That wasn't the plan.
Until my senior year in high school, I didn't know there was a Brown University. Or what it was; stood for. Brown was a lousy, leftover color. Sharper, brighter, better colors made some kind of brown when they failed to illuminate. Brown happened when all other colors collapsed into a pit of gloom.
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Of course, you learn it's not that kind of Brown. It's the Brown family. Four Brown brothers founded the school. One was an enslaver. One was an abolitionist. I went to their university. Brown University granted me two degrees, with scholarship support (thank you, donors). Post-we're-aged-+70s, our estate established an endowed scholarship at Brown.
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On campus I met the Bruno the bear, the university's stuffed mascot.
Bruno towered in the student union, claws out! You, freshman, passed Bruno on your way to the [then, long ago] below-stairs mailboxes (too often lacking love notes) and [then, long ago] below-stairs vending machines (where I learned this projectile lesson: don't trust aging chicken-salad sandwiches; puking consumed a weekend).
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As a freshman at Brown, my first solid, reliable, trusted friend was a dorm monitor from Puerto Rico via New York City; like me, a would-be poet, haunted, reading the Beats, full of whatever was handy. Ramiro was a sophomore and die-stamped handsome.
He came out to me early, just to get that off the board. He didn't at all come ON to me. I appreciated his trust: flattering. I hoped, craved, aspired to be counted among the UN-judgmental; it was the Beat thing to do and my chosen religion. It took a leap of faith for Ramiro: being closeted was the norm in mid-1960's America. The NYC Stonewall Riots were still four years off.
Handsome, hip, NYC-him would sit with small-town me on the curb outside the brick-shoebox freshman dorm. I was a mess. It showed. My dad refused to drive me down, because we'd fought about something. Freshman week was when you moved in as a new student on the verge of the rest of your life. In the movie, your dad clapped you on the shoulder and said, "Do me proud, son." Then drove away.
Not this time. Dad and me seemed to hate each other.
What actually happened?
I guess it was my mom who drove away that special day, in fact. I don't recall who drove me to Brown that day.
I sure don't know what was on my dad's mind that day, that one day when he didn't drive me. Something was knocking around his skull. It wasn't all that much about me, safe to say: Dad's wife [mom] committed suicide 18 months later.
Damn! Preventable? You're not that good.
I think Ramiro felt instinctively sorry for me. He was compassionate and bigly personable. He knew stuff. I was depressed and shrunken. I knew nothing. As a Brown freshman, nothing got better for me; on the contrary. I went from being a little bit of something in sports and music and academics in my high school to being nothing worth noting at Brown. Suddenly everyone was much better in everything.
I'd gone in a matter of months from being a big-enough fish in a small-town pond to a small fish lost and drowning in an ocean of achievement.
So, yes, fish can drown. Some pray for belly-up