I think this is the Bishop Watterson Junior-Senior Prom. Kathy made her own dress and fought with her mother for months about attending.

Years later I took lessons with Carolyn at a Fred Astaire Dance Studio in Manhattan. We did a nice foxtrot to Billy Eckstine's "Green Dolphin Street" (and that was fun) but my feelings had changed; I began to feel stupid and exposed on a dance floor. I have forgotten whatever I did back in high school to make these events fun.

Kathy and I went to this venerable Columbus prime rib place after the prom. We sat in one of the booths on the left in the center frame above and tried to order drinks, Mai Tais or Grasshoppers or something fancy. The guy asked for IDs and we withdrew the request. Still a nice time in a swanky place. One of their specialties was chive butter on fresh rolls served before the meal. I went there many times with my grandparents. In Columbus it was classy joint.

We drove from Columbus to the Adirondacks in a Cadillac owned by Jeff's dad during our senior year spring break. I'm in the bomber jacket standing next to Dan, Jeff right above him, and Mike is leaning on the back window. His family had the cabin that was our destination.

There was still a lot of snow in the Adirondacks in April (or May); we had to park the car on a plowed road about a quarter-mile from the cabin. At some point during the hike in from the road (especially difficult without snowshoes), the car keys were lost in the snow. The very next day a visiting friend making the same trek sank to his knees in the stuff and came up with the keys.

They gave me a $500 scholarship; my dad had connections at the local CBS affiliate and somebody there submitted my name. I always enjoyed making speeches; that helped me later when I started teaching.

I scanned a print to capture this image; it's massively damaged. I've rebuilt the faces but left the rest extant to show the original state. I don't care enough about the image to put in the hours it would take to rebuild it. And it would have to be rebuilt rather than restored, like the Ship of Theseus. Every pixel would be recreated. It would be inspired by the original image but ultimately a pixel-by-pixel recreation. Like they say in Hollywood, "based on a true story."

The closest we get to a sense of fate is our dorm assignment. And the roommate that accompanies it, naturally. In my case the roommate was gone after a couple months; he was an actor who laughed a lot and hung out with a group of friends from high school. They seemed very young and irritating; I was glad when they all moved out of my life and into another dorm. I had the place to myself for a few months but then was assigned a new roommate, a Cincinnati kid named Barry. He was an engineering major who hid his nerdiness well. Like all of us, he had committed to a second major in pot smoking. We got along fine, so well we spent the next few years living together.

In the long term the dorm assignment was far more significant than the roommate. I spent years believing it was just one floor of one dorm like all the other dorms in the world of 1971. Looking back and researching this a bit, I no longer believe that. For better or worse, the place was unique.

Charlie Manson in the dorm. I got my hair as long as possible as quickly as possible after graduating from that last Catholic school. Because of the dress code I was always the guy with the shortest hair in the band. I was also the bass guitarist, so my live appearances were mostly anonymous. I played a dance for my own high school once and asked a girl in the audience how she liked my band. "Oh, that's your band?"