Part two of
Liberal Art's Education
"Hi, my name is Anna and I'm a sophomore English major here! It's wonderful to meet you all. We're going to start our tour today with a look at one of our sample housing accommodations-"
Anna cringed inside. The father was wispy and looked like one good cold would finish him off; his son was round and could have been the poster boy for the "before" acne treatment photos. His mother was short and sensibly put together, it was this that made Anna want to run screaming back to the Tour Guide break room. Everything about the woman, from her sturdy walking shoes to her short practical hair cut and her matching separates pegged her as an
Interrogator. Sure enough, as soon as Anna stepped into the dorm hallway the woman started with "How are the bathrooms here, REALLY?" followed by a quick analysis of the RA's "quaint floor decorations" and moving without pause onto a diatribe on how her son's intelligence was far superior to any of his classmates. Anna turned autotron and fired back answers and witty comments, a familiar song and dance that was perfectly timed and executed.
Exactly 52 minutes later Anna collapsed into a swiveling office chair and unstuck her magnetic name tag.
"Bad tour?" A girl with cropped blond hair and square rimmed glasses paused her work at the computer.
"Crazy mother."
"She ask anything fun?"
"Yeah, what we're doing to bring organic foods to the school." A snort of disbelief.
"Better to start with cutting the cases of food poising to under 50 a month."
The girl went back to her CEEB codes and Anna pulled an old yearbook out of her bag. She knew she should really get stared on her paper on the Canterbury Tales, but this personal research was much MUCH more interesting. Back in 1936 the yearbooks had been run not by an administration that was concerned with equal representation, but by the students themselves. There were racy songs and student written cheers, anecdotes about poor freshman girls losing their reputations and boys having unfortunate collisions with drunken sidewalks.
School was, once upon a time, a place for mistakes and learning the hard way how the world worked. Now it seemed things had been sterilized.
She flipped languidly though the pages, mentally rating the girl's hair and the boy's half grins. Turning back towards the beginning she paused. The dedications always interested her, who had done things of enough merit to be mentioned FIRST and FOREMOST. This one, however, was different.
"This book is in memory of Grace Turner, who's bright smile always lit the room and who kept the jazz in her step always. You will be missed."
Beneath a simple black and white photo. Grace was standing by the school gates clutching a stack of books, her head thrown back in laughter. It was a perfectly posed candid, she was full of beauty and life and it was suddenly obvious why the campus had adored her. Anna turned to the middle of the book where the student pictures were organized by greek membership, followed by the "independents." Sure enough, there Grace was wearing the familiar little black pin. She was in the center of the composite, her chin turned up and a pretty poised smile on her lips.
Remembering the note penned on the back of the article, Anna flipped back to the photos of the men. Tony something, something that begun with a P, Tony...tony...tony... The very last fraternity was Delta Tau Gamma, one that still had a house on campus today. Tony Parson starred up from the bottom row of men. He had hair parted to the side and eyes that stared into the camera with intensity. No doubt about it, Tony Parson was a catch.
Paging forward Anna tried to pick Tony out of other groups, other pictures. He was on the football team, but this no great accomplishment in a school with a permanently losing record. Still he looked good in his jacket. He was also pictured in a candid at the fall dance, which must have taken place in what was today one of the dinning halls. He had a girl on his arm, a pretty dark young thing who was staring up at him in utter adoration. She looked familiar, and a quick scan of the Theta composite confirmed Anna's suspicions; they would have been in the same pledge class. Her name was Rebecca Mallory, she had been Vice President of communications. It seemed that Tony wasn't a "going steady" kinda guy.
"Um, hey Anna, you know it's quarter past five, right?"
The girl with the glasses was looking over from her swivel chair.
"Oh damn, thanks Emma. I'm supposed to meet people at Bunker for dinner in five minutes."
"Better hurry, the lines are going to be forever long by the time you get up there."
Anna swept the yearbook and the untouched Chaucer into her bag and hurried off across campus to the same building in which Tony Parson once attended a fall social.
