Tufts University - Jumbo Yearbook (Medford, MA)

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Indulging in the scenery, digging up jobs when needed, floating ... A month later running away again, this time from obnoxious religions and abject poverty into the hills again, back across Amer ica to Slumberville, to a fall semester of meditation and a winter of hard luck and a spring with no sex life - and a dip in the freezing Atlantic, diving deep, feeling the suck and pull of the last long breath. I ' m gonna skip ' Career Objective ' for a while, and go on to ' Educa¬ tion, ' said Norman to Dorothy, who nodded her approval and smiled, looking a bit like Janis. Now I create the impressive facade, thought Norman, as he typed: Pufts University, Mudfill, Ass. B.A. in English, June 1976. Now what? Five courses in Creative Writing? (What ' s your specialty, asked the prospec¬ tive employer. Writing what comes to my head, answered the prospec¬ tive employee, smiling. Sorry, you aren ' t disciplined. We need people who have a definite idea as to what you want. We don ' t need artists, there are plenty around, roaming the streets.) Professor Braintree, of the English Department, once said to Norman, You can be whatever you like. Norman thought he meant in manners of dress and peculiarity of sex. You must, however, bring an eagerness to your education. If you nurse your knowledge, it will grow, grow ten¬ thousandfold! Norman agreed. He had brought with him to college a light-weight limited teen-age confusion, and he going to graduate with a beautiful branching tree rooted in that confusion. Norman remembered a conversation over pin-ball last week with Bad-News Drizzle. You have to coax the ball with your flippers, he cautioned Norman, and Norman thought of college education in that perspective: I had five courses, five important courses in the last four years, and they were just like the pin-balls in the last game. The first ball was a course in Philosophy. I was new to the machine, saw how flimsy the rules were, found out where the most points will be scored, and I watched the lights glow. I was fascinated. Then the ball hit a snag I didn ' t know about. The ball dropped straight down to my flippers, and I let it slip. Ha! Y ' mean when it was your turn to explain your theory to the class, you blew it! Bad-News blew smoke rings. Yep, mumbled Norman, mortified. The next ball I took careful aim. Psychology. Hit the slot for the mind! And the ball plunked around for a while, not scoring anything worth my quarter, the lights and blinkers began to bore me. I saw an easy shot, muffed it, thought bad about it, and instantly the ball was drawn to that magnetic snag and the ball, again, was lost. But I realized, this time, that a slight push to the machine would change the ball ' s course after hitting the snag. Bad-News took a long pull from his cigarette, unimpressed. 16

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My third ball I decided not to aim, decided instead to be spon¬ taneous. It steared itself into a Seminar on Kerouac. A beautiful ball. Responding delicately, racking up the brownie-points, then it began to fall, and my flippers masterfully saved shot after shot, seemingly to learn a new discipline: the flippers would naturally flip each other in succession spontaneously, without a calculated destination. It was my greatest ball. I thought I was on the verge of a free game. After a brilliant array of pin-ball fantasy, and a recognition of my unique pin¬ ball skill, (and after a few quick pushes for a save from the snag,) I almost cheerfully let the ball take its course down a lost slot that multiplied my score three times. I was very close. My fourth ball was a flash in the pan. Creative Writing, a superb experiment in drawing attention to my game. I gathered an audience, screaming and shouting, coaxing the ball and so forth, persuading the ball to forget about the snag, exhibiting fast flipper action, putting on a fine dramatic performance in Pin Minor for the crowds. Then, at the last minute, to the ooh ' s and aahh ' s of the crowd, I dropped my fourth ball, inches away from a free game. Confident, I logically assumed my last ball would have to be the one to break through. A theory lay like a stagnant pool in my mind, a theory that needed a spark to create life. So I took careful aim, and I shot the ball into the groove of a course in Logic. I had to find the flaw in this machine, exploit it. The problem did not stem from my inability to play; however, the flaw was there, hidden within the basic structure of the game. The snag. I flipped furiously, almost nearing the mark, when I discovered and pursued the flaw. I needed the points, and I needed the snag, but I had to save the ball afterwards. I knew I was risking suicide. The Drama of it all overwhelmed me, and I tried for the snag, and prepared to give it the push. Ding ding ding Free Game! and I pushed and TILT!! And there I was, devastated, with my free game tilted out of the machine, and no more quarters. Good story, mused Drizzle. But what was the snag? Norman arched his eyebrows and said, The Question Why. The very next day Norman had gone to talk to another English professor, one who was being denied tenure because he had been too busy being a good teacher to do any research or publish a novel. One thing you have to remember, he told Norman confidentially, and that is how to con your professor. Most of them are set in their views because they ' ve done so much research in a certain field. They don ' t want to see new things, just what is already standard knowledge and reasonable opinions, and whether you understand them. And you can find this information and polish it up, regurgitate, only you could rephrase it better. You can show him a portrait of himself instead of just holding up a mirror. Try it and you ' ll see. Norman pondered these things as he typed his college information. For an hour he played mental solitaire with an uneven deck, all unimpressive college courses, all unimpressive grades. Nothing to show for years of anguish. 18