GPGC 50th Anniversary reunion post (TL;DR)
99.8% of you don't know that when I was a kid in Louisiana, I was a participant in a very special program.
(The pedantic among you will remember that a few weeks ago I renounced the entire state of Louisiana, specifically mostly because of its current governor - that is suspended on significant probation).
This is LONG, and I very much doubt that most of you will read it in its entirety, but that's OK, because it is here for me. But having said that, do read the first section about the Program itself.
The Governor's Program for Gifted Children was a specific vision of one man. Dr. George Middleton, known as Uncle Middy to us Gifties, was a clinical psychiatrist who specialized in treating above average intelligence young people, specifically children and early teenagers, usually ones whose intelligence was at odds with their emotional and social growth and skills. Over the course of several years in the 1950s, he started thinking about and beginning to plan a program specifically designed to care for and nurture these children and to help guide them to adulthood through the rocky years of adolescence. He saw very early on that the public schools of the time were specifically designed to educate the average child, and not to help anyone on the extremes. Of course he himself was of very high intelligence, and he had had a very rocky time growing up as a highly intelligent youngster, but of course we never heard about any of that, even in to adulthood. As time went on, Dr. Middleton began to develop a specific plan and program that would be designed to nurture the whole child, beginning at age 11-12 and going through age 16. The basic outline of the program as put in place then is still in place today.
College faculty and other talented educators would spend 6-7 weeks teaching these children a select range of subjects from three disciplines - science, humanities, and the arts. In the morning were humanities and science classes (with composition to be added later), and these classes were set by the age of the child. Then in the afternoon, there were to be classes in drawing, painting, symphonic music, chorus, set design, drama, PE, and musical theatre, with computer science to be added later. Over the course of 50 years the schedule and plan has remained remarkably consistent. The goal, as reiterated repeatedly to many who had been through the program, was to protect these young people from the tyranny of the average. These were kids who specifically had problems fitting in in their regular schools, kids who had social problems and misfit issues and problems with bullies and being teased, but who generally tested off the charts in terms of intelligence.
The Program, as designed by Dr. Middleton and as it continues today, however, is much more than just a set of classes that smart kids go to. He set it on a college campus, then MacNeese State College, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The students would live in dormitories - boys and girls both, starting in the summer between their 6th and 7th grade years, college style with roommates and counselors and not a whole lot else. The counselors were college students, at first hired from outside but of course later they were almost entirely alumna/graduates of the Program themselves. Over the years, the weekend programs evolved to include things such as dances, Bilbo Baggins birthday party, skating nights, and the like.
A student (a 'giftie') can go through the program for 5 years, with a graduation ceremony at the senior year. For most of the history of the Program, the years were called Freshman, Sophomore, Senior, Grad I, and Grad II. Sometimes it was Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior, Grad, which is the model I finished with.
Dr. Middleton had the extraordinary foresight to involve the state government, and the Governor at the time signed off on the program and its name was changed to the current name. Today, the Program is partially funded as a line item on the State of Louisiana's budget.
1984-1988.5. In 1984, probably in the spring, my mom took me to a hotel in Baton Rouge where I met this very kind older man. He told me he was going to test me and see how smart I was. Obviously he and my mom had discussed me at some length, as well, because along with being smart, he decided I fit the criteria of being socially clueless and emotionally different. I can still see the hotel room in my mind, even though I recall nothing about the actual test itself.
So off I went to the Program, where I still felt like a misfit but everyone worked very hard to include me, even though I didn't understand that until now. I went to dances (and was literally carried at one point, and ordered to have a good time, so I did), I went to pizza night and skate night and went swimming with my roommate and went to art and drama and orchestra classes and learned about how to calculate the displacement of a river barge and how to read a book and how to write better and and and...
I made many friends, which I did know, and was influential to many people, a fact I did not really realize until this weekend.
I got stupid about boys (a common problem, I understand) at around 15, and even though I went to the beginning of my Grad year, I went home every weekend to see the boy I was stupid about, and about halfway through, dropped out and did not go back. I never looked back, and left Louisiana 2 years later, and again, never looked back. Until...
