Postcards from the past

One of my many partners in crime is Mack. We met way back in the near-virginal years when we were paired up as roommates our freshman year at Northeast Missouri State University (I try not to acknowledge the name change). We lived in Ryle Hall 202, an all-women's dorm where I learned a lot about the world and how to navigate myself in the tiny pocket of Kirksville, Missouri.

Every time we left Kirksville to drive three hours to the airport or train station where Mack would head back to the Razor City in Wyoming and I would head back to the blissful concrete life in Chicago, we would barrel out of the parking lot of Ryle Hall and down the streets, flipping off the whole town and screaming at the top of our lungs, "Fuuuuuuuuck you, Kirksville!"  It was amazingly empowering. It was two A-students getting their release on. It was how I left Kirksville the last time I was there twelve years ago, long after Mack transferred and even though I had to yell it alone.

Mack went back to the 'Ville last weekend and she even snuck in to our old digs. She couldn't get into our room but she assured me it is very much the same. And the crazy thing is, she saw a car parked right outside the window -- the same window we peered out of after anonymously calling guys at the men's dorm across the way, posing as local DJs and telling them to hurry down, that they'd win a free Pagliai's pizza if they could meet the driver within the minute, ensuing much hilarity and wild times in the state of Misery-- with a license plate with my name on it. Of course, it also has the year '85, which is probably when the tiny zygote co-ed was born while I was busy listening to Like a Virgin and Purple Rain, but whatever.

Here are a few pieces of my past, courtesy Mack, shot on location at the once-center of it all, Ryle Hall.

It's like I'm still haunting the place.

                 Miss Scholarly Sluttina Roommate 1990

Where all the magic happened.
Or at least the karaoke and prank phone calls.