We slept late the day after graduation. Eight A.M.! Talk about lazy slugs! I awoke, and whispered a simple prayer which I will now quote in its entirety: “Thank You, God.” He knows the reasons I thank Him; He’s God. Even a human looking at my circumstances would know that I am blessed beyond what anyone would dare expect. Failure to thank Him would be the sin of being “unthankful”. Yes, it is a sin. In II Timothy 3:2 it’s listed among a host of unsavory things such as blasphemy, kidnapping, and lust.

I rolled out of bed, made a stop at the bathroom, and went down to the dining room to find my parents and Aunt Katy all looking very serious, sitting at a clean table with no breakfast in sight.

My mom spoke first. “Honey, would you go wake up Lisa? We have something to discuss with y’all.” I glanced at their faces and saw no sign of a smile or indication that this discussion would be about something pleasant.

As I headed back to the bedroom, I wondered what rule we possibly could have broken. It was a bad start for the first day after graduation. I completed the nearly impossible task of getting Lisa out of bed, and we headed down to learn about our infraction and how we would be punished. We were both drawing a blank about any reason for this meeting.

“Girls,” my dad began, “The situation with the cars has been cumbersome this year, and will only get worse next year.” He stopped and thought a minute, then stood up and said, “Tell you what, let’s go to the porch to talk.”

We didn’t know why the porch would be better, but I could see us riding bicycles to school. The five of us headed for the porch. There in the driveway sat our graduation presents. It was two brand new silver Mercedes GLC Coupes!

I cried. Lisa was speechless.

I hugged my dad and Lisa joined in for a three-way hug. My dad told Lisa, “I love getting hugs, but your mom is responsible for your car.

She turned and hugged her mom. “Mom! I knew your business was good, but this is too much!”

“No. It’s not too much for my baby, that is … my ‘headed for college’ baby!”

I was still holding on to my dad. “Daddy, I want to thank you, mom, and God!”

“That’s my girl! Always remember that, without Him, none of this would be possible!”

We were given keys and started out for a drive, or two drives since we had to each drive our own car. I almost cried when I got into my car and found that it had every option available; no blank covers where the option you didn’t get would have been. The smell! My olfactory system was having a party! My car was so fine I almost hated to drive it for fear a bug would get on it and ruin the paint. But, I forced myself to drive it. You know, it’s a tough job but someone has to do it. I thought of a prayer that I heard on reruns of an old show for children called “Captain Kangaroo”.

Thank you, God, for the world so sweet.
Thank you, God, for the food we eat.
Thank you, God, for the birds that sing.
Thank you, God, for everything.
Amen.

I held back tears as I drove and thought about that simple children’s prayer. My prayers were not “lip service”. I was truly thankful. Since the show was filmed in Texas and the prayer was said by one of the children, lines 3 and 4 usually came out:

Thank you, God, for the birds that sang.
Thank you, God for everythang.

To me, that made it even sweeter.

Then, I turned on the radio, and Joe Walsh was singing, “Life’s Been Good”. For those of you who lead a sheltered life, the song is about a rocker who has made it big, and it describes the excesses typical of many rockers. It also hints about a feeling of dissatisfaction. I wasn’t concerned about the messages; subtle and otherwise; I just enjoyed the music.

OK, I went from praying one minute to rock music the next. Hey! I’m versatile! I lived my childhood as a boy and now I’m a girl.

As for the Window, my Dad asked Aunt Katy to hold off on publicity until they were able to make it “modular”, so it could be shipped unassembled, and put together with relative ease at the customer’s site. Aunt Katy and my mom worked to make sure that the customer would not have to any soldering or difficult wiring, etc. Lisa and I helped when we could, even though this was not as much fun as actually building a window like we did the previous summer.

We had both been accepted to several schools, but after all the research and spreadsheet analysis, we chose Rice University because it was very close. We would share a dorm room, so we had the option to stay there or come home any time. Even though the trip was short, the traffic during the week was such that we would probably only come home on the weekend. Lisa was fine with that, and I agreed that it was a good plan, even though I would probably get homesick being away from home more than a couple of days. Can’t help it … I’m a homebody!

Then, we found that we had flexibility with our schedules. We could schedule 50-minute classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, or 75-minute classes on Tuesday and Thursday. Depending on class availability, we could have a full load being in class less than 12 hours a week. We would be allowed to sign up for up to 18 class hours a week, which was probably what we would do. Even with 18 hours, we were going to have a lot of free time. The college catalog said, “Two hours of study is expected for every class hour,” but we figured that number was greatly inflated, especially for brilliant students like Lisa and me. After learning about class hours, we realized that our dorm would probably see little use.

We got registered online. It was easy to get in almost classes together since we were taking a lot of basics and prerequisites. The first day of school was a bit of a shock, however. Far from the prim and proper environment of our private girls’ school, student … and a few of the teachers … were in varying forms of dress and undress. We hoped the education standards were much more stringent than the dress code. The uniforms in high school were simple; it was easy to choose an outfit, but it was nice to have a choice now. Lisa and I wore dresses mostly, and I was amazed at the college “men” who spent so much time girl watching. They hadn’t matured since 8th grade, apparently. I didn’t mind that much, as long as they adhered to the rule of “look, but don’t touch”.

On the first day of classes, however, I found one of my teachers totally unacceptable. Among other undesirable traits, his favorite word was “Goddamn”. How juvenile can he be? I was able to get a schedule change pretty easily because there are many choices when you’re taking prerequisites. After a couple of weeks, we settled into a routine. For P.E., I took out my excuse from the doctor from several months ago, and she accepted it! I just had to take some electives to make up the hours. Lisa was envious and tried to get my dad to write her an excuse since he is a doctor, but that was a non-starter. He doesn’t even have a prescription pad, and wouldn’t have done it anyway. He told me I should be ashamed to use an outdated paper like that. I told him that maybe I was a little ashamed, but I would get over it. I didn’t need P.E. I got enough exercise walking between classes on the huge Rice University campus.

So, Lisa got to be one of the runners along University Boulevard that the perverts ogle, while I sat in a course on astronomy one semester, and Psychology the next. Both classes were interesting, but I was surprised the amount of anatomy taught in the psychology class. I was sure I would have a lot more psychology during my schooling, maybe enough to understand Lisa one day.

One day we each took our own car because Lisa wanted to go to the library after classes. On the way home, I stopped to get a burger and went inside. That was rare for me; I usually preferred to take my food home. I wasn’t in a hurry, though, and I thought I’d take my time.

As I was eating, I felt someone watching me. I turned to look and … of all people … Bryan! (The bully from high school) He had looked away for a moment, and I quickly looked straight ahead, but I felt myself blushing. I could see out of the corner of my eye he was watching me again. Finally, he came over to my table.

Next: Tracy? Is that you?