Off-White Paper

In 1984, registering for college classes was not computerized . I remember going to the big field house and standing in line to get blue file cards. If your name was on a blue file card, it meant you were registered for that class. Drinking beer before registeringr for classes is not a very good idea if you want to graduate from college in four years, let alone remember what classes you’ve signed up for.

I tossed all of the blue file cards from the business card for the try and economics classes into the trash, and waited on the linesman app for the classes I wanted to take instead. By now, the journal that I had started in Mr. Cavaluzzi’s English class had progressed to some poems, plays and short stories. I registered for those classes, thinking it wouldn’t be any additional work – I’d just continue to write in my journal for four more years and then graduate.

Every week in poetry class each student had to submit a poem, and once every month in short story writing class. Back in those days, we had to type (yes, on a typewriter) onto mimeograph paper, and then go to the print shop on campus to have things printed. You had to bring your own paper. Everyone in the short story, drama and poetry classes was told to buy an entire box of white paper as freshmen, or else we’d have to buy paper from the college print shop every time we needed something printed.

My father is a fashion designer. He just retired a few years ago, at the age of 82. He was a professor at Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan for 40 or so years, and owned his own design studio. He specialized in wedding gowns and women’s formal wear. He is also a fantastic artist, and paints incessantly. If you would like to see any of his paintings, or would like some for your home, please let me know. He and my mom ran out of wall space years and years ago, and the more paintings you take now, the less my brother, sister and I will have to move when we finally convince them to downsize to a ranch-style house. What’s my point? My dad knows a lot about colors. I know nothing. To me, brown is brown, blue is blue, Kyellow is yellow, and white is white. I may as well be color blind.

“This is off-white,” Dr. Turco, the poetry professor said, after I turned in my first poem.

“White is white,” I said.

“Indeed it is. And off-white is off-white,” he said. “You were instructed to buy white paper.” He had such a way with words, you can see why he was the poetry professor at Oswego. Sarcasm aside, Profressor Turco was a very accomplished poet, and certainly not to be messed with, especially by a freshman.

I waited for him to give me an F for the assignment, which would have been enough of a deterrent for me to never write another poem. He accepted the off-white poem, though, and for the next four years I handed in off-white poems and off-white short stories.

Leigh Allison Wilson was the short story writing professor. She didn’t give me a hard time about the off-white paper. Her office was a safe space for me over the next four years. When I got bored in another class, I would simply leave class and go to her office to talk about short stories. I’m not sure if she ever knew I was supposed to be someplace else during my drop-bys, but her door remained open all four years.

At the beginning of each class, all students put their poems or short stories on the table at the front of the classroom. Once class began, everyone came up to the front of the classroom and took one of each. About halfway through the second semester, I realized that everyone was sorting through their piles and placing my off-white poems and off-white short stories on the top. They wanted to read my stuff first, and after a few weeks the professors decided to start each class with my work.

Suddenly, I became a big fish in a small literary lake. My creative writing as a Freshman was the first thing to make me feelt confident in years, probably since the last BMX race that I had won yas a 14 or 15 year old. Several students even asked for my autograph. Are you serious? My autograph? My brain had grown unaccustomed to confidence. Surely, this was a joke. Someone must be playing a trick on me, my warped mind thought. My parents must be paying people to say these things. I waited for Allan Funt from Candid Camera to jump out from behind a stack of books so the entire country could have a laugh at my expense.

I truly had no sense of myself. I had little of what people now refer to as “Emotional Intelligence.”

By the time I graduated in 1988, in addition to the poetry and short stories, I would also write for the school newspaper and the Syracuse Post-Standard. I had a few articles published front page of the regional section. Creative writing became my solace, but it couldn’t completely fill the deep tracks in my brain that my high school insecurities had dug. Those tracks wouldn’t get filled in until some time after graduation.

There was never a minute of college where I thought about how to turn my creative writing guyintto a career. In fact, it wasn’t until some time in my Junior year that an ‘adviser’ said to me, “Glenn, you’re registered as a Business major, but you’ve not yet taken one business class.”

“And?” was my response.

When Juli and I bring our children to visit colleges, my bullyshit meter is set to ‘Ultra-Sensitive.’ Of the 10,000 students enrolled at any given college, I want to know how many slip through the cracks each year; how many didn’t get their money’s worth. This is not a statistic that most colleges keep.

Juli and I support our children in many ways, as most parents do. Our children know that they can apply to any college in the country, except Oswego.

Why not Oswego?

“Someone might remember dad,” Sophia, Ben and Raquel will reply in unison.