Alumni Magazine - Summer 2008 - (Page 57) cleaned an office building. I opened the junior high school gym for the Park and Recreation Department. Three part-time dead-end jobs. My father wanted me to go back to school. I drank beer instead. I had a girlfriend. Cynthia. We spent evenings drinking coffee, taking walks around Broadmoor Lake, parking in the Garden of the Gods. She told me her life goals, none of which seemed to include me. I felt an anxiety I didn’t understand, a longing for something I couldn’t define. So I did what countless other lost young men have done in this country. I headed west. Think of the changes the last 20 years have wrought. In 1985 there were no cell phones or even phone cards. A call home required a pocketful of quarters or a voice on the other end willing to accept a collect call. There were no ATM machines. Money had to be wired or taken as an advance on a credit card during normal banking hours. Computer use required an understanding of foreign languages today more outdated than Latin: FORTRAN, BASIC, and COBALT. … As for me, I’m no longer skinny, not so naive. My blood pressure’s high, and I recently broke my hand after slipping and falling on ice. I spend most of my time working and studying in an academic building called Andrews Hall, in an office with no windows. Beer is more a condiment than a meal. Exercise is a walk from my office to the library. Cynthia is a pleasant nostalgic memory. I schedule an appointment, walk across campus to the University Health Center. I’m breathing heavily by the time I get there. “The first thing,” says the nurse, jotting a number down on her chart as I’m standing on the scale, “we have to do something about the weight problem.” Weight problem. The number one piece of evidence I’m no longer the kid I was then. The first trip was not only twenty years but also 70 pounds ago. “Of course, I’m wearing shoes,” I say. “Whatever makes you feel better,” she says. Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Summer 2008 57
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