Frat House Memories

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The Gannon University alumni news magazine came in the mail on Saturday and I flipped through it quickly, stopping on the story of the TKE house being turned into a lab for forensics for the study of criminal justice.

I hope they don't use the blue light in the basement of that place.

And the mind is a funny thing because when you see, even a photo of a place where you hung out, you remember.

The price to get into the Friday Night TKE party was two bucks. You were handed a cup and allowed to drink as much as you wanted.

We very rarely could come up with the two bucks, but I had a lot of friends around there so I didn't have to pay. One evening I was in the basement when a guy tapped me on the shoulder. He showed me a ledger that said this:

"Fuzzy - NP"

"Yeah?" I asked.

"That means, 'Fuzzy - not-paid'," he said.

My roommate Fluffy, who was a member, didn't miss a beat:

"That means, 'Fuzzy - not-paying'".

But there were so many more evenings. My brother John and a few friends visited me one time and John was in a discussion with one of the members of the frat who wanted all the Fuzzy's in attendance to leave.

"Let's get Fluffy and Rosie to break the tie," I said. "If they choose the frat over us we'll leave peacefully."

Five minutes later the guy who asked the question was on the floor with both of my buddies standing over him.

We were able to stay.

There was a beach party where a friend of ours was shown the door because his swim trunks were too tight and in his drunken state...

...forget that one.

I can recall a member of the frat standing on the bar singing the Police's King of Pain.

I remember drinking beers with Rosie and Terry and Gag and Lisa and George and Gema and Gorf and Luke and Chris Miller.

So many damn beers!

And then, almost as soon as I finished reading the article and jogging down memory lane I received a text.

It was the photo of the house. Miller sent me the text.

He'd read the same article.

"Isn't it crazy how quickly it went?" I asked.

And I know that Matt is now running around in the same sort of filthy houses now, doing the same sort of stupid things, thinking that those days will last forever.

But as I read Chris' response it occurred to me that time hadn't really stood still, and I think of that all the time.

If my 18-year-old self could look ahead to the nearly 50-year-old guy would he accept the deal?

"What are you looking at?" Sam asked as he hopped into the room with the two dogs following.

I most certainly would've embraced the deal.

But I can still pine for the good old days, right?


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