OK, by this time you kind of have to know that gross and gag-worthy things follow me like shadows. Tonight as I as showering I got a whiff of something… Not quite sure what is was, I had recently bleached my shower so I supposed it must just be the nasty drain. Being in the ‘ment has provided me with a few new nasal sensory opportunities, to say the least. The smell got a little stronger of mildewed, dirty drain then suddenly I was back in another life, one from 20 years ago.
I remembered the fraternity house we lived in every summer, in the middle of the SMU campus near downtown Dallas, Texas. My other home. I remember cleaning it, I was so excited- my dad paid me to help! I cleaned, moved things… And at some point found a collection of porn left behind by the Fraternity guys that forever burnt my pupils… But this isn’t that story. The Kaleo students came, ready for a summer of discipleship and work, I was excited to meet some cool college kids. They called me the “Kaleo kid” and I basked in their attention and praise.
I played with Drew and Katy, we went to malls and swam every day. There were never so many perfect summer days as these, existing now as a sort of imaginary memory. Such perfection isn’t usually found on this earth, even in childhood. We played (and beat) the college kids at Foosball, drank sunkist and played in huge downstairs, complete with a big-screen. The room was larger than life, I remember it as big as a football field. The doors all had combination locks on them and I loved that. The kitchen was industrial and the cooks found us charming little children. These were enchanted times, filled with dirty feet, smelly bodies and box fans. At night, I looked out the window, mesmerized by the heat lightening and distant thunder and knew God well.
Some days we’d walk around the beautiful campus and dip our feet in the fountains when our parents weren’t looking. We whispered reverently inside the high ceilinged pillared buildings. I declared this was where I would attend college. We played frisbee at dusk in the huge open field crisscrossed with sidewalks for busy people. We watched the swim team practice diving from high, oh so high up into a dark blue pool that seemed as deep and scary as the ocean. My mom ran around the track for what seemed like hours and we contended ourselves in the sandbox where people measured how far they could jump. We played on the giant, fun trampoline balloon where people jumped over a tall wire on to. It was magic.
Cheerleaders from all over the country attended a cheer camp at SMU and our Fraternity House was near the destination. Katy and I would sit, faces pressed to the glass, watching them as they daily filed into the giant auditorium, chanting cheers with their flashing pompoms spilling out of gym bags as they walked. They were the most beautiful creatures I had ever seen. Each squad had distinct colors and hairstyles and Katy and I argued which squad was ours. All of our barbie play was suddenly cheerleader based.
then there was the shower… originally for a floor of guys, there was 6 shower heads in a giant room. Modesty prevailing, the Kaleo girls had rigged up a shower curtain system that provided enough coverage to comfortable take a private shower. The tiny tiles covered the giant floor and we loved this shower, it was so much fun to talk to each other through a plastic sheet. We usually took showers during the day when all the girls were at work. We had the place to ourselves. and we found out… at some point… that when we were lathered up…. that the floor became very slippery… and yes, go there with your mind. We would kick off of one side of the shower and fly through the bottoms of the curtains into the other side of the shower room. We turned on all six heads (obviously not water conservationist or parent supervised…) for maximum slipperiness, soaped up and BAM- our own private water park! This was more fun than anything else we did during the summer. My mom must found out at some point and tried to tell us how gross it was, all the mildew, soap scum and germs we were sliding through on our naked bellies, but we didn’t care! -Unless we got tangled up in the hair in the drain. That grossed us out a little…
So, years later, my nasty drain in my shower has become a source of nightly memory invoking smells. God works in the most unusual of ways.