Nice Shorts
November 1, 2004
One of the most memorable years in Rich and mine relationship was 1991. Rich was attending school at Pitt and I was at State College getting a degree. This is one of many great times we spent together during this year. One weekend, Rich, I, and our cousin, Tim, decided to plan a visit for the two of them to Penn State. Rich was going to fly up using his connections with US Airways on Friday and Tim, who had just graduated from Pitt and was working at the time, drove up to join us on Saturday. I remember the weather was perfect, sunny and very warm. It was early April, daylight savings weekend, and the campus radiated with excitement of summertime. I was just as excited to see my two cousins and have some good-old-fashioned fun.
Rich's plane arrived kind of late on Friday night, so after I picked him up at the airport, we just relaxed in my apartment and conserved our enthusiasm for Saturday. On Saturday, Rich and I slept in (go figure) and then anxiously awaited Tim's arrival. He soon did and we took a tour of the campus. If you have never been to Penn State, a campus tour could take 3-days, so we did the abbreviated tour. It was at this point that Tim realized one of the big jokes from the weekend. In my generation of Penn State students it was very common for the student-body to have as part of their wardrobe a pair of cut-off army pants. Like the cut-off jeans of the seventies, these cut-off shorts with the fringe at the bottom or rolled-up to cover the fringe could be found everywhere and worn on everyone. This being the first balmy weekend of probably the year, this fashion statement was made in force and Tim, being a very sharp person, noticed these green shorts and flip flops everywhere we walked. The astute observation initiated many comments from Tim that had me and Rich laughing and repeating the rest of the weekend. Tim said, "When you register at Penn State, do they pass out those shorts to everyone also?" or "I feel like I'm back in Nam fighting 'Charlie'!"
After the tour, we got right to the act at hand at any college campus across the nation, some drinking. I'm sure if you do the math you could figure out that Rich was under-aged, so I guess you could thank me and my elder cousin, Tim, for Rich's drinking, but I was just trying to show Rich college life (I'm not sure what Tim's excuse was for the "corruption of a minor" behavior). At the time and growing up together in our families we were all pretty close, Tim was my big brother and I was Rich's big brother and we both got pretty good at getting Rich in trouble (isn't that what big brothers are for?). This was neither the first or last time we worked hard at showing the underbelly of life to Rich, but isn't that what life is all about. I had some parties lined-up for us because we weren't able to get into any bars. We caused some havoc at a few parties, mocked the party-goers for our own amusement, and had a generally great time while we got intoxicated. I remember the next morning we all paid the price for the night before, but at least we had fun.
I guess it was just a pretty typical great-time just hanging with my two cousins/brothers. This was just a short story to emphasize the relationship between what I often consider my immediate family and a couple of my closest friends. There will be more that include Tim with Rich and me, but this one was the first that slipped into my mind and demonstrated how we didn't ever need to do too much to have a good time together (a common theme to our fun). |
