Remembrance of Mugs Past

New prompt and upcoming events.

I went to my 30th college reunion last weekend and cried in the library. The high ceilings, the marble floors, the dry smell of the stacks. All of it familiar and startling.

(I've spent so much time in libraries since. Who would I be without them?)

Olin Library, Wesleyan University, 2025

“You lived here!” said my buddy, F., from New York.

“No wonder you’re teary,” said my other buddy, P., from Illinois. We three shared a cramped hotel room off campus for the weekend, forgetting we were over 50.

I did live in the library. It was safer there. I could hear myself think, especially during those anxious early days of trying to find my groove. In the lobby of Olin, I was an 18-year-old from small town Maine again, not quite sure why they’d let me in.

I didn’t know how to study as a frosh. (The word was new. It made me think of frogs.) I knew how to ace tests in high school: Learn by rote and report the answers back. At Wesleyan, the trick was to critique the material, be it Shakespeare, Virginia …