There Is a Charm About the Forbidden That Makes it Unspeakably Desirable - Mark Twain

Amy and I made plans to be freshman dorm roommates in Austin Hall on the University of Utah (the U) campus in the fall of 1981. Our plan was to live in one of the units which they call "suites"...suites were basically  little apartments which consisted of one common room, one kitchen and three bedrooms which housed two girls per room.

My parents believe that when you start college you should “go away” to college and although I lived in the same city as the U (none of my out-of-state choices would take me), I was thrilled at the opportunity to live life on a longer leash than the one I’d been raised on.

When further investigation into Austin Hall revealed that it was a dorm where boys were allowed on the floors where the girls were housed , my parents strictly forbade this, halted my plans and made arrangements for me to live in Bailiff Hall…on a floor where boys were FORBIDDEN to enter.  Apartment living was out of the question...that was for floozies and tramps! And…coupled with the fact that Austin Hall was open to all ages (including seniors), they realized that there were going to be kids living there who were old enough to buy booze and that was not going to fly!!!  One of the other selling points was that Bailiff Hall was only for freshmen and sophomores...the under 21 crowd...and that sounded much more appropriate. 

Bailiff Hall was a zig-zag shaped building with seven or eight zigs. Each zig had three floors. Each zag had three floors. The entire building was a boys’ dorm except the one floor I got assigned to...one floor of one of the zigs. Go figure.  That should have been a big red flag to my parents, but the brochures said “no boys allowed” and they believed it. I did, too, because I had been raised in the bubble known as Murray, Utah…a place where cotton candy was abundant and everything was as it appeared.  Bad things didn't happen in Murray.  It was a great place to grow up!   Anyways, back to Bailiff Hall…it was just for incoming freshmen and sophomores, so there was no chance that any booze would make its way in because none of us would be old enough to buy it. This sounded like the perfect solution to my folks…the people that wanted to protect their already “highly-spirited” daughter from the evils of the world.

Amy met her future husband our first year and she adjusted exceedingly well to campus life. I, on the other hand, being a resident of Bailiff Hall, lived a quiet, mundane day-to-day life of study and inner contemplation. NOT!!! It was a life of utter decadence and severe frivolity! Boys prohibited from the floor? HA! There were boys on the floor constantly! Booze flowed freely! The guys on the floor below me had a vending machine that dispensed beer! Imagine our delight when we would push the “mystery” button and get an imported beer! Imagine our disdain when that same button would produce generic beer! Anybody remember generic beer? Simple white can with plain black writing? Yes, it looked a lot like Dharma Initiative beer (Google-image it if you’re unfamiliar). Boys spent the night. Girls stayed out all night. And to make things worse, I joined a sorority. Let your mind wander where it may...I’ll deny everything.

Amy and her future husband did wonderfully in school and never had to have a “good stern talking-to” from their parents (like people who were placed on academic probation their first quarter) and they appropriately married after they graduated.  They both got great jobs, started a family and are highly respected to this very day.  I'm not saying that I experienced one of those "talking-tos"...AND I'm not saying that I didn't. 
In contrasst, I made every poor choice in the book. “Boy Crazy” had always been my middle name, but to be denied the chance to fellowship with my brethren made this moniker sound genteel. The attempt to keep me protected from whatever it was that my parents were trying to protect me from backfired.  I had more fun that year than any other year of my life! I met Mindy, who is my dearest friend and will be for life. I have stories that I will laugh about until I die! My boyfriends were a blast!  My non-boyfriends were a blast!  We danced on tables!  We played football in the dark on the quad!  We played constant pranks!  The boys kidnapped my favorite stuffed animal from my dorm room and held it hostage...they sent me polaroids of him tied up and blindfolded and didn't release him until we paid the "ransom" which consisted of Playboys and beer (that was embarassing...buying Playboys at the coner 7-11)  We published a weekly newspaper which regaled all of the week's antics.  We took pictures of Jake (aka Jake-o-Lantern) through his bedroom window as he masturbated.  We raided the cafeteria!  We drove to the hot springs at 4:00 in the morning!  We played video games!  We "borrowed" my friend's car to drive to Naugles for tacos at all hours of the night!  We made fake ID's and went to the bars!  (Imagine 24 of us all going in at one time and we all had Rhode Island driver's licenses...they never even questioned it.)  It was sheer mayhem!

The next two years I lived in my sorority house. Mom and Dad thought that would be a better place because now I would be living in a building with just girls...and it was a great place for me to meet other girls who were involved in their studies. Wow…that’s a whole other story. I won’t even go there, but I bet you can imagine the frivolity that ensued during those two years!  And just to let you in on a little secret...panty raids really do happen and girls are not the culprits.

Then came my glorious senior year.  My parents were still opposed to apartments, but by this time, they had lost all control.  I moved into an apartment…without my parents’ permission (even though they were paying all of my tuition and a generous portion of my living expenses). They were certain that I would never make it through college…and...I don’t know…maybe it was the fact that I was almost burned out on partying by then…or maybe I had matured…or maybe it was just the fact that I now lived in an environment where I wasn’t forbidden from exploration of the world outside of Murray, Utah…but that was the year I settled down. I loved school by that time and I was doing really well. Never mind that I had to go a fifth year to make up for that first quarter (GPA 1.85…academic probation)…and to make up for the incompletes and the three times I had to take Math 101 (no I didn’t fail the first two times…I just didn’t do so swell) so that I could get my GPA up. I buckled down and became reasonably settled and yet still reasonably fun! And yes, I did graduate…and my parents were both astounded and proud...despite the fact that Mindy and I drank champagne in a limousine on the way to our 9:00 AM commencement and then I fell asleep during the keynote speaker's presentation) and despite the fact that the first job I applied for was to be a flight attendant.

Still…now...at the awkward age of 47, I feel like I haven’t made my mark on the world. The need to express my inner adolescent still exists and the closer my son gets to college age (Heaven help me if he’s anything like me!), the more I look forward to focusing on my wild and crazy side again! I can play a mean game of Scrabble, I love to read and I’m thinking about taking up yoga…….do I know how to have a good time, or what?