The Presentation

8:00 a.m. Yesterday was 45 years ago. I stared up at the drywall-painted walls of a building I knew as a fraternity house. And for an instant, I was 45 years younger and every single trauma of my teen years was about to hit me like a clavier of hammers.

I’m back at Hamilton College. Back on the grounds of a campus that I still feel, even today, that my matriculation and enrollment was the result of a clerical error. I was a second trombone in a string quartet. If this were a Star Trek convention, I’d have a wardrobe of red shirts.

This was a school for the upper class. For the gifted. For those of powerful families. The only reason I was here was because I needed to get as far away from my toxic family as possible, and to work around whatever idiosyncrasies defined my existence.

And in that moment, as I reached for my wristwatch, I remembered all my gaffes and fumbles. And I hoped that my very existence on campus this weekend wouldn’t cause everyone else to pack their bags, go home, and cancel their tuition donations.

This isn’t even my designated graduation reunion year. This is for people who graduated in ’81, or in ’86 – anyone with a “1” or a “6” in their graduate suffix. I don’t belong here.

Maybe I should go home. Maybe I should pack my presentation, claim I caught whooping cough or COVID or something, and just go home. Ugh.

But I’m here. I’m here, and this is important. I’m giving the presentation on the 85th anniversary of WHCL-FM. I spent the better part of a year researching the history, and my original piece appeared in the alumni magazine. Now it’s time for Part II of this project – an oral history lesson during Reunion Weekend.

I walk along campus. There are actually printed signs near the event facility. Nothing photocopied here. These are fully painted metal signs stating WHCL 85th Anniversary.

I need a breather. A deep breather.

A quick shower, a change of clothes, and I’m off.

Off to the Root Glen.

The Root Glen is a pastoral hideaway along College Hill Road. It’s a sanctuary of birds and flowers and trees and streams. I’ve photographed the Root Glen before, and won awards for doing so. And as a student, I sat in the Root Glen during some of my most miserable moments. Times when I said something stupid and kicked myself for it long after everyone else forgave my transgression. Times when I felt like my name was a code word on campus for everyone to scatter.

Meditating at the Root Glen helped me back then. It has to help me now. I can’t have this happen again. No. I can’t. I get one shot at this presentation. One chance to take all those horrible moments in my life and put them as far behind me as possible.

For at least as long as I can during the presentation.

I’ve chronicled so many moments of failure and pain. That’s what blogs are for, aren’t they? To work through your emotions, to reinforce the few highs and battle against the numerous lows.

And I had to remember that one of those highs was the day I signed up for WHCL.

It was December 1981, I read news reports at the top of the hour. A few weeks later, I filled in for someone’s two-hour radio shift. By the beginning of sophomore year, I had my own show – Tuesday nights at midnight. I picked up a gig as the station’s production director that year, teaching myself editing techniques (we used magnetic tape and razor blades, and we did it by candlelight).

These are the stories I remember. Sleeping in the studio on a Tuesday night because my Wednesday morning class was at 8:00 a.m., and it made no sense to walk down the hill and then walk back UP the hill. Working on promotional events for the station – a concert with the English Beat (with R.E.M. opening), a marathon dance party as a charitable fundraiser, every possible thing I could do to actually feel like I belonged here.

Not just “belong” at the radio station, but also “belong” on campus. I needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t here by accident or by pity. That my diploma wouldn’t have an asterisk attached to it. That I could prove my family wrong, that I really was a good person and not just an accident because my parents didn’t use protection way back in 1963.

I’m sitting in the Root Glen. It’s still early in the morning. That same stream brings me back to 1983. Believing that anything and everything could work out for me. But knowing that I had more baggage than American Tourister. I look back at it now. Was I autistic? Did I have some previously undiagnosed learning disability or mental illness? Did my very existence simply make everybody uncomfortable?

And part of me realizes that I’ve gone farther after Hamilton than I ever dreamed. Published magazine articles. Two research books. Two fiction books. A burgeoning photography career. A blog that’s old enough to actually matriculate at Hamilton if it could afford the tuition.