About two years ago I wondered if the GPGC had a website. I think I had wondered that a few years earlier, and it had had one, but it wasn't really actually anything. However, I tried again a few years later, and apparently I hadn't been the only one, because there was now the GPGC Alumni home page. And it said 'Alumni click here', so I did, and joined the email list where we have discussions and arguments about a wide range of topics and a little bit of reunion and contact information and about 8 months or maybe even a year ago started hearing about the reunion plans that were being drawn up for this summer. I started getting nostalgic and planned to go. I bought plane tickets and did bobble-headed (as Nate would say) things with hotel reservations, and on Thursday last week I left the guys to their own devices and headed southwest.
The best way to get to Lake Charles is to fly to Houston and then take a puddle-jumper to Lake Charles. This is all well and good, except that... well, you might have heard about this little storm that east Texas was getting last Wednesday and Thursday - Hurricane Dolly. My plane to Houston was delayed, as had been the one before it. I got on standby for the one before mine, which left at my flight's original time. I got to Houston and the portents were looking grim. The Magic 8 ball decided that it was time for me to quit flying for the day, so the flights were canceled for everything along the I-10 corridor going east from Houston. First Beaumont, then Lake Charles, etc. They offered me one the next day, but I declined it. Then they offered me a flight to Baton Rouge, so I thought, "I'll steal my dad's car and drive to Lake Charles!'. So I booked to BTR, but there were several other people who wanted to get to Lake Charles, and they asked me if I wanted to ride with them.
These people were an older couple and two other businesswomen, so I sized them up and decided that the likelihood of getting driven off into the swamp south of Beaumont was minimal, and decided to go along. I was the only one in the car who didn't live in Lake Charles, and after they did the 'Oh, do you know so-and-so?'s, I was the only person who didn't know someone they had known for 30 years and/or were related to. 2.5 hours later, as I had learned a great deal more about rodeo and the aftermath of Hurricane Rita than I had known previously, we were in Lake Charles, about the time, I learned later, that the first airplane of the day made it to LCH.
This place is crazy - L'Auberge du Lac (which stands for The Hotel on the Lake, or possibly The Inn on the Lake), known locally as L'Auberge. Lake Charles is traditionally a wide spot between Houston and Baton Rouge, with a heavy emphasis on manufacturing and petroleum industry (from extraction to refining). It was hit very heavily by Hurricane Rita, the slightly weaker sister of Hurricane Katrina that hit 3 weeks later. On reflection, it was Rita that caused me to wonder about the status of the GPGC.
Anyway, L'Auberge is a casino/resort, 22+ stories high and sprawled over at least an acre+ footprint. It is impressive both in its industry and in its scope, as it has a pretty nice hotel, a Vegas-style casino (which is theoretically on a boat), a set of shops and restaurants and conference rooms, and one hell of a pool. LINK PICTURES LATER!!!
I arrived late on Thursday night, check in with no luggage (I didn't know where it was, and didn't much care, at that point), and went straight to the ballroom where the reunion was getting underway.
The first person I see who I actually recognize was my counselor (each year got assigned a counselor, who often followed that group up through the years as they gained experience). Sylvia Duhon recognized me, I recognized her, and we started talking like no time at all had passed.
Bilbo Baggins birthday party was an institution that happened both before and after my time at the program, but for assorted reasons didn't happen while I was there. As I wandered around exhausted and rather flighty, I was introduced to sibling after sibling of Sylvia's. It turns out that she is the youngest of 6 gifties from her family to go to the Program, and all 6 of the giftie sibs were in attendance at the reunion (there were 9 of them total, for whatever reasons 3 of them didn't ever attend). They one by one adopted me and talked to me and we had a terrific time. After a while I went up to my room, washed out my only set of clothes, and fell in to bed. at what might have been 1 AM.
