NOTEBOOK -- steve marble

* EDITOR’S NOTE: Steve Marble, a longtime editor and writer with the

Daily Pilot, has kindly agreed to write a column that will appear

regularly in this space each Thursday. It’s our opinion that Steve is one

of the best writers to have ever passed through the Pilot’s doors. We’re

sure you will agree.

The woman said she was from Washington and wanted to talk with my son.

I cradled the phone in my hand for a moment, my brain flipping through

the college literature that had been arriving the past few months.

There was Washington. Puget Sound. Home of the mighty Huskies. Lots of

rain. Then there was the other Washington, the one on the far side of the

state. Cougars. Colder than a meat locker. And there was another one, not

in Washington at all, but in St. Louis, which -- for me -- conjured up

images of Mark McGwire and little else.

I handed the phone to Ryan. It’s Washington, I said.

He cupped his hand over the receiver. “Which one?”

I shrugged. Haven’t a clue. The cold one, I think.

My son is a high school senior and maybe that’s all I need to say about

that. He’s old enough to see that the future beckons, that the great wide

open is only a few months down the road, but young enough still to be

oblivious to the hard reality of what lies ahead -- dirty laundry,

cafeteria food, poverty and possibly, as was my fate, a roommate from

Brooklyn who had no comprehension of why the shower curtain was invented.

When I asked Ryan where he wanted to go to college, he was fairly

decisive.

“Somewhere close to the beach.”

Uh-huh. And?

“Close to the mountains.”

That would be here, at home, I told him. But he smiled because he was

already far ahead of me. He talked about the value of campus life, seeing

a different piece of geography, the lessons that would surely be learned

by leaving the nest and venturing into the “real” world.

Uh-huh.

And so the literature began to arrive. Northwestern sent a packet with a

shimmering, summery photo of Lake Michigan dotted with, not angry,

storm-driven whitecaps, but little, tiny, cute boats. Indiana showed

itself off under a blanket of gold and crimson autumn leaves. Michigan

presented its football team. Snow? What snow?

San Luis Obispo sent a computer disc for a “virtual tour” experience. The

University of Pacific sent a videotape. And USC sent an application as

thick as a Papa John pizza with a complete page of bar codes, already

embossed with my son’s name.

The University of Oregon mailed a gorgeous brochure that explained, in

some detail, that it didn’t rain as much in Oregon as you might suspect.

And at any rate, it went on to note, the rain doesn’t really slow anyone

down. Not in Oregon it doesn’t.

Loyola Marymount included a map -- though scale-challenged -- showed that

the campus, indeed, was close to the mountains, the beach, the Rose Bowl,

Disneyland, Hollywood and most of the other major destinations in

Southern California.

Pepperdine played to one of its advantages -- a stunning shot of Malibu.

UC Riverside must have seen my son coming, presenting itself as being

close to the beach and the mountains.

University of Hawaii? Just the return address alone was enough.

Some of the colleges seemed persistent. Washington -- the one in St.

Louis -- sent a barrage of letters and colorful pieces of literature,

coming like small sorties through the mail. Most boasted a photo of the

Rams, as if we might be missing the old football team enough to consider

sending our eldest child off to St. Louis.

To be honest, some of the colleges I didn’t recognize at all. One --

Johnson and Fister, or something of that nature -- sounded like a wine

label, or perhaps a pharmaceutical firm. Hancock? An insurance company?

Nope, a college in the Midwest.

For a while, we stacked the literature on the dining room table. Finally

it became too bulky, sliding and shifting on its own. We organized it by

geography and then by regions. We broke it down in other ways, too -- big

schools, small schools, schools with small class sizes, schools close to

home, schools far away, schools with mascots like anteaters and banana

slugs, schools near the beach, schools near the mountains, cheap schools

and schools that cost as much as buying a brand-new Lexus every year.

We looked at the requirements -- the “freshman profile,” as it’s fondly

known in the college admission ranks -- and took stock of the SATs, GPAs,

ACTs, SAT2s and APs until we felt like we were swimming upstream against

the alphabet.

Where all of this ends, I don’t know. But I am certain of one thing.

One day -- like a lot of things in life -- the answer will arrive in the

mail.

And life will change. Maybe forever.

* STEVE MARBLE is the managing editor of Times Community News, publisher

of the Daily Pilot.