In 1973 I was a sophomore at Clemson on a full Army ROTC scholarship when I came to the realization, I don’t look good in camouflage. So, Plan B.

Dropped out of Clemson and enrolled at UW Madison with a new scholastic attitude; slow it down, enjoy college, try new courses, meet new people and take advantage of what we’ll call pharmaceutical opportunities.

I settled into an easy academic equilibrium … until my sixth undergrad year; what I affectionately called my “Slothmore year".

But then one night a friend of mine and I got high and decided to graduate. We decided we’d move back into the dorms, push each other and get our last few credits and our degrees.

Unfortunately, he chickened out. Fortunately University Housing was slow to react and I ended up in the lakeside dorms all alone in a room for two,

It was a half-price paradise. Big room. Two of everything. I pulled the two beds together and slept in a king. One desk for studying, one for my stereo. One bookcase for all my albums and the other for a tasteful arrangement of art objects. Very Metropolitan Home.

Plus I got a good paying campus job working in an engineering lab from 9P to 3A, perfect hours for a night owl like me. Life was good, until Christmas break when I found out I’d been assigned a new roommate. Homer. And Homer was the worst kind of roommate. A morning person.

He was a fisherman. Obviously because he decorated our room with fish paintings, paper maché fish and a garland made of fish vertebrae. And did I mention he was a morning person?

I was not happy. I asked our RA why this guy was changing rooms midyear. He tells me (in confidence) Homer punched his last roommate, a music major, in the face. Waaa? Then he threw this guy’s saxophone out their dorm window. Great, an angler with anger issues!

Homer and I got off to a bad start. Three times in our first week Homer locked me out of our room, twice nearly naked because I was down the hall in the shower when he left!

And did I mention he was a morning person?

It was clear one of us was going to get punched in the face. So I decided to get rid of him. I started with smoke. He had asthma so I took up the pipe. He liked seeing the lake, so I kept the curtains closed. I’d have my friends call our dorm room phone while I was at work, like 1AM and wake him up … and “make sure they left a message!” I’d call occasionally to get messages.

I became a Charlie Parker fan and played saxophone records all the time.

And, it worked. A couple of weeks later University Housing moved him to a single in the high rises and I got my king size bed back.

Now, I’m not proud of what I did but, I’m pretty sure I just accelerated the inevitable and sidestepped the whole punch in the face thing.

The next semester I moved off campus again and defeated the urge to get a diploma. I had a lot of fun in my seventh and eighth undergrad years.

But you know, now that I’m retired, I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s time to finish my degree. It might be fun to get those last two credits.