Forty Years On

I went to a little of my forty year graduation anniversary at U.C. Berkeley. I did not go to The Game. I do not know who won. I listened to Robert Reich saying predictable things which I mildly agree with. I saw a lot of the neat gray heads on top of the neatly dressed bodies of other alumni, mostly in heterosexual pairs. I saw a lot of blazing IQs going by in the heads of the students. I looked in the class room where I took a creative writing course and saw the same students that I left there forty years ago. I wasn't a 'real' student at UCB. I was a young mother of many trying to get to medical school so I could socialize medicine single handedly. I would run down San Pablo Avenue to University, up University to Shattuck and then through Kittredge to get on the campus when the buseswere stopped by rioting. A Blue Meanie tried to mace me when I was nine months pregnant but never mind all that. I just wasn't really a part of the University. I wasn't even on their fund raising list until a few years ago, when computers finally caught up with the skinny old lady who presided over records in (was it?) Sproul Hall.

I never got to medical school. I was unable to single handedly socialize American medicine.

Oh well.