Reading about a friend’s college experiences triggered my own memories about my years as a WVU Mountaineer. I started digging through my old journals and took a long trip down memory lane. I always liked school but I loved college. I want to share one memorable day with you.

The windshield wipers on my old cherry-red Ford Pinto desperately needed replaced but that didn’t seem to stop them from trying to keep the road visible in the gloomy, dripping wet morning I was driving through. They thwacked and screeched across the windshield at seizure inducing speeds, a metronome that had beaten itself into my headache. Rain was falling, leaves were falling, and the temperature was falling while my trusty steed and I continued to drive in circles, each loop covering more distance as I searched for the impossible: a parking space in downtown Morgantown. I was going to be late for class.

Three blocks from Elizabeth Moore Hall, I signaled and parallel parked into what was almost a space, the size of which was about 2 inches longer than my car. Using the term parallel in this case was an exaggeration, but the benefits of driving such a small car included the ability to park nose in to the curb, butt out, without sticking out farther than the truck behind me. I only needed the space for an hour and crossed my fingers that the poor guy driving the truck didn’t need out of his space before I left.

Wrenching the door open, I grabbed my backpack and briefly thought about the possibility of having an umbrella in the car. If there was one lurking in the back seat, finding it would take too much time so I slammed the door, pulled up the hood on my jacket and headed to class. Being parked on a hill, as if there were any other type of place to park in Morgantown, the rain water was running in rivers down the sidewalk. Within minutes, my shoes were sloshing and I could feel my feet starting to prune as they shrank away from my wet socks.

With one block to go, I paused on the street corner before crossing, watching with disbelief as a small sports car whipped around the corner. It plowed right through the center of a huge puddle which appeared to desperately leap out of the car’s path. That sheet of wet, brown, slimy, oil-glossed water embraced me like I was a long lost friend. There was nothing left of dry on my body. Being just a few steps beyond normal, I wasn’t mad at the driver. I fumed at my own stupidity for standing by the puddle in the first place. And, I was ticked off because I was sure the car was being driven by a lady who knew exactly where her umbrella was.

To be continued….