fifth floor where the computer will find it. My nervousness exaggerates the involuntary movements, so the chair is hell on wheels. He leaves me to find someone to operate the computer. I muse on that irony and the fact that they understand all I say but the damned course title. The girl my hero finds even gets my ID number. While she disappears to find me in RAM, I vow to make my classmates laugh at least once today; if I do not, I will drop.
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A New York transplant to Chicago at 11, Barb Bechdol attended 4 special schools in 4 States. She met Larry Bechdol at Southern Illinois University; It was love at first pun. They married in 1969. A member and officer of Illinois Council Congress of Organizations of the Physically Handicapped COPH, Barb also served 2 years on the Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities. More recently, she belongs to NDSU, F.R.I.D.A., and Chicago ADAPT. Barb and Larry became webmasters of this site after the first Disability Pride Parade. Their other favorite web site is www.PUNSRUS.net.