How I got lost and found in a college town. You may relate.
I was a high school sophomore visiting Athens, Georgia, for the first time. Athens is home to the University of Georgia, a few good bands, several loud bars, and too many homeless panhandlers. My best friend Joanna had invited me to tag along when she went to see her brother Ed, a UGA freshman. Ed had just taken us to a football game and was giving us a tour of North Campus when I spotted the monument that stands downtown near the intersection of Broad Street and College Avenue. Dodging traffic , I sprinted toward the thing and climbed to the top of the steps that surround its base. Arms thrown wide and head tossed back in true Titanic fashion, I took a deep breath and bellowed-I’m the queen of the world!!!
I’d been living in Athens for less than one month. Curled in a cubicle within the university’s audio-visual department, I was cramming in a mandatory viewing of some obscure Spanish film about a conquistador abandoned among South American natives . The Spaniards return on a “rescue” mission decades later, but the conquistador ultimately rejects his countrymen and remains on the island. The film ends with him screaming like a wounded animal, running naked down the coast.
As I was thinking about how powerfully the closing scene conveys despair, I realized that a student with a horror-struck look on his face was watching me in fascination. He kept pointing to the screen on my television and then pointing to the public TV displayed overhead. There, the two towers were collapsed and burning. Juxtaposed with the screaming conquistador, the whole scene seemed tragically appropriate and life-changing.
We all had very little in common other than an inability to get along with anyone else. The constant presence of either smoke-able substances or groove-able music often seemed like the only thing that enabled us to tolerate each other.
The only non-smoking member of the group, I relied on the music, and I developed a previously un-tapped passion for tribal drumming and jam-type sounds as a result. Beyond just helping me endure my surroundings, there was something genuinely spiritual about matching my body’s movement to the beating of the drums.
For the nights when I wanted to discuss something more intellectual than the smokers’ circle allowed, there was Philosophy Club. After we’d been in session for about a semester, we organized a public debate about the existence of God.
In the dank basement of a now-defunct coffee shop, I spoke in God’s favor and watched as pasty-faced smokers and coffee addicts seemed to wake up. Some even stayed late to tell me about their recent transformation. After that, life seemed to get in the way of all us club members, and discussing the essence of beauty, love, and art took a backseat to hastily completing assignments that I no longer remember and later threw away.
My grandmother, of all people, kept telling me that I needed to hear the Ralph Roddenbery Band. Apparently, her neighbor in LaGrange had a son who lived in Athens and was a member.
One sticky July day, I finally stumbled on Ralph and his friends playing the main stage at a free outdoor festival. I was pondering whether to stay and commit myself to my current relationship and career or to embrace the unknown. Ralph was rallying the crowd in a chant that literally pushed away the rain. After that, he rocked us all with his music, lyrics, and raw brand of insight and enthusiasm.
“Everybody is a little bit right and a little bit wrong,” he said. “Nobody else can be yourself.”
I left Athens two weeks later and went back to my hometown. Shortly after that, I met a man that I’d never seen before handing out Ralph Roddebery CDs. The two of us got married one year later.
Welcome to Authspot, the spot for creative writing.
Read some stories and poems, and be sure to subscribe to our feed!
