Bethel University - Spire Yearbook (St Paul, MN)

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DALE JOHNSON. Tom With An Airplane

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Balanced Diet Aloneness is a salty food. I desire it, savor it, Feel I must have more. Yet my tongue dries from so much good. Then I thirst. Silence is a perfect apple. I reach for it, consume it. Never seem to have enough. Yet too much of such a tart sweetness Sets my teeth on edge. LORRAINE EITEL We passed, two isolated cars, and caught each other’s make and year. Our doors were locked. One day, our engines failed. We stopped, and saw beyond the chrome. Recharged, with engines tuned to harmonize, we left the silly road. KIRSTEN MALCOLM

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Small Boy With Plane He’s a suntanned boy with knobs for knees and elbows. Scraped knobs, that is. His white T-shirt is smudged with a morning’s worth of grime, his brown shorts twisted about his straight waist. Squinting at the midday sun, the boy stands mid ragged grass and soggy litter before a stone-block wall. The wall is tall, the sky vast, the boy but a sprout wondering how life grows so big. Gangly stepping over the rubble in boat-sized tennis, he holds up a model airplane. One forefinger spins the propeller. A high voice hums a rotary accompaniment while glassy brown eyes still stare at the big blue. Docs he dream of flying his own plane someday? Docs he doubt his pint-siz.ed shape will ever become a man’s body? How can he grasp the immense gap between boyhood world and grown-up life? Tomorrow maybe an aviator in a spaceship looking back at mini-earth. Today just a small boy with a toy plane pipe-dreaming in the clouds. KATHLEEN ASSEt.lN I rechcckcd the room number written on the slip of paper. Yes, this was the right classroom in the AC building which the admissions people had suggested 1 visit. Cautiously aloof, I stepped into the Oral Interpretation classroom and chose a red-plastic chair—in the corner. One girl leaned toward me, her eyes bright with interest. “Hi, I’m Debbie. Are you new at Bethel?” I smiled weakly and said I was considering coming to Bethel the following year. Several other students joined Debbie in asking about my possible major. The the young mustachioed instructor arrived and hastily began class. Or rather, he didn’t begin class. He had noticed the factions of drama majors and English majors in harsh competition during critique sessions. Theater enthusiasts harped on the English students’ lack of dramatic style, while the literary buffs cut down the dramatists' poor choice of material. I felt as though I had stumbled into a lovers’ quarrel as the men and women aired their differences. Reaching a common understanding, the students bent their heads and prayed for forgiveness all around. The class dismissed and my new friends stopped to assure me that I wasn’t an intruder on this personal business. Indeed, they invited me back. Surveying the speckled-brick classroom as I left, I thought, “If this is the way they care about each other at Bethel, then this is the place for me!” KATHLEEN ASSELIN