When I was a freshman in college I met a lot of people from all over the country. I went to the University of Colorado in Boulder in the fall of 1975. It was an interesting school in that, though it was a state school, it only allowed 40% of the student population to come from Colorado. The reason was simple. It was actually a destination college due to skiing. The University could make a lot more money from rich out of state kids compared to local kids like me.
I met people I would not have ever met in any other situation. I'm talking rich kids here. They had a rule we had to live in the dorms the first year of college. I ended up in a place called Williams Village which was four tall buildings connected to each other every three floors by way of an indoor bridge way. I lived in the shortest building, which was 15 stories tall. The tallest buildings were 18 stories tall. Below is a picture of CU with those tall dorms in the background. I lived in the short ones to the right of the picture.
These were all co-ed dorms and fully 25% of the entire student population lived in Williams Village. On my floor I met the son of the Secretary of State of Colorado. I met the heir to the Seagram fortune. I met the son of the guy that said, "The wide wide world of Sports" on ABC every Sunday as film of a skier totally losing it was shown. I met Buddy Hackett's daughter. I met the son of the Monterey, California Chief of Police. All these people lived on my floor.
We had interesting times. We'd have parties, of course. We'd have lots of fun. Once we chartered a bus from Boulder to Denver to go see the Who at the Denver Coliseum. We were able to then drink from a keg we brought on board and smoke pot while being transported to the show. At one point the bus driver got on the intercom and said, "Stop smoking Mexican marijuana!" This caused us to put out the joints we were smoking. After a long pause he then said, "And please start smoking Columbian!"
One time our entire dorm decided to have an electric kool-aid acid test...all 15 floors. That is a story for another time. It was 18 hours of hundreds of LSD addled 18 and 19 year olds.
At the end of my first year of college, I had a girlfriend from New York. I'll call her Nancy because her name is Nancy. She grew up on Long Island in the town of Hempstead, NY which is just past Queens really. She lived in an Italian neighborhood. Her mom was Irish. Her dad was Italian and looked like Fred Flintstone.
In the summer of 1976, I took a car camping trip with my new friend from Philadelphia who I'd met during that first year of college. I'll call him Eric because his name is Eric. We drove west through Colorado, then went through the Four-Corners states looped through Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina...then up the Eastern Seaboard to his parents home in Philly. After a week I took a Greyhound Bus to see my girlfriend Nancy at her parents home.
Nancy showed me around. We went to Manhattan a couple times. The first time was at night to see a rock and roll show. The second time was during the day so I could be a tourist and walk around. I wanted to go up in the Empire State Building, of course. She pointed to a building and said, "There it is." The only problem with that was is wasn't the Empire State Building. It was the Chrysler Building and I told her so.
That was a mistake. She got really angry with me telling me I didn't know what I was talking about because I was a hick from Colorado. So then I started pointing out buildings to her starting with the Grant Building to show her I actually knew something about the buildings in Manhattan. This only made her madder because it turned out she didn't know what building was the Grant Building or even what building was the Empire State Building. Oops. So, here's this hick from Denver showing Nancy from Long Island the buildings in Manhattan. That was a mistake even if she didn't know them.
She decided to let me be a fool and have us walk to what I believed to be the Empire State Building since she was adamant that I was wrong. It was the Empire State Building that I guided us to. I wanted to go up to the observation deck. She was so mad she told me she was staying outside. So up I went and it was very cool. It cost $7 I believe to take the elevator to the 86th floor. When I came back down, Nancy was in a very foul mood. Her Irish-Italian heritage was on full display.
I left her parents' home the next day to take a Greyhound bus back to Eric's parents' home in Philly. We drove up through Boston then New Hampshire, Vermont and into Canada. The Summer Olympics had just ended in Montreal by the time we got there. We drove through northern Michigan then into Wisconsin where I had the biggest breakfast I'd ever seen. I'm not kidding. I ordered something that came with four eggs, six huge pancakes, two giant slabs of ham and a mountain of hash browns. It came on two dinner plates. I just stared at it for a while before doing my best. I probably was able to consume 1/3rd of the thing. After Wisconsin we drove through Iowa, Nebraska and finally Colorado. Seeing that wall of the Rocky Mountains in the distance as far as the eye could see north and south made me so very happy.
Before the new semester started in Boulder the next fall, I'd received a letter from Nancy. She'd broken up with me. Apparently the whole Empire State Building thing was what did it because she felt I'd humiliated her on purpose. I hadn't, but it's how she experienced it and so that was that. We were through.
We didn't have any contact for a almost three months until she contacted me in late October to let me know she was pregnant. She'd missed a period. She tried to pin it on me. It was beyond obvious there was no way that could be since we hadn't had sex for over three months. She eventually copped to that telling me it was some guy she met at a party with whom she'd had a one night stand. She didn't even know who he was or how to find him, but she wanted to have an abortion, was scared and didn't have the money. So, I gave her the money and went to the clinic with her. We remained friends for some years.
Has there been any weird reason you had a break up in the past?
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Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, and interesting videos, as well as links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate. Readers may notice that most who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but newcomers should not feel excluded. We welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
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