My cell phone read 41 degrees. The Fahrenheit reading had been oozing down for the past forty-five minutes. My feet were cold. The black thermal underwear I wore under my jeans was struggling to thermal me. Misty rain swept across the football field, water droplets glinting on the synthetic turf. Field lights glowed hazily above the unfolding epic struggle on the gridiron below. Having logged a tad short of fifty years in Florida, I was out of my element, a gator on a glacier, a flamingo on an ice floe.
My Life’s Editor, next to me on the sideline, was hopping up and down and screaming along with a gaggle of fans. Only one thing could move two octogenarian Floridians to freeze their tushes on a frigid rainy April night in Colorado – a grandchild. There she was, seen through the drifting mist in her gold cleats, black yoga pants and red T-shirt. She took a hike from center and stepped back, arm cocked to rifle a spiral downfield. Patrick Mahomes in a ponytail.
There are 26 sororities in the US on 670 campuses, according to Google. Sorority sisters lead the “Greek Life,” enjoying comradeship, doing service work, and having a place to stash their cosmetics. Becoming a sister involves “rushing,” a psychological version of Navy Seal training, like crawling across a rock-strewn beach under fire, armed with only a smile and a cell phone. Our granddaughter, a freshman at CU (as the University of Colorado at Boulder is termed), rushed a sorority.
My Life’s Editor and I did not experience sororities. Her alma mater did not offer Greek Life, nary a toga in sight. I went to an all-male college. I did not experience sororities, much less see many women on campus. The occasional female grad student could be spotted at Sterling Memorial Library in her Birkenstocks and Janis Joplin threads, causing lust in our hearts. I am glad there were no women to style for. Personal hygiene was optional for us. The idea of shaving daily and digging for a clean shirt or pair of jeans in your roommate’s dresser every day is fatiguing.
I did join a fraternity, Beta Theta Pi. The brothers did not live there. The Beta house gave me a place to take my date on weekends, notably my future Life’s Editor. It was removed from the common student rabble. A miasma of stale beer assaulted you when you entered. My fraternity paddle never paddled anyone. It has runic symbols and a rampant dragon. I know what the stars at the top signify. I would have to kill you as soon as I revealed the meaning and I can’t afford to lose readers. The reverse side has a spooky, hooded figure, suggesting a monk, with his back to the viewer. There were no monks at the Beta house.
Fraternities and sororities flowered in the latter half of the 19th century when Greek language competence was viewed as a sign of intelligence and symbolic of the higher realms of knowledge. Fraternities were formed by students to meet and engage in scholarly discourse. They sat about, smoked pipes and looked distinguished. Phi Beta Kappa was the original, formed at the College of William and Mary in 1776. It does not rush. Once I stood next to someone at a cocktail party who was a Phi Beta Kappa.
I was not Phi Beta material, but I was on a Dean’s list. The middle of my sophomore year, I was summoned to the office of the Dean of the College. I entered a room with a long oak table, around which sat professors in tweed jackets with leather elbow patches. On the walls were portraits of formerly alive professors who had even more facial hair than the current lot. There was a single empty chair at the end of the table. It was mine.
I was an engineering major. In a Fortran coding course, my first assignment was to launch a rocket into orbit. My “if statements” and “do loops” never got the rocket off the pad. The Indian graduate students who operated the computer center snickered and elbowed each other when I took the walk of shame up to the desk with my stack of rubber-banded punch cards.
The gist of it was that the engineering faculty was not of a mind to keep me. It was in my best interest, as well as in the interest of future astronauts who might ride aboard a rocket I might have built, that I abandon engineering. The American Studies Department, a citadel of empathy, valuing word smithery, became my haven for the next two years.
Our granddaughter successfully rushed Gamma Phi Beta. She was out slinging leather in the cold and the rain as a part of Greek Week, when sororities compete in Powderpuff football, synchronized dance, and other skills pertinent to the life of a CU sorority woman. According to the dictionary, a “powderpuff” is a small, soft, cotton pad used to apply powder gently to a woman’s face. Pro Tip: though called “touch” football, there is nothing gentle about a Powderpuff football game. The crusty old Michigan State football coach Duffy Daugherty said, “Football is not a contact sport, it is a collision sport.” How right he was. Bodies were flying at the game that night. A truckload of face powder could not have covered the dirt, sweat and tears.
The best part about it is that when the combatants walked off the field, they hugged as sisters, winners and runners-up all together. And, oh yes, Patrick Mahomes in a ponytail led Gamma Phi to the championship.
Marshall Craig 