I'm Twenty-two For a Moment...

I know, I know....we haven't spoken since before the annual Holy Thursday/Last Supper dive bar extravaganza....and as is the case every year, my favorites turned out at Nancy Whiskey...and some extra special surprises greeted me...and that always makes the night all the more celebratory. The electrician's union and Internal Affairs Division chatted us up and told us we were beautiful...and we received a few marriage proposals before the night was over, of course...so it was a good time all around. And on top of that, thanks to RJP, we have added an addendum to the tradition -- closing the night at 

RD Benders...a NJ dive that may actually rival Nancy in its divey-ness...So, all of you who have lamented missing out this year, you can put this date on your calendar now: Thursday, April 1, 2010....I am talking to you Bridget Breen....

So, this weekend I did something I have not done in 17 years...secretly...in an upstairs dorm room on the campus of the great Stonehill College, my beloved alma mater. And even though I was a little out of practice, the technique comes back pretty quickly....and, in fact, I even enjoyed it once the initial nervous guilt dissipated. Oh, wait...wait...no...not that.... Come on, boys, I wouldn't go that route two weeks in a row...especially when my writing must have been so shrouded in mystery last week that TL and Big both thought I actually did buy a cookbook from the d***o saleswoman...no, I can't go another week speaking in code...And anyway, this was much better than that....

I hit the campus for Spring Weekend and I drank a Busch Light in Quincy House...

Can't be beat....

Ok, let me rewind a tad and explain how I found myself literally in the exact same spot I was on

this very date in 1992...and on what was arguably the biggest party weekend of the entire school year at Stonehill. How lucky was I? You know...I would bet that each one of us has thought about this over the years since college graduation, right? No matter what college or university we attended, we have all wondered what it might be like to once again be able to, without a care, crack open a beer with your roommates and best friends on a warm sunny weekend, playing hacky sack in the courtyard, music blasting out the windows. And I had no idea that I would have even a small chance of reliving it....in fact, it was all sort of a random course of events that put it into place....

A few weeks ago my friend and fellow Stonehill alum, guitarist and kickass DJ, Red Matt, had posted an invitation to his gig this past Friday, which was taking place at this little neighborhood spot, The Village Manor (kind of divey, though not compared to my fave, Nancy, of course...), up 

in Dedham, MA. And I was thinking, you know, Matt has always been so nice about reading and commenting on my blogs, and I just couldn't resist the chance to go and see him in action...and play the groupie/fan/supportive college buddy...So I rounded up Rob as my travel companion, Megan and Mike as our sitters (and on opening weekend at Winged Foot, no less...) and made plans to meet Jeanne and Bob at The Village Manor. And then, I realized that TL and his wife, JL, live in Dedham with their two kids...and once TL and I hatched a pre-gig cocktails on his living room couch plan, that sealed it...I was heading north for a 24 hour road trip.

So on the way up, we were making great time on 95 in the little blue Jag...barely even arguing over my CD selection (and yes, I did force him to listen to a little 

Backstreet Boys....)...and my mission was to get to that Stonehill Bookstore before it closed so that I could bring my babies back some branded merchandise as a little road trip souvenir. I am a complete dork in that sense, by the way...I have been dressing them in Stonehill-wear since they were little babies...and if you ask any one of my kids where they are going to college they don't even hesitate...in fact, they are almost like "duh...Stonehill, of course..." And you know, this kind of bugs their dad who already has Ellie on a plane to Pepperdine School of Law, Tim running the Ivy Club's Spring Bicker at Princeton and Will the pledge master of the DKE chapter at Vanderbilt...Ok, maybe someday I will wrap my head around that possibility...but for now, it's Stonehill all the way. So at any rate, I am driving down Route 138, passing my Freshman/Sophomore dorm, The Sem...Rob rolling his eyes as I recount with delight the stories of the Woods and Dorm Feud and the Sem Brunch...and as we make the right into the campus entrance and head towards the 

bookstore, I cannot help but notice the activity on this gorgeous day...girls in running clothes by the old caf...kids practicing lacrosse and football and wrestling (yes, dead serious...) on the quad outside Duffy...the picnic tables outside Otis overflowing with cute young boys (hopefully none harboring of those nasty crabs that seemed to always plague Otis House guys...)...and the lawn in front of Boland covered with sunbathers...I turned to Rob and said: "the guys certainly didn't look this good when I was here..."

So we park behind Boland and hop out...noticing a gaggle of students standing outside Quincy House, blasting their music and tossing a football and chatting and having fun. And as I stood there waiting for Rob and checking email on my handheld before heading down the steps of the bookstore, this is what I hear:

"Hey, Suzanne! Suzanne!"

