Here and Now
The Proposition at the Party
You know how hard it is to steal a glance at someone’s name tag without being noticed? This usually happens when they clearly know who you are, but you’re drawing a blank on them? Well, I went to a party in October that was just the opposite of that: everyone was unabashedly studying name tags, often before saying hello. The occasion? A lovely party at a classmate’s home where my Furman University graduating class of 1974 was celebrating our FIFTIETH Homecoming year!
The large-print name tags bore maiden names and yearbook photos, and while this helped with some recognitions, it didn’t help with all of them. I was still faking it half the time and they probably were too. But none of that mattered; we were just happy to still be well and gathered together.
Because Furman didn’t have sororities back then, our group of friends had laid claim to the same dormitory hall for three years. We were a very tight group, and we knew that most of us would be at this party. We prowled the crowded rooms of our classmate’s lovely home for one another. When we were successful, the party was pierced with long, screech-y exclamations that melted into hugs, stories, laughter, and happy tears as we treasured our decades of friendship and caught up on the in-between. It was like we’d never been apart. Glass-dome moments abounded.
I had just finished one of those both-of-us-faking-it chats and headed outside for a beverage. A guy just inside the door stopped me and said, “Hi there, Nina! Remember me?” (Um hello dude: if I remembered you, we’d both know it by now.) “Freshman year, Marat-Sade? Want to go outside and make out?” Wait wait wait wait wait, Mr. Whoever-you-are! I didn’t remember him at all, by face or by name tag. Yes, I had taken a freshman spin with theater, and yes, the play was Marat-Sade, but I sure didn’t remember this guy, nor anything about the play that would have prompted tonight’s invitation. Was it rude of me to laugh and say, “I’M SORRY, WHAT??? No I don’t remember you and, um, no, I do NOT want to go outside and make out!”?
And then, it got worse.
Up walked his wife and guess what? SHE hadn’t forgotten it either! Seems they had been dating at the time, and she was jealous of whatever I did in my role in the play. Fifty-four years she had toted this around. “Honey,” I said, “ it is time to let this go.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
When I told my friend Mathewson the story, he quoted a meme making the rounds: “If you’re ever feeling down just remember that you’re a sore subject in somebody else’s relationship.” I don’t think anyone had septuagenarians in mind as an audience.
Roomies and Hallies
We were roommates three: Marsha, Shelley, and me. We were intelligent, privileged, cute, and lively young ladies in the sunrise of our lives, and we had not a care in the world other than tests and term papers and whether to go to the dining hall or make a box-pizza for supper. After that October reunion party, the three of us slumber-partied at our hotel. It seemed not a minute had passed since we last turned out the lights in Townes 103.
The years had burnished us with life, love, and losses, but our souls were still united, and the only discernible difference in the paths our lives had taken was that Shelley had brought a really nice bottle of wine that needed a corkscrew, where I had brought some little screw-top mini bottles. The hotel’s front desk didn’t have a corkscrew because people kept stealing them, so we caved to the screwtop delicacies, talked some vehement politics (we were all excited at the time), shared some conversations from the reunion party (mine was the best), and fell asleep at 10:45.
The next day, hallmate Laura Ann and her husband Bud joined us at the alumni picnic on campus. In the warm October sun, I regaled Bud with some of the grand adventures we had undertaken. I did try to respect that he and LA had been dating at the time and this was the first he’d heard of any of this. I promised that none of us could remember how or why we came up with these things, nor who the ringleaders or participants were. It’s been over fifty years. We’re fine. I’m leaving this right here.
There was the Halloween when we put brown paper bags over our heads, cut out eye holes, opened a package of hot dogs and paraded through the halls of the boys’ dormitories (for which we could have been kicked out), handing out raw hot dogs and saying “Happy HaloWEENIE!” As if.
This next one was outside the conservative bounds of behavior expected by our dear Alma Mater, but it happened, we survived, and here’s how I told it to Bud. One night when we should have been studying, five of us put on way too much makeup, padded our bras, and went out to a local dive, pretending to be workers in a local textile mill. For safety, we adopted fake names. I was Nadine. So safe. Far from fooling anybody, we succeeded only in amusing the patrons, spent a couple of hours dancing with some guys we would never see again, and returned to the safety of our dorm. Could we do that today and stay safe, much less anonymous? Mischief was just easier back then. The world was kinder, it was quieter. I promised Bud that we had just been naive and adventurous, and lucky. It had been, I said, The Golden Age of Mischief. Laura Ann just sat there and smiled.
