Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

My senior year at Ohio University, I took a course to fulfill a college requirement that required me to attend concerts and plays throughout the quarter and to write critiques of them.

I knew little of music despite four years of high school choir, which I took along with other football players since it was an easy credit. I knew even less about plays (though I once had performed as a monkey in a first-grade Christmas pageant). And I knew nothing of dance.

I had grown up on a small farm in rural southcentral Ohio. Not to say you can't have cultural experiences growing up in rural Ohio, but the opportunities are not readily present.

So I enjoyed the class as a new experience despite the difficulties my lack of knowledge presented me in judging the performances. I wrote my critiques in the style of Rolling Stone album reviews, the only thing I had to draw upon in writing them. Apparently I wrote them in an amusing enough manner for the graduate assistant to grade them kindly instead of faulting me for my probable many errors.

And I did enjoy the class. I listened to YoYo Ma perform, watched Russian ballerinas dance and attended Noises Off!

The class was one of the few bright spots for me. My father had recently died, a wonderful girlfriend had ended a relationship and I had little money despite working 20 plus hours a week.

It was a small class held in a cramped space in an old building heated by a radiator that always seemed too hot or too cold.

I think I slept a lot in the class because I remember little of the classtime. Just the shows.

There was one student in the class who was stunningly beautiful. She looked and moved and had the lithe form of a brunette Grace Kelly at 19. I knew little of her other than it was said she came from old money and she expressed liberal views. She always carried herself with a certain gravitas, but she never seemed to put on airs in the class. She always had an easy smile to her.

I spoke little in the class out of fear of exposing how wide my ignorance was.

The last performance required for the class (I can't remember what it was) was on a winter's night. It was very dark when the performance ended and very cold when I stepped outside. I recall it had not been as cold when the sun had been up, but a front had moved in and sharply turned the previously wet sidewalks into ice and a snow had befun falling.

The young woman I mentioned earlier stepped outside and shivered. She shivered. Since we both left at the same time and were heading in the same direction we fell in step together.

And when we came to an icy set of stairs I instinctively held my arm out to support her and she took it.

And she kept it there as we walked. We talked of the performance and we spoke of others we had seen. And I asked her about why she attended the class. She wanted to be a writer. She was an English major. We talked of authors and favorite books.

It felt good walking with a beautiful woman holding my arm across the lovely Ohio University green at night.

We walked slowly, but eventually we got to her dorm and we said good bye and parted.

There was no farewell kiss, no attempt for a kiss. I did not want to risk spoiling a lovely moment that even as I walked with her I knew I would lock away and save. And I didn't see her any more for the rest of the school year.

But I remember her and her kindess. And I probably always will.

That's my happy story for tonight. Your happy story might be any story you wish to share.