After waking up at more or less my normal time Friday morning and spending a solid hour ironing my clothes dry enough to wear, I wandered downstairs to the conference room at the hotel. There was much networking and talking and 'Do I know you?' and 'Oh My GOD Hi!!! How are you!!!' going on. Lots of hugs, talking and storytelling ensue. Several people, obviously, had been in the same boat as me as far as getting to Lake Charles the night before, so one man asked me if I was one of the ones who didn't have luggage. I said I was, and he offered me a ride to the airport later, after the lunchtime flight from Houston had gotten in. I hadn't called the airline, because the bag was tagged for LCH and it held my phone charger (which is in my carry-on now, thank you very much), and of course the hold time for Continental baggage line was much longer than I wanted it to be. We drove to the airport and walked in, and there was the baggage claim area with both of our bags in it. We retrieved them and all was right in the world.
Back to L'Auberge, and a terrific conference keynote presentation about the Gifted Adult, and more networking/catching up in the afternoon. The presentation will be online eventually, and since I volunteered to help with that, I will let everyone know when it is up.
After a while, the closer-in gifties start to come in - the ones who live in Louisiana and east Texas and had worked that morning. I started seeing more people from my time frame, including several more counselors and one specific person.
One of the very first people who befriended me when I arrived at the Program was Ben Waggoner. We had hit it off somehow almost immediately, and although I don't remember any specifics, I am now realizing that he was every bit as much out of place in the real world as I was. Anyway, sometimes like knows like, and for whatever reasons we were always hanging out. So he walks in on Friday just around dinner time, and he hasn't changed in the slightest bit. People are scattering for dinner, so we just pretty much without even discussing it join right back up. It is really exactly like the intervening 20-25 years hadn't ever happened.
Oh, one thing that I didn't do for assorted reasons was rent a car, since I figured that there would be at least taxis, if not plenty of people to bum rides from back and forth between L'Auberge and McNeese (now McNeese University). So since he drove, he had his vehicle.
Off we went to dinner, and biographies, and general catching up, and then on to the musical.
The musical is a long-standing tradition, just like the stage production (which we had skipped that afternoon) and the orchestral and choral concerts. This year it was Once Upon a Mattress. There was plenty of decent performance, but there were plenty of bobbles in the kids' vocal ranges. I learned later that the old drama/musical teacher thought it was like "watching cardboard."
The musical (and the next day's choral/orchestral concerts) were in Bulber Auditorium, an institution on McNeese campus that was built in honour of (and named for) the father of one of my contemporary gifties. The auditorium looked and smelled exactly the same. It had apparently been closed for a while after Rita and only recently re-opened. There are things that are visceral - for example, I remembered without realizing it which side of the building the assorted bathrooms were, and went up the wrong set of stairs (they're on the balcony level, for whatever stupid reason). The balcony level went right through, of course, but still, it felt funny to be going up the wrong side. Isn't memory funny sometimes? After the musical, an alumni party.
Two of the people I had wanted to see most hadn't shown up yet, both for different reasons. They made it to the party which was held at a local alum's house. His cousin was another of my counselors. It was north of town, most of the way to the actual lake Charles, in a lovely, beautifully restored late 1890s house with wrap-around porch. Who knew Lake Chuck had such nice real estate? They had asked a favour of the local police, who posted a policeman outside to keep out the riff-raff (or to keep us contained, one or the other).
Person #1 was Jeff, who had been a year ahead of me at the Program. He has had a rough year, in which his partner died and he lost pretty much all of his livelihood, his possessions, and his residence. He had drifted back to New Orleans, working catch-as-catch-can as a medical secretary, and I was very glad to see him. He had tried to 'save' me for years when we were in the Program together, which astonished me once I figured out what he was talking about. It hadn't occurred to me that people still believed this one particular religious story out of the hundreds that had arisen over time. I mean, no-one still believed in the Greek Pantheon, did they? Then why the Christian one? They were more or less contemporary, and surely we lived in a scientific age where people KNEW better, right?... well, anyway. More on that another time.
Person #2 was Paul, also known as HPH, who, aside from Dr. Middleton, pretty much defined the Program as I knew it. He was a counselor (he was the one who blasted Wagner every morning in the boys' dorm), he was the debate teacher, he did other, esoteric things that we didn't understand but knew were important, and so on. He is now a well-written lawyer in Arizona, and a regular poster to our Alumni email list. I was glad to see him, and impressed that he remembered me.
