FINDING A PERFECT PLACE

As I started unpacking my parents' van, I was filled with a certain amount of anxiety. Hey, who wouldn't? It was my first day at college. Stanford University, to be precise. I'm Brendan-Brendan Carruthers. It had been a long drive to California from Chicago, but now it was finally done. Here I was, at Stanford-the place I had wanted to be since I was a freshman in high school. Of course, for most of high school I wanted to be anywhere other than high school-but Stanford was the number one choice. I had gotten my key, and my room assignment, and headed up with the first batch of my stuff. I went to my room, and found the door open. "Hey, you Brendan? I'm Jake, Jake Atkinson." I shook his hand. Jake was a very large human being. My parents came up behind me, and Jake introduced himself to them. "You need some help?" he said. "Sure. Thanks," I said. "You're all moved in?" "I've been moved in for some time," he laughed. "Football players had to be here a month ago." Oh, s**t, a football player. If there's anything I hate more... Jake was cool, though, helping me and my parents get all my stuff in. I went downstairs and kissed my parents goodbye. They were crying. Hey, I was their only child, and here I was, going to be 2000 miles away. I didn't cry, but I was going to miss them. They were great parents. I went back up to my room, and Jake was there, reading what I assumed to be a playbook, listening to music. "Hey. Your parents get off all right?" "Yeah." "Where are you from? I forgot to ask that." "Just outside of Chicago." "s**t, we're almost neighbors," he grinned. "I'm from Milwaukee." "Milwaukee. Since you play football, you must be a Packers fan." He grinned and pointed at his desk. I hadn't noticed it before-an autographed picture of Brett Favre, the Packers' great quarterback. "Are you a football fan? I take it you don't play, not with that body." It wasn't said nastily, which surprised me. I was tall, but skinny. "No I don't, but, yes, I'm a fan. Da Bearrsss, of course." "Of course. However, I'm not anticipating any autographed pictures of any Bears quarterbacks being your prized possession!" "Not hardly. If I did have any, it'd be a linebacker like Urlacher. The Bears don't do quarterbacks. So, what do you do? Football-wise, I mean." "I'm a linebacker," he grinned. "I was all-state in Wisconsin last year. U of W recruited me, as did a few other Big Ten schools, but I'm sick of snow." "Don't I know that. I got offered a full ride by both Northwestern and U of Chicago. I decided California sounded better." "Full ride?" he asked. "Academic?" I nodded. "Oh, goody, I get a brain as a roomie. Us dumb football players need all the help we can get," he laughed. "Most of the dumb football players I knew in high school needed a lot more than that," I said. "I have no doubt," he laughed. "Hey, I hold my own. I don't care how good you are at football, you don't get into Stanford unless you can hold your own. But I wasn't going to get any full rides academically from U of Chicago, I can guarantee you that." "Most football players I knew in high school couldn't get a full ride to Kindercare." He cracked up laughing at that. "You're not fond of football players, are you?" I just looked at him. "Hey, I had assholes on my high school team, too. I know what some of the smart kids went through." "Yeah, pretty much." He looked at me. "How well do you know football?" "Well. That's your playbook, right?" He nodded. "I could understand it without much of a problem. I just don't have the physique to play." "Well, if you can understand this, you're a better man than I," he grinned. "There's about a gazillion different defensive formations in this system." "Of course. It's Stanford, right? The playbook was probably designed by some computer science major with too much time on his hands." He cracked up laughing. "So, are you a computer science major?" he grinned. "Yup," I laughed. "You?" "Undeclared. I'll probably go for history. If the football thing doesn't work out, I'd like to be a teacher s***h high school coach." We sat there, chatting for a while, very relaxed. I liked Jake immediately. He was cool, and didn't seem full of himself. Very unlike football players I knew. Hey, he got it right. I got picked on. I was a geek, and I knew it. I was valedictorian of my class. I was tall, geeky, skinny, and wore glasses up until senior year, when I finally got contacts... And the football players led the torment. Was college going to be different, or was Jake just an exception? A very welcome one, considering we were rooming together, mind you. That was something to find out. We were three weeks into college. The first week was orientation. Boring, for the most part, as I had suspected. All kinds of blathering about 'diversity' and all that stuff. My high school talked about 'diversity' too. It meant, "All colors and races are treated with respect-but we all kick the s**t out of the geek." Then there was the 's****l harassment' seminar. Back in high school, the girls considered it 's****l harassment' if I said hello. Classes, however, had started well, surprisingly