Sometimes a little learning can be dangerous
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- March 15, 2020
- 846
When I was a sophomore in college, two things happened independently of each other that have, in the ensuing years, become inextricably linked.
And no, neither one had anything to do with my bad luck on the social scene, at least directly, so that should ease your mind about what is to follow.
After all, I seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time and effort lately conveying just how daunting dating was at my alma mater, a place of higher learning that relied on trial and error.
Mostly error.
But let’s forget about that whole sideshow and get back to class.
Needing to bolster my non-English major curriculum with enough electives to fill out my 15-hour course load, I turned to anything other than math or science or business.
That pretty much left me with what was euphemistically called “the humanities,” a field of study so broad and wide and deep as to defy easy categorization. So rather than wander aimlessly in its endless mazes, I did what any self-respecting sophomore would do.
I asked a junior.
She was one of those girls you’d see at parties but also at poetry readings, the kind of mid-’70s woman who knew on some intrinsic — nonmasculine — level that the balance of power was shifting.
In her case, however, the emphasis was on “balance,” not “power.”
This, of course, made her an ideal ally as I plotted my strategy.
“So,” she said as I stood behind her in the lunch line at the South Dining Hall, one of Notre Dame’s landmines, “I’m guessing you want an easy A.”
“No,” I blurted out before the server behind the steam table could ladle out a cupful of cream of something awful soup. “Not that.”
My friend turned to face me.
“You want something challenging then,” she said, missing the byplay between me and the Soup Lady. “Then there’s only one choice.”
I met her gaze, accepting her implied challenge, not wanting to get involved in a silly side road into culinary calamity.
“Lay it on me,” I said.
“Sociology 501,” she said. “It’ll change your life.”
And that’s how I found myself enrolled in a grad-school-level seminar that met once a week — Mondays at 9 p.m. — on the sixth floor of the library. The professor was a tall, bearded, bespectacled man who favored bib overalls and always wore sandals, even during one of South Bend’s typical snowstorms, the kind that dumped 10 inches in three hours. He introduced me to cognitive dissonance, chaos theory, the writings of B.F. Skinner and sensory deprivation.
But the one lasting thing he instilled in me was an absolute faith in what sociologists like him called the self-fulfilling prophecy.
As my South Dining Hall gal pal had intuited, it changed my life.
Which brings us to the second major event of my sophomore year.
I had worked the summer before, ironically enough, at the college in my hometown where I was the low man on the maintenance/grounds-keeping crew totem pole, an unenviable position that involved scrubbing frat house bathrooms with a toothbrush and yanking dozens of dead shrubs from their beds.
It was thankless work and paid only a buck and a quarter an hour, but when you’re 19 and full of spit and vinegar, you’re always up for a challenge. Besides, it wasn’t a bad way to spend the summer because the campus hosted a couple of cheerleading camps, which meant lots of girls in halter tops and cut-off jeans wandering about.
The last thing I did before I left home and returned to campus was to place an order with the Warehouse Sound Company of San Luis Obispo, specifically my very first component stereo system: a tuner/amplifier, two speakers, a turntable and a cassette deck.
I paid for it myself, using nearly every nickel I’d saved that summer, and instructed the folks in California to send it to Notre Dame, c/o Music Mike, Dillon Hall, third floor suite w/balcony.
While other guys were painting King Crimson and Rolling Stones artwork on their walls and others filled the air with the whine of electric saws as they cut boards to build bedroom lofts, I waited patiently for my contribution to communal dorm life.
It was, to say the least, a huge hit with the fellas. Once assembled and fully integrated, the machine took on immediate legend status, the kind usually reserved for athletes or guys who played guitar.
On those rare Northern Indiana spring days when the skies cleared, I’d put my speakers on the edge of the ledge and turn it up to 11.
But now I’m 65, and it’s been nearly five years since I last enjoyed my stereo system at any volume. To be blunt about it, I haven’t been able to outsmart the technology, one that has rendered my speakers — a pair of JBL L50s I got in 1978 or so — obsolete.
They require an outdated means of connection to the back of these new receivers, and so far I’ve failed two times to find a match.
Twice before I’ve had to pack everything up and return the amps for a refund. Twice before I’ve told myself it’ll happen soon. Twice before I’ve kept the faith.
But now, as I write, my third attempt to restore music to my life sits unopened on the floor of what I used to call my Stereo Room. I bought it at my wife’s insistence on my birthday trip to the beach, but I can’t bring myself to go through that disappointment again.
It’s a classic case of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Since I’ve already had two hideous experiences with possible replacement amps, I fully expect — with no evidence to back me up — the third time will not be the charm. It’s entirely possible I’ve made a fantastic purchase and that once I find my groove, so to speak, those 3,000 albums, 500 CDs, 200 45s and 100 cassettes will find their voices once more.
But the box sits on the floor, and I simply stare at it, 25 pounds of unrealized power. It might as well be filled with bricks or sand.
There is a time component in play, however. If I don’t return it by Saturday, I’m stuck with it, and I can’t allow that to happen.
So it’s me versus my self-fulfilling prophecy. Sometimes I wish I’d taken a class in electrical engineering instead.