North Carolina State University - Agromeck Yearbook (Raleigh, NC)

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natural to drink as much of it as I do; the carbonic (?) acid isn ' t good for my stomach lining, and I ' ve been promised ulcers by a variety of reputable physicians. Further, the caffeine is making me a nervous wreck. Hell, it even tastes awful this early in the morning. I drain the rest of the can and head for the door. As I gently close it and lock myself out, I wish I could have left her a note to tell her how much I love her. She likes them, and gets lonely very easily. But there ' s tonight. Even before I look at the clock I know that this is the first morning in quite a whilethat the clock now happily ticking on its shelf back in the apartment has been less than 20 minutes fast. This one insists that it is 7:47. I marvel again at my speed realizing that there are those who won ' t. That asshole will doubtless come up with something like Well, Mr. — Ah — (looking up my name, as a tactless reference to the infrequency of my attendence, then mispronouncing it) — so you ' ve decided to join us after all. Do come in. All of which is very strange, I tell myself. He should feel complimented that I took the effort to come in, knowing I would be late. When people run to keep from missing very much of your class you have nothing to worry about, and nothing to gain from ridiculing them except enemies. When you should worry is when they wake up, see it ' s time for your class, and go back to sleep. I wonder to myself why so many professors here think they ' re such hot shit. It wouldn ' t be so bad if so many of them weren ' t right. You can at least laugh at someone you know is full of shit. The people who are very good you can only listen to. Still, it ' s a pleasant change from high school to find not only instruc tors who know about their subjects, but know a great deal about them. A girl passes with hair that looks like it belongs on a Barbie doll and an outfit to match. I wonder why I ' m the only person on campus who looks like he just woke up at 8 in the morning. These people take showers after they get up and I understand that some of them even eat breakfast. My system automatically convulses at the thought of food before noon, and the portions of a pizza, Cheetos, ice cream, Coke and Laughing Cow Cheese ingested the previous night within a one-hour period and not as yet undigested remind me that they ' re ready to make a break for it at the first opportunity, in case I get any funny ideas. I look around hopefully for Ken, but see no one in the surging cro wd fitting the description. I amuse myself with the notion that he ' s already in class. Having made the seventeenth turn against the flow of the crowd (no matter which way you turn, it ' s always against the flow) I find myself in the correct building. The clock hanging from the suspended ceiling reads 8:14. As I leave the stairwell and land in the hall outside my class, I notice with little surprise that I ' m the only one in it. The door is closed, of course. I open it and step quietly (but never meekly) inside. Ah, so Mr. — ah — Burnette — will be joining us after all this morning. We ' ve been waiting.

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wake at seven. No alarm, no nothing, just seven. I try to make my eyes focus, but I know that the clock will be making its same horrid little face. Somehow, I ' m just not the person who rises and shines, so I wake and smoke. It ' s just a good excuse, good , justified in a smoker ' s mind, to stay in bed for another 15 minutes, petting the cat, figuring out what I should have done and didn ' t, and glad that I got as much done as I did. One of these days after I ' ve married and divorced an Arab sheik, I ' ll have a maid who chooses my clothes, makes up my face, and does my hair. (I ' ll brush my own teeth.) For the time being, I have to do these things myself so making up my face consists of washing it and doing my hair of brushing it. (I still do my own teeth.) After dressing (putting on any two clean articles of clothing that I can find) I locate my shoes, and stagger down the stairs and out the door. After discovering no chauffer-driven limosine, I climb into my car, sad and battered that it is, praying that it ' ll start. It hasn ' t failed me yet. The radio that sounded so good yesterday when I was out of school and liberated from work with a whole free night in front of me, blares and fits badly into my morning mood, especially since all the neighbors can hear it, or could if my muff lerless engine didn ' t drown it out. Motoring up Gardner Street, my eyes scanning the sides for a parking place (I failed to pay $35 for a non- existing parking space on campus), I have to make the same old decision. Can I stand the pressure of parking illegally and, perhaps, coming back at the end of the day to find my car spirited away to Zebulon? Or shall I legally park eight blocks away and trudge? Being the nervous worrier, trudging always appeals to me more. Walking toward school, I pass many Irish-Spring- smelling people who look bright and alive. Mostly I watch the sidewalk cracks passing under my shoes and dream of motorized wheel chairs and ski-lift contraptions hanging from the telephone lines, free for poor students. The Old Union, smelling suspiciously like eggs, bacon, and breakfast, stops me long enough for a cup of coffee. I ' ve been working on a technique of pouring coffee and getting cream and sugar without putting my books down. By this time I have permanent spiral notebook scars on my inside forearms and my back and arms are bent around them. I saw an aerial photograph once of the brickyard and, at the time I wondered how the photographers arranged to have no people on the place when they took the picture. Upon closer inspection, however, I could see little blobs of humanity that blended into the bricks. This small blob makes her way across staring again at the mosaic designs. As I reach and enter the right building, the first bell (ten minutes to go) always catches me directly under it, shattering the otherwise hurrying silence. The class door is locked so I collapse against the opposite wall where I smoke, drink my coffee, (well stirred by the motion of my walk), and wait. Cursing 8:00 classes that really aren ' t so bad when you get there, women who look beautiful in the morning, and ten-pound textbooks that have to be brought to class, I sit and restore the circulation in my arms, still waiting. Just once I ' d like to see my professor enter yawning, bleary-eyed, and rumpled. But starched, alive, and crackling, he comes stepping down the hail, opens the door, and prepares for his class. I struggle to my feet, slip into a front dest (because if I sit in the back I can with easier conscience go back to sleep), open my notebook, and begin. Good Morning! (sic)