And though I know that I am 17 years out from graduation day...and though I am actually kind of a little bit old enough to mother some of these kids...I couldn't help but believe the fantasy -- damn, everyone still knows me here! And as I focus on the figure who is waving at me in her collegiate one-length hair, Ray-Ban Aviators and Lilly Pulitzer mini skirt...I see that it is my girl Kaitlyn...one of the students we met in March...the girl from Garden City who sat next to me at Jersey Boys and chatted it up at dinner with Tappers...the one who was born one week after my 18th birthday...Kaitlyn Rose, my girl. We ran to one another and hugged and squealed as though we were separated at birth. And we giggled and chatted and caught up...and Kaitlyn's roommate, Kathleen of Fairfield, CT, came over and I introduced them both to Rob...and they tell us that it is, in fact, Spring Weekend...the legendary social hallmark of a Stonehill education...lots of events and outdoor drinking and usually a big concert...Back in the '90's we had Meatloaf and Ziggy Marley and thermoses filled 

with pineapple rum concoctions and Woods parties and poison ivy....This year at Stonehill they were having restricted parties and canceled condom giveaways (what? sex at a Catholic college? God forbid!) and dry townhouses and no open containers and gangster rap group/Oscar winners, Three 6 Mafia, whose lyrics include "put my **** in your m***h" and "whack that b*tch"...catchy, right? The girls told us there was a

rumor the band would walk off if the audience wasn't "diverse" enough....these guys knew they were playing Stonehill, right?????????????? Anyway...as we wrapped up our chit chat and started to head down the bookstore stairs, Kaitlyn says: "Come back to Quincy afterwards and have a drink with us..." Like music (not Three 6 Mafia music though...) to my ears.

So I rush Rob through the shopping process...slim pickins by the way, the kids each got a Stonehill blanket due to the derth in T-shirt choices...and I only spent $115...such a committed alumnus...And so, we head back up so we can take Kaitlyn up on her gracious beverage offer...and I walk smack-dab into fellow '92 grad and legendary rockthrower, Dennis C....and we are both totally dumbfounded, in some 1992 Twilight Zone or time warp...And we are all befuddled as we say hello and ask one another what we are doing there...and Denn-O turns and to his companion, who, it turns out, was Paul S....another '92 grad. Neither of them had been on campus in years and just randomly decided to do a drop-by...and here we all were, at once...and on Spring Weekend, no less. I wondered if they considered sticking around, getting piss drunk and beating the living daylights out of some smaller, weaker opponent as was their Spring Weekend tradition back in the day...or maybe one of their buddies would return and defecate publicly in Commonwealth Court...hope so! This was some kind of g**damn bizarro world anyway, so why not...

So we meet back up with Kaitlyn (after a quick hello with my little Stonehill boyfriend, Justin, newly shaven head, on his way to some music class....) and we enter the front door of Quincy House...and the memories just flooded back. Bryan, Brian, Red Matt and Preston lived over in Quincy/Phipps...and we Orleans girls drank and partied to varying degrees in their rooms every single weekend, singing loudly along with Carly Simon and "Anticipation" (And stay right here, cause these are the good old days...)...Quincy/Phipps was home to the hallucinogenic beer tap and many, MANY sick nights. I think Heidi and I each got ourselves punched in the eye one Spring Weekend when we tried to get between Bryan and Red Matt who were seriously duking it out over the CD selection...but I know for certain that they hosted a "Come As You Are" party Saturday morning, Spring Weekend 1992...8 a.m., drinking rotted out keg beer in our pajamas and bedhead.

And as Kaitlyn and Kathleen walked us upstairs, I took notice of how much had not changed...the mangey rug, for one, which I am quite certain has not been replaced since TL was a student...and that stale beer stench mixed with sweaty collegiate boy smell...and there were girls running around the halls wrapped in towels, not a care in the world...and the pictures in collages on the walls -- they could have had our faces on them because the poses were the same...the moments unchanged all these years later. I was wondering if maybe Bryan and Brian's hallucinogenic tap was stuck in a closet somewhere...now that is a relic I would love to retrieve...

And so we popped open a frosty can of Busch Light together around some table at which they played some beer dice game...and I regaled them with stories of Stonehill Days-Gone-By...like the time Ziggy Marley and his ratty dreadlocks played Spring Weekend and one of the Otis House girls (questionable morals over there...) hopped onto his tour bus and proudly serviced him over at the Holiday Inn in Brockton (such an elegant young lady...)...and then, thinly veiled, said girl reported the experience on WSHL that following week, thanks to Jeanne and Michelle who hosted a reggae show on Tuesday mornings...And Kaitlyn and Kathleen and their posse hooked me up with some campus gossip and inside scoop on the girl with whom they are friendly who had just been "transported" from the caf for being falling-down drunk and how she missed her final report presentation in some Marketing class and how screwed she was...for many reasons apparently. And all the while I am savoring my delicious Busch Light...And their friends came in and out, and Rob and I pretended to one girl that we were the parents of the other and she was all impressed that we were so young, but not at all fazed that we were drinking cheap beer with our "daughter"...