In true giftie fashion, just like I didn't get a car, Ben didn't pre-reserve a hotel room. So I offered him half of mine (after clearing it with the spousal unit, of course). This turned out to be a good move except for the music, as I had the last room in the Super8 that night (didn't want to pay full price for Friday night at L'Auberge, and the Super8 is the second-best hotel in Lake Charles according to the locals). He had read the schedule for the weekend more thoroughly than I had, and as such, wanted to go to the graduation ceremony Saturday morning. He woke me up in what I had forgotten was a time-honoured method - blasting Wagner's Flight of the Valkeryes at a pretty healthy volume. I got vertical quick, and got a mental image of a flock of Hueys coming out of the sunrise toward the camera, a-la Apocolypse Now.
Breakfast etc. and out to campus, where we did catch the graduation ceremony and I did more catching up with my childhood. Another venerable family had long since adopted me, even though they didn't recognize me immediately - the Runnels family has many ties with mine, even though they are all much older than me. Chief among them was the school their father started when the oldest one of them taught himself to read at the age of 2. I went to that school for all of my elementary years, as did my brother. Additionally, that same father was in the same department at LSU as my father throughout our childhoods. Anyway, once I told them my name they knew who I was. They have several children among them who either are in or have been through the Program, including the graduating class's Magna Cum Laude valedictorian.
After that, we went on a tour of the campus, which had been washed in hot water until it shrank to a size more like that of an NYC city block. The dorms the boys had been in when we were there had been torn down and rebuilt as pretty nice-looking condo/apartments for students, but they looked wrong, so we didn't even go over there.
We wandered through the student union, where we had had so many dances and activities. This was also where the cafeteria was (and still is) - it was at the time so bad that we became convinced that they were re-serving food. To test this, Brad (who reminded me of this story) slipped a note in-between the cake and the frosting on one piece of cake, and found it the next day. I didn't know it at the time, but a formal complaint was filed, which eventually and at least partially led to the food service being contracted out.
Over to the hall where all of the morning classes had been (and still are) held - we found an unlocked door and went in. The only obvious differences were a bit of paint, mostly new desks, and at least one ceiling-mounted computer projector. There was now a computer lab, too.
When I was there, the Program had its own computer lab, pretty much new either my first year or the year before, filled with TRS-80 III machines. It was astonishing to me to realize, as I did over the course of this weekend, that I can trace my current career straight back to that computer lab where I started learning LISP and BASIC.
Then we walked over The Bridge to the girls' dorm. The Contraband Bayou runs right through campus, bisecting it unevenly such that only one row of dormitories were on the one side of the bayou and the rest of the campus was on the other. The entire time I was there, the girls lived in a dorm on that far side of the bayou, and to get there, you had to cross a cement bridge. The bridge looks exactly the same - they haven't even painted the railing. The bayou looks the same, with the same amount of kudzu in it. The dorm looks almost exactly the same, with the same exterior, almost the same lobby, and the same crappy piano in it. The rooms are almost identical too. More about them later.
Lunch, more networking and catching up, pizza, and a panel discussion about life in the Program. They started with the 1960s, which, astonishingly, had a rather large contingent of alumnae showing up. I had eaten with the mid-80s group - we had coagulated in to a blob of alumnae which kept breaking apart and reforming throughout the weekend, so the only other person from my year, the only woman from the year after us, and a woman from the year before us walked back over to the dorm. We did pause for pictures on The Bridge, and had plenty of commentary about how much the campus had shrunk, and how LONG it used to take to walk from our dorm over to the union (called The Ranch, as McNeese is the home of the Cowboys).
As an aside, I had a discussion with Candace, who was the only other one from my year to show up, about the Scared Mom version of child-raising vs the Free Range Parenting style. I should write that one up soon, because I need to get my arguments in a row better for the next time it comes up.
So we went in to the dorm, and back in to the rooms, as escorted by one of the counselors (the son of another former giftie). He told us that Rita had hit the campus pretty hard, especially that dorm (named Colette)
This is as far as I have gotten as of battery-shutdown on the airplane between Houston and RDU. I'll post this and take the rest of my outline and write it later.
