Page 260 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
I do; the lovely young lady (whose name, unfortunately, escapes me) whom I would visit at Skidmore and who would share the great blackout of November 1965 with me; and a visit from, of all people, Harriet Levin, with about thirteen more years on her and without her sailor hat—all other dates were Smithies. Putting aside the most important of them and the unnamed person whom I met under ridiculous circum- stances on the night before my Comprehensives (see “Comprehensive Coverage,” later in this chapter), the most memorable among them were the adorable Texan from Cushing House, whose father owned a famous knitting brand; a resident of Jordan House who introduced me to sailing (in Chesapeake Bay) and eating crabs on newspapers spread on dining room tables when I visited her at home in Laurel, Maryland; a Gardiner House expert in Russian who could not discuss her CIA interview with me; a graduate of the National Cathedral School who, not surprisingly, was totally out of my social league (Baldwin House); and the cute, very smart, and exceedingly feisty Port Washington young lady from Emer- son House, Joan Bertin, who became the executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship and whom I last saw—on TV— testifying against the elevation of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. (I would be remiss at this point if I didn’t point out that Kathy was Bork’s teaching assistant at Yale—after she put in the best exam in his class; see her autobiography for the non-lurid, apolitical details.) Finally, there was the blind date who took up more of my time prior to our meeting than did any other. From, I think, Cutter House, this last person was named, quite unfortunately, Betty Hair. To restrain myself from saying anything ridiculous when we would meet, I rooted out the problem by spending the better part of an hour with my roommates giddily doing every hair joke that entered my warped mind.
I survived the date with Betty Hair, a very nice person, but did not go out with her again. Joan Bertin was a very different matter. Not only did she go out with me on a number of occasions, but our relationship was such that by not observing Thanksgiving in the traditional fashion, she also managed to figure prominently in my ultimate admission to the bar.
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