And it just totally took me back...and even though I am always incredibly envious of 21 year old, fresh-faced college girls, I was even more so of these girls...this whole group who just replaced

the generations of us prior...those of us who all feel like we have a claim on our old campuses and Spring Weekends and the Bookstores and Quincy Houses...I wanted to tell them to cherish every second (these are the good old days...)...but somehow I think they knew how lucky they were because I was sitting there with them...a ghost of Stonehill past...here getting my kids branded souvenirs...up to see an old Stonehill buddy perform an acoustic set...having pre-gig cocktails with the TLs...and maybe someday kind of soon I might be dropping Ellie or Tim or Will off at Quincy House (probably Ellie...hey, that damn rug better be changed by then...TL, get on that, by the way...). But there I was...with all of that history and water under the bridge...and dammit, I still couldn't deny the allure of swilling a cheap crap Busch Light in a dark rickety townhouse. Heaven on earth...You know...and someday Kaitlyn and Kathleen and the Quincy '09 gang might just be me...and I don't think that frightened them to the core...which is good, no?

So the rest of the 24 hour road trip went by in a whirlwind...best of all of course was visiting the TLs in their beautiful home...yummy champagne, festive Dark & Stormies and a big tray of sushi (yeah, I know...I expected them to serve us Froot Loops and Gatorade too....). And of course JL and I played "who do you know" and later they entertained me with delicious tales of their wedding at The Popponesset Inn back in '94...(thanks for the ammo, by the way...), as their industrious young son played mixologist...I am all for training the kids early a la Joan Crawford. And we laughed and socialized further and further into the evening...topping off a few too many times...so of course we ended up as late arrivals at Red Matt's show at The Village Manor....better late than never, right? So we caught up with Jeanne and Bob and a whole 90's-era Sem contingent -- Rachel (Mrs. Red Matt) and Amy and Theresa and MaryKate -- 

while Matt got his Gordon Lightfoot on (if you could read my mind, love, what a tale my thoughts would tell...). And we had a great time catching up and sharing toasts and pictures and giggles about the old days...but it was my story of the Bookstore and Spring Weekend and Denn-O and the Busch Light at Quincy House that brought out those most longing looks and unabashed envy. So the gang peppered me with questions and we recounted those Spring Weekend memories...And of course, no surprise here, each one of us agreed that we would give just about anything -- within reason, of course -- to transport back to those days...hang on the lawn in front of Quincy and fill a thermos with hangover-inducing pineapple rum and have a crack at that hallucinogenic tap and a "Come As You Are" party and a kiss-and-tell WSHL interview with a trampy Otis House chick...even if it meant we had to listen to Three 6 Mafia....

Well...maybe that's going a little far....

xo, Suz

Photos 1 and 2:  In various celebratory stages with my disciples, big sis, Cath, and RJP, at The Last Supper...

Photo 3:  Upstairs at Quincy....a little Busch Light, collages on the walls...feels like '92 all over again...Rob doing his part to fit in with the collegiate baseball cap...

Photo 4:  Spring Weekend 1992...starting the party in a She-She/J9 sandwich...

Photo 5:  Red Matt and me in '07, fifteen years out and still longing for that hallucinogenic tap and Quincy House shenanigans...

Photo 6:  My jealous and possessive 5 and a half year old, Will, buttering up his best gal with his "Stonehill" branded wardrobe...

Photo 7:  I told you the Stonehill boys keep getting hotter...and I am guessing none of those guys have a case of the Otis crabs...

Photo 8:  Kaitlyn (right) and friend showering us with welcomes and greetings this Spring Weekend...

Photo 9:  Spring Weekend 1992, Commonwealth Court...endless debauchery..

Photo 10:  The lovely gentlemen of Three 6 Mafia...Ok, free condoms banned at Stonehill, but live gangster rap?  Not an issue whatsoever!
Photo 11: Some Orleans girls with the Quincy boys, Bryan, Brian, Preston and Red Matt...Michelle and I perched in the center, sitting on top of the keg...

Photo 12:  Spring Weekend 1992 with the Nantucket House guys....rugs, paint, furniture, probably even the sheets...all still there today...

Photo 13:  A very happy Ziggy Marley...after a return visit to Otis House, no doubt...

Photo 14:  Kathleen and Kaitlyn, our Quincy hostesses...these are the good old days...

Photo 15:  Round upon round of Dark 'N Stormies...TL threw those three back in one sitting...

Photo 16:  Gordon Lightfoot, the Red Matt of the '70's...