(The pedantic among you will remember that a few weeks ago I renounced the entire state of Louisiana, specifically mostly because of its current governor - that is suspended on significant probation).
This is LONG, and I very much doubt that most of you will read it in its entirety, but that's OK, because it is here for me. But having said that, do read the first section about the Program itself.
The Governor's Program for Gifted Children was a specific vision of one man. Dr. George Middleton, known as Uncle Middy to us Gifties, was a clinical psychiatrist who specialized in treating above average intelligence young people, specifically children and early teenagers, usually ones whose intelligence was at odds with their emotional and social growth and skills. Over the course of several years in the 1950s, he started thinking about and beginning to plan a program specifically designed to care for and nurture these children and to help guide them to adulthood through the rocky years of adolescence. He saw very early on that the public schools of the time were specifically designed to educate the average child, and not to help anyone on the extremes. Of course he himself was of very high intelligence, and he had had a very rocky time growing up as a highly intelligent youngster, but of course we never heard about any of that, even in to adulthood. As time went on, Dr. Middleton began to develop a specific plan and program that would be designed to nurture the whole child, beginning at age 11-12 and going through age 16. The basic outline of the program as put in place then is still in place today.
College faculty and other talented educators would spend 6-7 weeks teaching these children a select range of subjects from three disciplines - science, humanities, and the arts. In the morning were humanities and science classes (with composition to be added later), and these classes were set by the age of the child. Then in the afternoon, there were to be classes in drawing, painting, symphonic music, chorus, set design, drama, PE, and musical theatre, with computer science to be added later. Over the course of 50 years the schedule and plan has remained remarkably consistent. The goal, as reiterated repeatedly to many who had been through the program, was to protect these young people from the tyranny of the average. These were kids who specifically had problems fitting in in their regular schools, kids who had social problems and misfit issues and problems with bullies and being teased, but who generally tested off the charts in terms of intelligence.
The Program, as designed by Dr. Middleton and as it continues today, however, is much more than just a set of classes that smart kids go to. He set it on a college campus, then MacNeese State College, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The students would live in dormitories - boys and girls both, starting in the summer between their 6th and 7th grade years, college style with roommates and counselors and not a whole lot else. The counselors were college students, at first hired from outside but of course later they were almost entirely alumna/graduates of the Program themselves. Over the years, the weekend programs evolved to include things such as dances, Bilbo Baggins birthday party, skating nights, and the like.
A student (a 'giftie') can go through the program for 5 years, with a graduation ceremony at the senior year. For most of the history of the Program, the years were called Freshman, Sophomore, Senior, Grad I, and Grad II. Sometimes it was Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior, Grad, which is the model I finished with.
Dr. Middleton had the extraordinary foresight to involve the state government, and the Governor at the time signed off on the program and its name was changed to the current name. Today, the Program is partially funded as a line item on the State of Louisiana's budget.
1984-1988.5. In 1984, probably in the spring, my mom took me to a hotel in Baton Rouge where I met this very kind older man. He told me he was going to test me and see how smart I was. Obviously he and my mom had discussed me at some length, as well, because along with being smart, he decided I fit the criteria of being socially clueless and emotionally different. I can still see the hotel room in my mind, even though I recall nothing about the actual test itself.
So off I went to the Program, where I still felt like a misfit but everyone worked very hard to include me, even though I didn't understand that until now. I went to dances (and was literally carried at one point, and ordered to have a good time, so I did), I went to pizza night and skate night and went swimming with my roommate and went to art and drama and orchestra classes and learned about how to calculate the displacement of a river barge and how to read a book and how to write better and and and...
I made many friends, which I did know, and was influential to many people, a fact I did not really realize until this weekend.
I got stupid about boys (a common problem, I understand) at around 15, and even though I went to the beginning of my Grad year, I went home every weekend to see the boy I was stupid about, and about halfway through, dropped out and did not go back. I never looked back, and left Louisiana 2 years later, and again, never looked back. Until...
