When the Sorting Hat takes away the guesswork
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- November 23, 2024
- 35
One of my favorite ingredients in the whole Harry Potter universe, aside from the newspaper photographs that feature moving images, is that of the Sorting Hat, which places students in their various houses, be it Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff or Slytherin.
Each aspiring wizard and witch takes a seat and warily awaits his or her destiny as the Sorting Hat, which is held aloft over their heads, probes their character, their strengths and their weaknesses.
It was a Hogwarts tradition, steeped in antiquity, vital to the series.
When I was a senior in high school, the world of Muggles and Quiddich was decades from creation, though I was conversant on Middle Earth and Hobbits, having been introduced to Tolkien and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy on a campus visit to Wittenberg.
That university, along with Ohio Wesleyan and Miami of Ohio, had seen fit to send letters of acceptance after receiving my applications for admission, which provided me with a decision.
But then something rather unforeseen occurred.
Along about Easter, my parents — well, my mother, actually — urged me to apply to Notre Dame, and because it seemed like a harmless lark, I went along with the whole application process, never dreaming the seed I’d planted would actually take root.
You must understand that I was essentially a non-entity in high school: not a varsity athlete, not in student government or the band or the choir, and certainly not in the top 10 percent in terms of class rank. I played JV baseball, had a position on the radio station staff and wrote for the newspaper — in short, the definition of a slacker.
I wore my hair too long, preferred the Rolling Stones to the Beatles and, when it came to social skills, was an utter failure, a wallflower.
When the manila envelope from the office of admissions arrived that spring afternoon, I was probably in gym class, being subjected to learning how to square dance, someone’s idea of imparting a modicum of between-the-genders experience to those lacking it.
To this day, phrases like “allemande left” and “do si do” and “promenade home” cause my brain to seize up in shame, hideous reminders of yet another high school disaster, one of so many.
When I got home after taking my customary walk across the vast grass field that lay between the school and the house, I was all prepared to dump my textbooks, grab a handful of Chips Ahoy cookies and settle in to watch “Three Stooges” reruns, always a highlight of my decompression session, when Mom stopped me.
I think there were tears in her eyes, but I could have imagined that.
“You got in,” she said, smiling in a way I’d never seen before.
I stood there in the kitchen, not sure what she was talking about.
“Notre Dame,” she said, producing a letter from behind her back. “You’ve been accepted for the fall semester. I’m so proud of you.”
You have to understand I’d all but forgotten even applying. It wasn’t as if I’d been waiting for weeks to hear from the school like I might have when, as a kid, I sent in for magic jumping beans or sea monkeys, maybe an autographed photo of Batman and Robin.
This was far enough off my radar to exist in some parallel galaxy.
And yet, there it was, irrefutable evidence my life had changed.
Which brings us back to the Sorting Hat, four schools and a choice.
It wasn’t much of a contest, really. Having spent time in Springfield, Delaware and Oxford — all lovely places — and three colleges with lots to offer, I headed off to ND later that summer.
My father was born and had grown up in South Bend, the Northern Indiana town that was home to the University of Notre Dame. After serving in the 101st Airborne in World War II, he attended Indiana University before matriculating to Kent State for his master’s degree, then on to Ohio State, where he earned his Ph.D.
Somewhere in there, he met Mom, and they fell in love and, soon after their marriage, produced three children in three years, a prodigious feat of fertility that was remarkable, even by mid-’50s standards. She was a Columbus girl with big-city dreams, but Dad had his heart set on life as a professor in a small town, so they settled in Ashland, a place I left coastal Carolina for last winter.
I hadn’t been back to Notre Dame since 2018, the longest such absence from my old school since, well … maybe my graduation.
In the intervening years, the campus and its attendant memories — mostly good, bordering on great, but others so toxic and painful as to become anathema — danced in and out of my conscious mind but took on almost hallucinatory qualities in my often uneasy sleep.
I’m certainly no dream therapist, nor do I trust my REM state to be anything other than suspiciously unreliable, but there’s no doubt the years I spent at ND left deep impressions on my psyche.
I hope you’ll tune in next week for more on my return to campus.
In the meantime, to revisit Harry Potter’s world for a moment, it’s said the wand chooses the wizard, not the inverse. I have a feeling the same viable truth applies to me and my alma mater.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to follow him on his Facebook page, a place where leprechauns still dance in delight.