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

Page 7 text:

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)