April fools: Heading (Do not change)
Asbestos. You either love it or you hate it. Me? I’m an avid fan. Growing up in the Midwest, I had plenty of experience living with asbestos. I often reminisce on the golden days of lying upside on my childhood couch – my feet hanging in the air and bashing the living daylights out of our thin living room walls – specks of beautiful fibrous materials dancing off the ceiling like a matinee performance of “The Nutcracker.”
After high school, one of my biggest fears when looking for a college or university was losing that whimsy and charm of my youth. However, it only took one springtime tour of St. Lawrence University and one voluminous whiff of the Whitman Hall corridors to know that this school would be my new home.
But let me back up a bit. As a child, I was diagnosed with a very rare case of self-diagnosed ADHD. Nothing could keep me focused: not the medications, not the Mike and Ikes, not the therapy from my seventh-grade history teacher. I was hopeless. I had an asbestos-shaped hole in my heart that could only be filled by the chemical compounds behind my arid drywall enclosure.
That hole kept chipping as time went on. It became denser and more concave, like a future Pope without an “L.” By the time I was 17, I needed more and more asbestos. Unfortunately, I still needed to satisfy the rest of my life. My college of choice needed to match all my requirements.
No place satisfied my wants and needs more than SLU. The campus was gorgeous, the people were lovely, the faculty and staff were inviting, and the administration always knew the needs of its students. And they knew exactly what I needed…
When I got the SLU, I had a thirst to satisfy my gullet. I immediately advocated for being placed in Whitman. I marauded those walls like a cypress vine in a regal Venice restaurant. I banged, bonged, blasted, booted, and butted the eggshell soft walls scavenging for any trace of that sweet, sweet, mmmm goodie white powder. It wasn’t a fix; it was flirtation – a dance with the divine ordinance of government-mandated chemicals.
Soon enough, I reignited the then-defunct Asbestos Club. I had the financial backing of the Performance and Communications Department. On one hand, I was sad they didn’t have the money to put on their spring performance of “Yentl.” On the other hand, I was happy to share my Midwest roots with my newfound friends.
One of my closest friends, Rabbi Major Major, said of their experience with asbestos, “Gary and I were skating at a hospital on top of a huge hill, overlooking a valley. An ambulance came and took out a dead woman. Gary asked me why she wasn’t moving or blinking. They hadn’t closed her eyes yet. She must have died on the way. A car full of family and friends came in with the ambulance. They were all crying and hugging each other. One woman screamed hysterically and grabbed at the woman’s body, asking her to wake up. I had to tell Gary that her soul went to heaven. I didn’t believe a word of it, but I knew it’d be easier for him to understand.”
And that’s a statement I’ll never forget. Thank you, Rabbi.