Pasadena
Your job in high school as a
hospital janitor taught you to make beds with nice,
tight hospital corners, but when you arrived at AC,
your dorm monitor told you not to, that every guy in
the dorm room should have beds that looked alike.
Despite that, you lived in
maybe the coolest men’s dorm, whose wacky
inhabitants occasionally engaged in fierce farting
contests (this is how I developed my own fair
skills).
You arrived at AC as a
believe-everything church nerd, but later left
(without graduating, because it just got boring) as
an ultra-liberal who despised top-down church
government (while still trying to remain loyal to
Herbert W. Armstrong “authority”).
You attended a blistering
student assembly in which Herbert W. Armstrong blasted everyone for
trying to “go steady” before we were supposed to,
and in which he declared that even sitting and
talking at suppertime could constitute a “date”
between two people (with no more than one or two
dates per semester allowed); so, afterward at
supper, the tables were nearly all gender segregated
to prevent an accidental “date”.
You rejected Herbert W.
Armstrong’s definition
of a “date”, and at the supper afterward, you sat
down with five women at the table…so did that count
as five dates? Did you give a rat’s ass?
You had to listen to that
psychotic madman, Rod Meredith, get his jollies at a
lecture in the sex class, er, Principles of Living,
by telling the girls that if they were being held
and kissed by a guy, that all that the guy was
thinking about was how he wanted to “RAM his penis
into your vagina!”
After that lecture, you were
ashamed to look at the girls in the eyes.
In the course of just over 24
hours, you would have three “dates”: one for Friday
night Bible Study, one for Sabbath brunch/services,
and one for Saturday night at the movies.
You were always respectful of
your dates, never took liberties, and were naïve
enough to think that everyone else was doing the
same.
Years later, learning the truth
about what really went on, you kicked yourself for
not getting in on the fun.
At dances, the band had to
stick to “standards” for most of the night, but
after the last minister/faculty member left, they’d
start playing things like “Get Back”.
Your theology classes,
especially Meredith’s First Year Bible classes, were
really just sermons, with very little true academic
study involved.
When you first arrived in
Pasadena in late August, over thirty years ago, when
the air quality was much worse than it is nowadays,
you were surprised, in the evening, to see the San
Gabriel Mountains “come out” as the smog
dissipated. (The mountains are 6,000 feet or more
high, and sit literally at the northern fringe of
the city.)
When you first arrived, you
thought how blessed you were to have either Herbert
W. Armstrong or
Garner Ted Armstrong preach to you just about every Sabbath.
By the time you left, you were
sick and tired of seeing and hearing them.
During your second year, you
had a very conservative dorm monitor, but you and
your mates “worked” on him all year, so that by
spring, he came back from Sabbath brunch with two
oranges and a banana, and carefully placed the
banana, pointing upward, between the oranges on a
study desk.
At the end of that year,
everyone chased down one of the freshman guys in
your floor of Grove Terrace, pulled his pants off
and threw him outside, as your formerly conservative
dorm monitor urged everyone to take off his
underwear, too!
Church people from back home
whom you thought of as shining stars in the past,
when they would come out to college to visit, seemed
shy, humble, and a bit “faded” to you.
One of your best friends of the
opposite gender fell mutually in love with someone
of a different “race”; they dated on the sly, but
your friend’s love interest was too haunted by guilt
to go against the criminal racial rules of the
church, so their relationship went by the
wayside—for that reason only.
Your friend’s love interest
wound up, only shortly thereafter, marrying another
person of the same “race” as your friend.
You found several members of
the opposite gender supremely attractive, wonderful
to talk to, and very uplifting; you wanted to date
them but couldn’t—they were of a different “race”.
You eventually moved off
campus, while taking only one or two courses, and
having little or no interest in the coursework. You
shared a large house with several others, and things
got crazy. On one Friday night, rather than going
to boring Bible Study, the crazy ones stayed in and
spontaneously began chanting things that Herbert W.
Armstrong used to
say, like “Bunsei Sato!”, or “You’re going out!”.
These were all chanted at one time, with a regular
beat. The conservatives of the house, arriving back
from Bible Study, looked wide-eyed and shocked, and
disappeared into their room.
You learned to appreciate
smoking a good cigar living in that house.
A couple of your friends in
that house started making little hot air balloons
with dry cleaner plastic bags, thin metal wire, and
birthday candles. On calm, cool fall and winter
nights, the balloons would float very high before
the candles would burn out. On New Year’s Eve, the
guys sent one up that wafted right over Colorado
Blvd. with a million people lined up and down in
preparation for the parade the next morning. Police
helicopters even flew around it to see what it was.
Years after leaving AC, you
began attending a “worldly” university, and were
thrilled to find out what getting a “real” education
is all about.
……And when looking back at all
the crap….you still have all the fond memories of
the good people you knew, and the good times you
had….
FP
5/15/06
Editor's note: More AC
memories are welcome. Please indicate which
campus (Pasadena, Big Sandy, Brickett Wood) that you
attended.