BE IT EVER SO HUMBLE
 
 
     The dorms of the Valley Area engaged in a traditional
series of athletic confrontations every fall as the football
madness peaked around the State game.  The game in front of
103 kilopeople served to seed smaller-magnitude events
attracting at least the same number around the campus.
Fraternities were not left out either; the outstanding
contempt that marked the boundary between the hazed and
unhazed on campus provided enough reason for half-serious
rivalry that the summation of activity almost served to
eclipse the ACAA-sanctioned game in the crater-formed bowl of
the stadium.  C T found a sudden interest in the contest to
be held on this day.  Most certainly the attraction of
Porcupine football was at least a symbolic calling card of
the University.  He had received a half-price ticket book
entitling him to a prime freshman seat--in the end zone--to
cap it all off.  Today he strode out on his traversal from
Lodge Hall, on the march that students made to the academic
Diag area.  He crossed the pedestrian bridge and negotiated
the completely vacant roadway crossings that never carried
many cars at peak because of the snarled traffic that wasn't
far away.  Most people at the University walked.
 
     With the level of activity he had seen the night before
(or did he see it?  He'd had about one more beer than usual
due to the mania of the State game festivities.), the absence
of people gave him a temporary command of the campus.  Here
and there, the serious student on his way to some serious
portion of academic work walked in a measured stride in the
distance.  C T took a breath and watched it cloud out.  On
this November day, the players on the field in their uniforms
and pads might be warmer than anyone else, and that includes
the ones who thought a few quick shots of liquor might heat
them up.  He thought "I should be in that position over there
in three years.  I'll be right up there at the top, having to
study on Saturday." Such feelings of future glory somehow
delighted him, but they also gave him a new and sudden sense
that something wasn't right.
 
     Up until now, he hadn't called home, and it was only 100
kilometers away in Southville.  He hadn't a satisfactory
reason.  It wasn't open contempt, but somehow, he wasn't
really inspired to do it by any empathetic or humanistic
feelings of real or imagined "love," either.  His father
understood, he felt, when he called around midterm time.
"Don't worry about keeping in touch.  The University is a big
experience for you and you have to keep busy at it.  I love
you, C T."  There were no quotation marks around that "love."
 
     C T walked distinctly past the triangular bronze marker
that denoted the center of the Diag and the approximate
centroid of campus.  Supposedly, any freshman trampling it,
intentionally or not, would drop out the term before he
graduates.  It was a scare like that of carcinogenic
substances and radiation.  C T made sure he always kept the
marker in sight, even when hundreds of people milled over the
area between weekday classes.  The buildings stood in their
various majesties around the Diag, and as C T passed between
them he sensed something like a field effect, like being very
near very highly charged bodies, where he would expect his
hair to stand on end.  This was the structure of American
academia!  But it only worked part time, during the week, and
hardly on the morning before the State game.
 
     He would write a letter home, he decided, as the Diag
buildings tailed off and the bowl of the Stadium approached.
He would sit down at the electromechanical typewriter and
type what he felt.  He hardly felt this way before.  He knew
he should have.  He wouldn't have denied the need to.  All
throughout the start of his term at Lodge Hall, Tim Rankin,
his blindly assigned roommate from the more solidly
agricultural portion of the state would tell him, "C T why
don't you talk more to your parents?  They are your parents,
after all..." This occurred as the casual country man loosely
held some random book while reclining in his bunk.  Tim's
humbleness never struck too much of a convincing image, but C
T knew he was right.  He was put on the defensive at these
questions.
 
     "I'll write them as soon as I feel like it.  I will."
Now, finally, he felt like it, and a sense of justification
set in.  As he started a circuit around the sides of the
soon-to-be packed truncated oblate paraboloid of the Stadium,
he started to think of the topics of his letter.  Would he be
making amends?  Would there be a need for forgiveness?  It
was difficult to think of what they were thinking of when he
hadn't seen them in so long.  He finally decided that an
account of news about school would be in order.
 
     So it became that this Saturday, when all the groggy,
hung-over residents of dormitory corridors and half-comatose
fraternity brothers tried to stand on the floor without
missing, C T started trying to make himself anew with his
parents:
 
     "Dear Mom and Dad,
 
     "I've been busy with my schoolwork but I still have time
to write letters.  Well, here's my first one home.  It's been
pretty wild around here, you know.  As soon as midterms were
over, the State game madness started.  As I write now, the
game is three hours away.  My roommate is looking around for
his Porcupine Quill hat and his 'Back Off' sweatshirt.  I've
been up for awhile.  I walked around the campus a little.
Not much going on.
 
     "I got midterm grades--three solid 'A's,' an 'A-,' and
one 'B+.'  The 'B+' was in economics.  There are a lot of
'headhunters' in those business and med-school related
classes that try with all their might to destabilize class
morale and throw the curve off with their grades.  Well, that
won't be too bad.  Economics is just part of my core
requirement in engineering.
 
     "I'm thinking more that I want to come home for
Thanksgiving.  It's not like Christmas, where they close up
the dorm and you have to go home.  I know I originally wanted
to stay here and try to get a real edge on my work, but I
guess I told you how well my work is doing.  Is Tammy coming
home from State for Thanksgiving?  I know she misses home.
I'm starting to, too.  It's too bad her school's on the wrong
side of the football field today...ha ha!
 
     "Well, Tim found his clothes.  I think they're making a
poster down the hall to try to catch the attention of the TV
cameras.  I'm going to go and give them a hand.  I want you
to know that I'm never really ashamed of you, or anything.
 
                                      Love,
 
                                      C T"
 
     He found a business-size envelope in his dresser drawer.
He had everything a student could need and made frequent
trips to the bookstore to buy more equipment.  Some of it was
extravagant, but then look at his grades.  Tim walked up,
scratching his disheveled brown hair and rubbing his unshaven
lean face.  "That typewriter was mighty loud.  I still have a
bit of a fuzzy head.  What were you writing?"

     Oh, a letter to my parents."  C T wasn't ashamed.  He
had  written them, after all.
 
     "Well that's really good.  What made up your mind this
morning of all times?"
 
     C T wasn't sure of the answer to this himself.  He
seemed to have woken up with the ambition.  "I don't know.
Well, I've been meaning to.  Say, did you find me a good
price for my ticket yet?"
 
     "Do you mean, 'did I scalp it?'"  Tim was trying on his
Porcupine hat.  The quills were reminiscent of the hairstyles
of certain modern rock and roll performers.
 
     "I just wanted $15.00."
 
     "Well you paid half price..."
 
     "Yeah, I see what you mean.  Maybe I'll just go down the
hall to Marty's room.  He's running a clearinghouse.  He said
he'd give me ten."  C T fished the ticket from his top-
priority drawer.  He also picked up the letter.  He wondered
which was really more valuable.