Turning points for me

Continuation of my testimony from last Tuesday:

I realize my whole experience at Ohio University was unbelievably valuable for what it took off the table in my life, as in REALLY fast.

I didn’t mention this in my last post, but before my freshman year began at OU, my mom and I actually went to the campus to go through “sorority rush.” We stayed in a dorm with no air conditioning during the really hot and humid weekend of August 12, 1982.

The reason I know the exact date is a funny one. My mom and I had returned to the dorm after a long afternoon of “sorority hunting” and she said she wanted to lay down a bit. I said I would get us some cold drinks and snacks from the vending machines, and as I was returning to our room, I passed through the “common area" living room where a television was on (it’s odd how I’ve remembered this scene so vividly).

All I heard was the name Henry Fonda and I stopped dead in my tracks to turn to the TV. It was the evening news and they were reporting about his sudden death. I ran to our room to tell my mom, saying in a shocked voice, “Hank died!” She said, “Hank who?!” When I said, “Henry Fonda,” she just looked at me like, “What?!”

Years later, my mom has laughed with me about this story, but I remember she didn’t make fun of me at the time.

While Doris Day was my top favorite, I had another top favorite--Katharine Hepburn. I even named my brand-new Raleigh 14-speed touring bicycle after her, calling it “Kate.”

Like many of my high-school classmates, my best friend from childhood, Marcy, was totally aware of my adoration of Hepburn (as was my college-entry English teacher, Miss Morris!)

Anyway, we went to see “On Golden Pond” in the movie theatre shortly after it was released in February of 1982. Marcy would later mimic Hepburn’s voice around me, saying in an old cracking voice, “You old poop.”

*****

All I remember from my sorority weekend was how I didn’t find much of anything appealing about “Greek life” and none of the girls seemed like ones I would have anything in common with.

What was shocking is that nothing about the weekend clued either one of us in at all about OU being a party school, much less one that was in the Top Three for the country!!! I guess we were both just that naïve, mom and daughter.

The biggest takeaway from my one quarter at OU was learning I didn’t want anything to do with “theatre.” It went out of my system just like that.

I remember not fitting in or connecting much at all with my peers or instructors. I guess maybe I realized (I honestly have no idea what my mindset was) that I had been living in a fantasy world, one filled with old movie stars I had adopted into mind and heart.

I mean, I even made scrapbooks filled with magazine articles (accompanied with lots of photos because they were all still very much in “the news”) on Cary Grant, Doris Day and Katharine Hepburn.

Others on my list of favorites included Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable (also from Ohio), Ingrid Bergman, Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn (I memorized songs from “My Fair Lady” and used the same cockney accent she had in the movie).

As an aside, there is one memory that sticks out more than anything else about my few months as a theatre major (and this is embarrassing). I was assigned to be an usher for a play the theatre department put on and was directed by an instructor, in the evening hours leading up to the premiere of the show, to clean gum off the bottoms of the auditorium seats, as well as clean anything on the floors.

I remember other students were around and I told the instructor, really hamming it up like I was a movie-star diva, “Lisa Leland does not scrape gum off seats.” Right away, I was set straight by the instructor, who was not amused, and was immediately cleaning gum off seats.

*****

When I transferred to Ohio State I was placed in a freshman high-rise dorm that had a twin dorm next to it; they were mockingly known as “Sodom and Gomorrah.”

My three roommates weren't given any real advance notice that I was moving into their quad and so things got off on shaky ground. I remember not having any real connection with them and would often lie in my bunkbed in the dark by myself, hugging my pillow as I tried to tune them out in the room’s “common area” where we had our desks.

To get through the rest of the school year, I took only basic courses, not knowing at all what I would pick as my new major.

When I first signed up for OSU’s journalism school, I remember I went in with the idea I could try and become an on-air personality for some TV station. I was a huge fan of the Mary Tyler Moore Show and thought highly of Mary Tyler Moore as a person. Indeed, I had a little scrapbook I put together on her too!

The thing that was the turning point was when I took my initial classes. My professor for Journalism 201, Henry Schulte, is who I credit more than anyone else for me becoming a professional journalist.

to be continued tomorrow