Category Archives: College

LBJ, they say, could meet somebody once and remember his name forever.  Not so with me;  I can be introduced to somebody and five minutes into a conversation not have the faintest idea what his name is.  I am lousy with the names of other people probably because I have insecurities about my own name.  First comes the Nick part.  Wait, actually, first comes the William part because my first name is William after my father.  So when I am making plane reservations or something like that and give my legal, credit card name they sometimes, with excessive familiarity, take to calling me Bill.

I don’t like being called Bill.

And for most of my life in the parts of the country where I have lived, “Nicks” have been very few to none.  Perhaps because the name was unfamiliar, I would introduce myself and people would say, “Dick, did you say?”  Or “Pleased to meet you, Rick.”  I thought maybe I was saying the name too softly because of what followed it, “Tingle.”  So I practically took to bellowing “Nick,” but I still got the Rick or Dick deal.

Then came the “Tingle” part.  I think about 2000 Tingles live in the USA.  We are not that common, true.  So I could understand having to repeat that.  But be damned if I can understand why people can’t spell it.  Is that T….I…, they would say, and so I took to saying my name is ‘NICK!!!         Tingle, rhymes with Jingle or Dingle; spelled “gle” and not “gel” which properly speaking is something a person puts on his hair.”

And there was that stinking commecial for dandruff shampoo.  You could tell it was working, the commercial went, because “the tingle tells you.”  So practically everytime I heard it, I would yell at the TV, “Well, this mother fucking tingle isn’t going to tell you a goddamn thing.”  Or words to that effect.

My best friend in college roomed with the only black guy in our class.  His name was Wilbert, and I called him Wilber for nearly a year and a half till he exploded and yelled directly into my face, “WilberT.  With a T.  Wilbert.”  I apologized and felt bad for a week.  I guess I just didn’t hear the “T.”  I had never heard the name Wilbert before.

Once Wilbert and I rode back to San Diego on the same Greyhound Bus.  As I was saying goodbye to him, our fathers came up.  His father was a bit shorter than mine; mine was white and his was black.  But they were dressed exactly the same way.  In khaiki shirts and pants and with steel tipped work shoes.  This was a common working class uniform at that time, a left over, I expect, from soldering in WWII; Sears sold the pants and shirts real cheap.  The uniforms made them look like twins.

One Saturday morning during the summer I was working that punch press, I heard “Purple Haze” on the radio and thought, wow, what the fuck was that, and did something I had never done before or since.  As soon as the song was over, I got in my trusty old Plymouth and went out and bought the Jimi Hendrix Experience (“Have you ever been experienced, not necessarily stoned but beautiful”) immediately.  The problem was though, I didn’t have stereo, but 3 or 4 groups of guys from my college were summering in that apartment building, so I went down stairs and knocked on one door, and asked if I could use their stereo so that I could hear all of this album.

So we sat around and listened to it once with guys coming and going; then we all got stoned and sat down and listened to it again.  I wanted to listen again, but I didn’t know these guys all that well.  So I thanked them and said, since I didn’t have  a stereo, they could keep the album if I could come down and listen to it once in a while. They said sure.

A couple weeks later I hear this knock at the door and one of the guys from the apartment downstairs was standing there, looking disheveled and wide eyed, and he said something like, look man I know you don’t have much money, and we only go through this life once, you know man, and well, here I would like you to have this, you know, it’s all one and what goes around comes around, like Karma, you know.  And I said something like while I was a bit short, I was doing OK, but he wouldn’t hear of it and handed me this big wad of money, and then he gave me a big fucking hug, like at a time when people didn’t go around hugging all the time.

This guy was on LSD, so I didn’t see any point in arguing with him, but thanked him and he went on his way.  I checked the roll; $500 mostly in 20’s.  I stashed the roll because I was pretty sure once he came down and started thinking about it he would want the money back.

 I never took LSD.  I was tempted.  Guys would come around saying they had like seen God; they had broken through to the other side and kicked open the doors of perception.  But other guys would come around and say they had seen snakes with teeth coming out of their friend’s asshole.  I just didn’t want to chance it.  I knew that my connection to what people called “reality” was pretty screwed up.  My consciousness was naturally altered and I really didn’t need any additional chemical imbalances.

The guy held out, to his credit, for almost two weeks.  I mean it must have been a bit humiliating to give a guy $500 out of the goodness of your heart and then come to ask for it back.  But he did looking pretty chagrined and wondered did I have any of that money left.  Sure I said and went back to the bedroom, took a 20 off the roll, and gave him the rest of it.  Thanks man, he said and started to make excuses.  It’s all there, I said because I could tell he was dying to count it, but, hey, I did use 20.  I’ll get it back to you if you want.

Oh, hell, no man, he said relieved to be able to keep up a pretense to generosity, you keep it.  My pleasure.

God, but I am one tactful guy!