My Short American Decade
2012; University of Iowa; Volume: 42; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.17077/0021-065x.7234
ISSN2330-0361
Autores ResumoOn freshman move-in day, as I unpacked my stuff, I played a Jay Chou CD on my new roommate's Dreamcast, Taiwanese pop riffs spilling out the open common room windows of our suite towards the Old Campus green.I heard someone say Christopher Reeve was outside, here to see his daughter off, but I can't remember if I saw or just imagined looking out and seeing the back of a wheelchair in the Bingham courtyard.This is the oldest part of campus, the site where in 1718 the Collegiate School became Yale College after a Welshman from Boston and onetime governor of Madras donated four hundred and seventeen books and some spare goods that sold for eight hundred pounds sterling.There is also a statue here of Nathan Hale, class of 1773, hanged by the British for espionage two months after the Declaration of Independence, but not before uttering the words that wrap around the base of the statue."I only regret," he said on the gallows, "that I have but one life to lose for my country."The execution took place in Manhattan at what is today the intersection of 66th and Third, where you can now buy some Gap jeans on one corner and then pick up a Starbucks macchiato on another.My roommate on the bottom bunk was six-foot-two, 260 pounds; he was from nearby New Britain and eventually became a starting defensive lineman.His aol handle was DaRuffRyder, but Willie was, as giants are, gentle, something he seemed to have inherited from his generous, if smaller, parents, who were originally from Puerto Rico.We shared the suite with two normal-sized guys in the other room: Matt, white and blond from Oakland, and Lee, from Portland, the son of Vietnamese refugees.They all came with their parents and siblings and things, suitcases, laundry hampers, lamps, fridges.Willie brought a nineteen-inch TV, on which I watched The West Wing every Wednesday night.Matt brought an old Nintendo system, which he used to dominate us at Tecmo Bowl. Lee brought a rice cooker, which I was thankful for.I brought my checked baggage allowance.I remember my mother waving from underneath the vaulted arch at Phelps Gate the morning we said good-bye, not really thinking about what she must have been thinking, dropping her youngest child off on the other side of the world for four years.She had made a similar trip thirty-five years before, leaving Indonesia to study in Australia.She never went back.
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