Then there were my motorbike adventures. For some reason I’ll never understand, my parents had caved to my pleadings and I started my sophomore year as the proud owner of a Suzuki 50. With a maximum downhill speed of 55 mph, it was mostly useful to go get box pizzas, but I sometimes rode it into town to source a piece of clothing. One lovely day, I offered Shelley a ride around the campus nature trail. Curves and hills and bumps! And just one little spill from which the only casualty was my blue jeans. A belt loop caught on a low branch and pulled a 90-degree tear all the way across my back and halfway down my right leg. Shelley snugged up extra close to cover the gap, and back to the dorm we went, laughing till we cried.
The Paper
As you can tell by now, I had a whole lot of fun at Furman, at the expense of my academic record. I was making friends and testing boundaries, and studying was not high on my list of things to do. While I did enjoy my major classes (biology), I never mustered the discipline to buckle down and learn all that was there for my taking. I graduated with a solid GPA of 2.8*, barely crossing the finish line thanks to an A in my last biology class, my Independent Study. This project had captured my passion, and I really had done my best on it. I have just learned it became my legacy.
My advisor, Dr. Leland Rodgers, knew of a sixty-two-acre site that was about to be given to the Greenville County school system. It had been paved and improved for the South Carolina Tricentennial in 1970 but not used since. He suggested that my Independent Study be a draft plan for developing it into an environmental science center. My outdoor-loving interpretive naturalist kicked in and I worked like crazy, visiting the site often, taking measurements, writing descriptions, and proposing locations. I recorded the plant life and soil types all over the site. My paper, “The Greenville Environmental Science Center: Suggestions for Development” did earn that “A” that I needed so badly.
Over the next fifty years, the project occasionally crossed my mind, but I never checked to see if anything had happened there.
The Legacy
Three days after returning from the wonderful Golden Reunion weekend, I had this voicemail:
“Hello Nina, my name is Thomas Riddle and I am the Assistant Director at Roper Mountain Science Center in Greenville, South Carolina. I’m reaching out to you on the off-chance that you may be the Nina Barnett who wrote ‘The Greenville Environmental Science Center: Suggestions for Development’ while a student at Furman University in 1974. If so, I would love to speak with you about that paper. We’re currently planning our 40th Anniversary Celebration and I’m looking for people who had input to the original vision of Roper Mountain.”
I called him back immediately: “YES, I’m the Nina Barnett who wrote that paper!”
He said he couldn’t believe he was really talking to me. He said that my paper had helped guide the early development of Roper Mountain. He said that my research on soil types in the area and suggestions for where to place exhibits had been especially valuable. I didn’t remember doing soil types, but… he was reading from a copy of my fifty-year-old paper! He was getting chills; I was choking up.
As we talked, I googled Roper Mountain Science Center and almost fell out of my chair. Planetarium! Observatory! Butterfly Garden! Life-size Dinosaur Adventure Trail! So much more. From their website, ropermountain.org:
“Roper Mountain Science Center, a special facility of Greenville County Schools in Greenville, South Carolina, exists because of a unique partnership of public ownership, corporate sponsorship, private support, and volunteers.
Public programs at Roper Mountain Science Center include Friday Starry Nights, Summer Adventure, Laser Days Of Summer, Holiday Laser Shows, and more than 100 week-long camps in our Summer Exploration Camp series.”
–ropermountain.org
In the ten years after I graduated from Furman, hundreds of dedicated individuals and organizations had forged partnerships, raised funds, and opened this incredible natural science education center that is free to all Greenville County Schools students and visited by thousands every month. My graduation-saving paper had been a key contributor. I’ve had a legacy for forty years and never even known it.
Roper Mountain Science Center will celebrate their 40th Anniversary next year. Thomas said they look forward to hosting me and my family when we can make it up. I cannot wait.
*Though not apparent at the time, I did learn how to study at Furman. In ensuing years I earned nursing and master’s degrees with bright shiny 4.0 GPAs. Just for the record.