enough. I was taking a variety. Stanford required general-type courses, like a humanities course and a writing course. Despite being a computer geek, I had always done well in that sort of thing-especially writing. I worked hard at that. Hey, I wanted to go into computer research. I wanted to help develop the next generation of computer applications. Being able to write up research findings was a plus. So, I did well in the writing courses. I was also taking calculus-and math is one of my strengths. What surprised me were my classmates. I didn't get scorned. I wrote a paper for the writing course that led to a lively discussion in class-and the feedback I got from my classmates was great. No scorn, no derision, just opinions founded on respect. It was pretty awesome. What happened the first Monday of the third week of classes was pretty neat, too. It was in Calculus. We were doing some problems, and I was doing fine with them. I heard a sigh to my right, and turned. It was a blonde girl I had seen in the class. Didn't know her, but I had noticed her a bit. She was obviously having difficulty with the material. After class, she stopped me. "Hey. You're good at this, aren't you?" "Yeah, it's my strength." "I thought so. Listen, I know this is presumptuous of me, but I need help. I'm a pre-med who has to take this stuff, but Calculus throws me. And I know you are getting it, and I don't know who else to ask." "I'd be glad to." I stuck out my hand. "Brendan Carruthers." "Sheila Mitchell," she smiled, shaking my hand. "Oh, Brendan, thank you. I'll be eternally grateful." "No problem. When do you want to do it?" "Are you free tonight?" "Sure." I gave her my dorm and room number, and we made plans for her to come up about seven. Jake had some football thing going on, so I was alone when she showed up. "Brendan, I can't thank you enough. I'm doing fine in my other classes, but this is really losing me." "I'm glad to do it." And I was. I didn't mind helping people at all with classwork. I found it flattering. We pulled up a chair, and I talked her through some of the stuff we had been doing. As she worked on it, I took a look at her. She was wearing a tee shirt and shorts. Her legs were long, muscular, and very tanned. Her arms looked like they had prominent muscles, too. I could tell she was broad-shouldered. Her face? I think most people would describe it as "cute". She had long, straight blonde hair, a cute turned-up nose, and freckles, visible even with her tan. What I liked were her eyes-they were deep blue and seemed to sparkle. After a while, she seemed to be picking things up a bit better. I suggested a little break. "You want something to drink?" I asked. "Love it. Do you have any diet coke?" "No, but my roomie does," I laughed. "He's cool about stuff like that, I'll just have to owe him one." I grabbed one for her and took a coke for myself. "I don't drink diet coke, I have enough problems keeping any weight on as it is." She giggled. "Where are you from?" she asked. "I know it's not California, you have an accent," she giggled. "Chicago. And you?" "San Diego." "Ah. That explains the tan." She giggled. "Well, that and the fact that I spend way too much time in swimming pools, many of them outdoors. I'm a competitive swimmer." "Oh, you swim for the team here?" I asked. "Not this year. Next year I will be, but I'm concentrating on some international meets this year. And Nationals next spring-and, hopefully, the Olympics next summer." "Is that realistic? I mean, do you think you have a shot?" "Oh, yeah. I won one gold and two silver medals at the world championships this past summer." "Wow. I'm impressed." She just grinned. "I noticed you were pretty muscular." "Yeah. You have to be. The backstroke is my primary stroke, and that takes strength, especially in the legs. And, believe me, when I get to the Olympics, I guarantee there will be a couple of people in the pool with me that are on steroids. Since I have no desire to f**k up my body like that, I have to be an animal in the weight room instead." "Very smart," I said. "I knew a couple of football players in high school who everyone assumed were on 'roids. And they were bigger assholes than the other football players. Which is saying a lot." She giggled. "I have to ask you, though-you said you were pre-med?" She nodded. " And high-level swimming? You must have no time." "I manage it pretty well," she smiled. "Though I'm not out at parties four nights a week, I can tell you." "I can imagine," I laughed. "Pre-med gets harder as you go along. I'm just taking basic courses now. Which is a good thing-I'd hate to be trying to fight my way through some of the junior-level biology courses in an Olympic year. The timing worked out well." "Except for having to take calculus," I grinned. "Yeah, except for that," she grinned back. "I'm breezing through Biology, and my humanities-type courses aren't bad, but calc is killing me." "Well, we can't have that," I smiled. "I have to help you, so your mind is at ease, so I can watch on TV as that American flag goes up a few times next summer." "Good plan" she grinned.