About two years ago I wondered if the GPGC had a website. I think I had wondered that a few years earlier, and it had had one, but it wasn't really actually anything. However, I tried again a few years later, and apparently I hadn't been the only one, because there was now the GPGC Alumni home page. And it said 'Alumni click here', so I did, and joined the email list where we have discussions and arguments about a wide range of topics and a little bit of reunion and contact information and about 8 months or maybe even a year ago started hearing about the reunion plans that were being drawn up for this summer. I started getting nostalgic and planned to go. I bought plane tickets and did bobble-headed (as Nate would say) things with hotel reservations, and on Thursday last week I left the guys to their own devices and headed southwest.
The best way to get to Lake Charles is to fly to Houston and then take a puddle-jumper to Lake Charles. This is all well and good, except that... well, you might have heard about this little storm that east Texas was getting last Wednesday and Thursday - Hurricane Dolly. My plane to Houston was delayed, as had been the one before it. I got on standby for the one before mine, which left at my flight's original time. I got to Houston and the portents were looking grim. The Magic 8 ball decided that it was time for me to quit flying for the day, so the flights were canceled for everything along the I-10 corridor going east from Houston. First Beaumont, then Lake Charles, etc. They offered me one the next day, but I declined it. Then they offered me a flight to Baton Rouge, so I thought, "I'll steal my dad's car and drive to Lake Charles!'. So I booked to BTR, but there were several other people who wanted to get to Lake Charles, and they asked me if I wanted to ride with them.
These people were an older couple and two other businesswomen, so I sized them up and decided that the likelihood of getting driven off into the swamp south of Beaumont was minimal, and decided to go along. I was the only one in the car who didn't live in Lake Charles, and after they did the 'Oh, do you know so-and-so?'s, I was the only person who didn't know someone they had known for 30 years and/or were related to. 2.5 hours later, as I had learned a great deal more about rodeo and the aftermath of Hurricane Rita than I had known previously, we were in Lake Charles, about the time, I learned later, that the first airplane of the day made it to LCH.
This place is crazy - L'Auberge du Lac (which stands for The Hotel on the Lake, or possibly The Inn on the Lake), known locally as L'Auberge. Lake Charles is traditionally a wide spot between Houston and Baton Rouge, with a heavy emphasis on manufacturing and petroleum industry (from extraction to refining). It was hit very heavily by Hurricane Rita, the slightly weaker sister of Hurricane Katrina that hit 3 weeks later. On reflection, it was Rita that caused me to wonder about the status of the GPGC.
Anyway, L'Auberge is a casino/resort, 22+ stories high and sprawled over at least an acre+ footprint. It is impressive both in its industry and in its scope, as it has a pretty nice hotel, a Vegas-style casino (which is theoretically on a boat), a set of shops and restaurants and conference rooms, and one hell of a pool. LINK PICTURES LATER!!!
I arrived late on Thursday night, check in with no luggage (I didn't know where it was, and didn't much care, at that point), and went straight to the ballroom where the reunion was getting underway.
The first person I see who I actually recognize was my counselor (each year got assigned a counselor, who often followed that group up through the years as they gained experience). Sylvia Duhon recognized me, I recognized her, and we started talking like no time at all had passed.
Bilbo Baggins birthday party was an institution that happened both before and after my time at the program, but for assorted reasons didn't happen while I was there. As I wandered around exhausted and rather flighty, I was introduced to sibling after sibling of Sylvia's. It turns out that she is the youngest of 6 gifties from her family to go to the Program, and all 6 of the giftie sibs were in attendance at the reunion (there were 9 of them total, for whatever reasons 3 of them didn't ever attend). They one by one adopted me and talked to me and we had a terrific time. After a while I went up to my room, washed out my only set of clothes, and fell in to bed. at what might have been 1 AM.
