Page 250 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
gift for me but that I shouldn’t mention it because I was the only one of her seven grandchildren who was a recipient of a bequest. I was skeptical about the story at the time and never did receive any cash; what I real- ized years later, however, was that the Mustang was a gift but that it wasn’t a gift from my grandmother, as I had been given to understand: it was a gift from my parents that they bought, I assume, to congratulate me on turning things around, perhaps using some cash that my grand- mother had left my dad. Dad stuck with the story about Grandma’s gift, and I was happy to play along as I drove off, determined to make my return a successful one. As I said earlier, junior year is supposed to be, and most often is, the best of the college years. You know what you are doing, you know how to have fun, and you’re not yet looking ahead and feeling somewhat jaded and superior to that which surrounds you. This time I believed that I would make the supposition fact. I was a year older, perhaps a bit more mature, and definitely more motivated because of my ten months in the desert. Whether for those reasons or because of my new living conditions, my new courses, my new role at my frater- nity, or my new and well-rounded social life—or because of all of the above—things were definitely looking up.
This time I did not elect to live at Phi Gam. Amherst had com- pleted building its four new “social” dormitories, so styled because they were organized around four- and six-room “room groups,” each of which had its own living room that was shared by the roommates. Not wishing to live at the fraternity house as yet, I lived in one-year-old Crossett Hall with Charlie Jacknow, who is my friend to this day and with whom I had been in close contact while I was at home; Geoff Kur- land, a runner from Rochester, Minnesota; and Peter O’Loughlin, a swimmer. All four of us belonged to Phi Gam but spent as much of our social life in Crossett as we did at the house. We also had our own rooms in which to study. (Showing no respect for the storied history of Cros- sett, in 2014 the college announced that it would soon be demolishing the social dorms to make way for newer and—so the college said— better facilities.)
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