And above all that … during what was one of my darkest despairs, the pain of COVID-19 and watching the world crumble around me … WHCL came back into my life. Alumni broadcasts on Friday nights. Started in 2020. Kept going for 200 episodes, only ending when I felt that there were enough students on campus that my show should not take a spot away from one of them.

Peace through trauma.

It seems silly to treat WHCL as some radio equivalent of Florence Nightingale in the theater of my personal war, but maybe this is so. Maybe this is truly so.

This is where I am right now. Sitting in the Root Glen. Gathering the courage to return to the dorm room, grab my laptop and my Peavey Messenger M100 sound system – the same electronic cocktail I’ve used for trivia events for the past year – then head to the Filius Events Barn and make something happen.

Who am I kidding? There will probably be four people in the audience if I’m lucky. And three of them will say they wandered into the wrong presentation, and the fourth will be there to remind me of my past failures. Every. Single. Failure.

Man, a Sugar Free Red Bull would really taste good right now.

I see several of my classmates. They’re Class of ’86, back for their 40th reunion. For me, this would be my 41st reunion, so I’m a bit off-schedule. I’m glad to see them. They all look great. I feel three days older than dirt.

They tell me they’re excited about the WHCL presentation. I thank them. I tell them I’m still nervous. They tell me not to worry. That everything will be fine.

Trust me. I’ll stop worrying when the presentation is over.

Professor John O’Neill is still on campus. He and his wife see me at a reunion luncheon. They actually say they’re going to my event. This is Professor O’Neill – the literature professor who took my initial writing essay with “Usually these things get off to an unusual start,” and used it as an example of how NOT to write an essay. He’s going to the event.

I’m almost at Tabasco-level intensity right now.

I check my cell phone. There’s a message from someone – probably one of the last people I would expect.

He is a Class of ’83. It’s an off-year for him, but he’s coming to the campus to partake in reunions and to see my presentation. Also, even though it’s an off-year for him … he’s the father of a Class of ’26 graduate, so technically it’s an on-year for his family.

He was the upperclassman who originally recommended I join WHCL.

Forget Tabasco-level intensity. This is “chomping on a barrel of Carolina Reaper Chilis” intensity.

Back to the dorm room. I need to practice these timings once again. I MUST NOT FAIL.

It’s time to pack everything up and head across campus to the Filius Events Barn.

And here I am. This is the setup area.

An audiovisual tech walks over to the podium and helps me set up my laptop. “Do I need to go back to my car and get my Peavey?” I asked.

“No,” the tech smiled. “I’ve got this.”

Thirty seconds later … the laptop and sound system and visual connections clicked together like puzzle pieces. Smooth.

At 3:00 … people entered the auditorium. People I knew. People I didn’t know.

All right. Time to make this presentation work.

And … by God … I pulled it off. All the slides advanced exactly when I needed them to, not one slide jumped out of place. The audio was perfectly synched. Several people in the crowd pulled out their cell phones and took pictures of some of my slides. I didn’t expect that.

And at 4:00 …

Applause from the crowd.

I made it. Project complete.

Made it threw. Whew.

I brought my laptop back to my dorm room. Everything worked out well.

I think it’s time for me to get some dinner. Even though I’m not technically part of the class of ”86, three years of my life synched with three years of their lives. So it’s about as close to a “reunion” for me as I can claim.

And during that dinner … some surprising comments. From people I hadn’t seen in nearly four decades.

“You were the radio guy,” one person said. “You helped get our weekend started”

“I thought you were the most real classmate on campus,” said another. “You were yourself, 100 percent, and didn’t try to claim being anything else.”

“I had a show on WHCL on Sunday mornings,” said one person, “and you helped me out and made my show better.”

“I’ve followed you on Facebook,” said another, “and your photographs are incredible. You have an incredible photographic eye.”

I’m looking around, wondering if they’re talking to my shadow. But no …

I did it.

And I’ll take those messages of kindness and joy with me when I leave campus this morning.

Because maybe … just maybe … for the first time in a long time … I accomplished something personal.

I mattered. And I got it right.

Even if I couldn’t believe it at the time …

This weekend … I somehow got it right.