After waking up at more or less my normal time Friday morning and spending a solid hour ironing my clothes dry enough to wear, I wandered downstairs to the conference room at the hotel. There was much networking and talking and 'Do I know you?' and 'Oh My GOD Hi!!! How are you!!!' going on. Lots of hugs, talking and storytelling ensue. Several people, obviously, had been in the same boat as me as far as getting to Lake Charles the night before, so one man asked me if I was one of the ones who didn't have luggage. I said I was, and he offered me a ride to the airport later, after the lunchtime flight from Houston had gotten in. I hadn't called the airline, because the bag was tagged for LCH and it held my phone charger (which is in my carry-on now, thank you very much), and of course the hold time for Continental baggage line was much longer than I wanted it to be. We drove to the airport and walked in, and there was the baggage claim area with both of our bags in it. We retrieved them and all was right in the world.
Back to L'Auberge, and a terrific conference keynote presentation about the Gifted Adult, and more networking/catching up in the afternoon. The presentation will be online eventually, and since I volunteered to help with that, I will let everyone know when it is up.
After a while, the closer-in gifties start to come in - the ones who live in Louisiana and east Texas and had worked that morning. I started seeing more people from my time frame, including several more counselors and one specific person.
One of the very first people who befriended me when I arrived at the Program was Ben Waggoner. We had hit it off somehow almost immediately, and although I don't remember any specifics, I am now realizing that he was every bit as much out of place in the real world as I was. Anyway, sometimes like knows like, and for whatever reasons we were always hanging out. So he walks in on Friday just around dinner time, and he hasn't changed in the slightest bit. People are scattering for dinner, so we just pretty much without even discussing it join right back up. It is really exactly like the intervening 20-25 years hadn't ever happened.
Oh, one thing that I didn't do for assorted reasons was rent a car, since I figured that there would be at least taxis, if not plenty of people to bum rides from back and forth between L'Auberge and McNeese (now McNeese University). So since he drove, he had his vehicle.
Off we went to dinner, and biographies, and general catching up, and then on to the musical.
The musical is a long-standing tradition, just like the stage production (which we had skipped that afternoon) and the orchestral and choral concerts. This year it was Once Upon a Mattress. There was plenty of decent performance, but there were plenty of bobbles in the kids' vocal ranges. I learned later that the old drama/musical teacher thought it was like "watching cardboard."
The musical (and the next day's choral/orchestral concerts) were in Bulber Auditorium, an institution on McNeese campus that was built in honour of (and named for) the father of one of my contemporary gifties. The auditorium looked and smelled exactly the same. It had apparently been closed for a while after Rita and only recently re-opened. There are things that are visceral - for example, I remembered without realizing it which side of the building the assorted bathrooms were, and went up the wrong set of stairs (they're on the balcony level, for whatever stupid reason). The balcony level went right through, of course, but still, it felt funny to be going up the wrong side. Isn't memory funny sometimes? After the musical, an alumni party.
Two of the people I had wanted to see most hadn't shown up yet, both for different reasons. They made it to the party which was held at a local alum's house. His cousin was another of my counselors. It was north of town, most of the way to the actual lake Charles, in a lovely, beautifully restored late 1890s house with wrap-around porch. Who knew Lake Chuck had such nice real estate? They had asked a favour of the local police, who posted a policeman outside to keep out the riff-raff (or to keep us contained, one or the other).
Person #1 was Jeff, who had been a year ahead of me at the Program. He has had a rough year, in which his partner died and he lost pretty much all of his livelihood, his possessions, and his residence. He had drifted back to New Orleans, working catch-as-catch-can as a medical secretary, and I was very glad to see him. He had tried to 'save' me for years when we were in the Program together, which astonished me once I figured out what he was talking about. It hadn't occurred to me that people still believed this one particular religious story out of the hundreds that had arisen over time. I mean, no-one still believed in the Greek Pantheon, did they? Then why the Christian one? They were more or less contemporary, and surely we lived in a scientific age where people KNEW better, right?... well, anyway. More on that another time.
Person #2 was Paul, also known as HPH, who, aside from Dr. Middleton, pretty much defined the Program as I knew it. He was a counselor (he was the one who blasted Wagner every morning in the boys' dorm), he was the debate teacher, he did other, esoteric things that we didn't understand but knew were important, and so on. He is now a well-written lawyer in Arizona, and a regular poster to our Alumni email list. I was glad to see him, and impressed that he remembered me.
