Well, suddenly Brian was swinging the machine so violently from side to side that on one of his abrupt swings the machine smashed into the side of the wall, creating a small hole in the wall. One afternoon while we were playing pinball, he took the tilts out so that we could swing the machine if the pinball was heading toward the gutter. Toward the end of my second week in Boston, I started to notice that Brian was acting a little strangely. Man, if you are going to take classes that are 3 hours long, they sure had better be interesting. I was finding the classes tedious and uninteresting. The only drawback was that, as a student in the School of Business Management, I was feeling like a fish out of water. It was joy to take the “T” to BC each day. In one of the rooms downstairs, Brian had a pinball machine and for hours we would play marathon pinball contests. I had a nice room on the first floor near the large kitchen, while Brian and Laurie’s bedroom was on the second floor adjacent to the Victorian style turret. Perfect! Brian and I agreed on the rent and when September came my parents gave me one of the two family cars for three weeks so I could bring all my stuff and get settled.
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It was a short walk from the house to the Green Line (trolley) and from there only a ten minute ride to BC. I called the only friend I knew in Boston, one of my childhood friends named Brian.īrian told me that he and his girlfriend Laurie were living in an old Victorian house in Brighton and that they were actually looking to take in a boarder. When I was accepted at BC, I was told that I would be placed on the list for on-campus housing, but for my first year I would have to find an apartment near the college. I got a job as a journalism intern at the local newspaper and applied as a transfer to Boston College. I left Rollins, went home and tried my best to help out around the house. In the spring of 1974, after spending 6 months as a freshman on the Rollins College (Winter Park, FL) baseball team, playing for a coach I loved, I learned that my parents back in Connecticut were contemplating a divorce and I felt like I needed to go back home. I wonder how many of you have found yourselves crying alone in your car in the midst of sudden detour off the regularly scheduled path of your life-heartbroken, shaken and suddenly cast adrift and imminently facing one of the biggest decisions in your life.
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Over the weekend when former Cardinals QB Kyle Sloter told me that when Southern Miss pulled his scholarship after three years, 5 hours short of him earning his diploma, he sat in his car and cried-on the verge of losing his lifelong dream of being a star college QB-wondering why and how this ever happened-and pondering which road to take from there.