In true giftie fashion, just like I didn't get a car, Ben didn't pre-reserve a hotel room. So I offered him half of mine (after clearing it with the spousal unit, of course). This turned out to be a good move except for the music, as I had the last room in the Super8 that night (didn't want to pay full price for Friday night at L'Auberge, and the Super8 is the second-best hotel in Lake Charles according to the locals). He had read the schedule for the weekend more thoroughly than I had, and as such, wanted to go to the graduation ceremony Saturday morning. He woke me up in what I had forgotten was a time-honoured method - blasting Wagner's Flight of the Valkeryes at a pretty healthy volume. I got vertical quick, and got a mental image of a flock of Hueys coming out of the sunrise toward the camera, a-la Apocolypse Now.
Breakfast etc. and out to campus, where we did catch the graduation ceremony and I did more catching up with my childhood. Another venerable family had long since adopted me, even though they didn't recognize me immediately - the Runnels family has many ties with mine, even though they are all much older than me. Chief among them was the school their father started when the oldest one of them taught himself to read at the age of 2. I went to that school for all of my elementary years, as did my brother. Additionally, that same father was in the same department at LSU as my father throughout our childhoods. Anyway, once I told them my name they knew who I was. They have several children among them who either are in or have been through the Program, including the graduating class's Magna Cum Laude valedictorian.
After that, we went on a tour of the campus, which had been washed in hot water until it shrank to a size more like that of an NYC city block. The dorms the boys had been in when we were there had been torn down and rebuilt as pretty nice-looking condo/apartments for students, but they looked wrong, so we didn't even go over there.
We wandered through the student union, where we had had so many dances and activities. This was also where the cafeteria was (and still is) - it was at the time so bad that we became convinced that they were re-serving food. To test this, Brad (who reminded me of this story) slipped a note in-between the cake and the frosting on one piece of cake, and found it the next day. I didn't know it at the time, but a formal complaint was filed, which eventually and at least partially led to the food service being contracted out.
Over to the hall where all of the morning classes had been (and still are) held - we found an unlocked door and went in. The only obvious differences were a bit of paint, mostly new desks, and at least one ceiling-mounted computer projector. There was now a computer lab, too.
When I was there, the Program had its own computer lab, pretty much new either my first year or the year before, filled with TRS-80 III machines. It was astonishing to me to realize, as I did over the course of this weekend, that I can trace my current career straight back to that computer lab where I started learning LISP and BASIC.
Then we walked over The Bridge to the girls' dorm. The Contraband Bayou runs right through campus, bisecting it unevenly such that only one row of dormitories were on the one side of the bayou and the rest of the campus was on the other. The entire time I was there, the girls lived in a dorm on that far side of the bayou, and to get there, you had to cross a cement bridge. The bridge looks exactly the same - they haven't even painted the railing. The bayou looks the same, with the same amount of kudzu in it. The dorm looks almost exactly the same, with the same exterior, almost the same lobby, and the same crappy piano in it. The rooms are almost identical too. More about them later.
Lunch, more networking and catching up, pizza, and a panel discussion about life in the Program. They started with the 1960s, which, astonishingly, had a rather large contingent of alumnae showing up. I had eaten with the mid-80s group - we had coagulated in to a blob of alumnae which kept breaking apart and reforming throughout the weekend, so the only other person from my year, the only woman from the year after us, and a woman from the year before us walked back over to the dorm. We did pause for pictures on The Bridge, and had plenty of commentary about how much the campus had shrunk, and how LONG it used to take to walk from our dorm over to the union (called The Ranch, as McNeese is the home of the Cowboys).
As an aside, I had a discussion with Candace, who was the only other one from my year to show up, about the Scared Mom version of child-raising vs the Free Range Parenting style. I should write that one up soon, because I need to get my arguments in a row better for the next time it comes up.
So we went in to the dorm, and back in to the rooms, as escorted by one of the counselors (the son of another former giftie). He told us that Rita had hit the campus pretty hard, especially that dorm (named Colette)
This is as far as I have gotten as of battery-shutdown on the airplane between Houston and RDU. I'll post this and take the rest of my outline and write it later.